A brief history of Tao's Chinese Fandom
The point of this post is to make more people aware of Tao’s C-fandom history, because it had a large impact upon Tao’s growth over the past 2 years. I hope more people can understand Tao’s actions and see him as the genuine, caring young man that he is, rather than immediately dismissing his actions as ‘insecure’. I hope you can read this post all the way. Thank you.
Tao’s teaser in 2011 immediately drew the attention of the general public. His Wushu performance was very well received in China. When the Chinese netizens were still discussing which Exo members has plastic surgery, Tao already has gathered quite a steady fan-base. There were multiple large forum threads about Chinalines, with Tao as the main focus.
Of course now I am going to have to talk about ‘professional fans’, something that I am not sure whether it exists in the Western markets. They are people who are hired by entertainment companies to control the popularity of certain celebrities. They will flood the forums with certain view points in order to create positive or negative image, make-up rumors and lead the fandom in certain directions which will create the most profit.
Unfortunately, Tao was not well received by these ‘professional fans’; his fan base mostly is comprised of first time fans that have no knowledge of Korean Wave.
That’s when Tao experienced a large scale Anti-ing that has never been experienced by any member of a K-pop group before. The entire incident was extremely organised:
1) To release selected old photos and make up rumours about coming from a poor family background. In fact this is one of the first ‘facts’ that I have heard when I became a fan of Exo. However from this post we know that Tao is from an extremely wealthy background.
2) To illegally invade his personal websites, release fake rumours to brainwash the public. Rumours include Tao having eight girlfriends at the same time, having an illegitimate child in France, etc.
3) To abuse Tao openly on the Internet through his Weibo, QQ and other social media. Large amount of accounts created by ‘professional fans’ to attack Tao in his comment section as well as private messaging.
Such large scale anti for a newly debuted idol’s career is deadly, and highly effective. As majority of the fans are young in age, they are quick to believe these made-up ‘facts’, even the older netizens would form a negative view about Tao. This lead to large-scale fall in number of fans – Tao’s Baidu Tieba (one of the largest fan-page) was dropping at the astounding rate of over 1000 fans per day. Of course there were also netizens who joined in on the anti-ing as it was the Internet trend.
Because of everything, Tao’s mental and emotional state was severely affected. When the rest of Exo are beginning to gain popularity, he was like a defeated general, and in early 2012 interviews you can see that he is clearly afraid to speak. Tao’s mother had actually prepared enough money to terminate his contract with SM, to prevent him from getting hurt further.
That’s why I have to express my thanks to one fan (currently part of Taouch – Tao’s fansite), she told Tao live on air that: ‘whether it is a small step or a large step, it is a step towards your success. We will continue down this path with you even if we have to kneel.’ She made him aware that not the entire world was against him; there are still people who loved and supported him.
I also need to thank 韬家战斗机 – at the time in the largest Chinese K-pop forum, every day there would be at least five threads focused on Anti-ing Tao on the front page. He single handedly fought against them and won respect for the HaiLangs. During the time, Tao’s fandom was regularly bashed for no reason at all.
I am now going to talk about Taoris, so if you are a shipper you might want to skip this section.
Taoris became very popular around the same time. Taoris not only promoted the idea that Tao is heavily dependent upon Kris, unable to function by himself and absolutely worship the ground that Kris walks upon, it also pushed up Kris’ image as a caring leader. Everyone who became Tao’s fan will tell you that Kris is the closest to Tao, as well as cemented with the idea of Tao being crybaby who always needs Kris to buy him Gucci. I guess it could explain why Tao receive such large scale bashing and hate on Instagram and Weibo for not support Kris in his recent decisions.
It is fortunate that Tao has achieved so much personal growth in these two years despite all of his adversities. He is still the confident Huang Zitao, the Huang Zitao that believes that ‘nothing in the world is impossible for me.’ Through his hard work, Tao has proven to the world that he is a capable, independent, talented and very popular.
I hope that people will keep these in mind when they think of Tao next time. He is a much more dynamic person that the fanfictions have given him credit for.
Below I have translated a couple of comments from Tao’s fans who were present during Teaser and Mama Era.
‘Back then we could only find photos of Tao in other Exo members’ fansite photos. We treasure even a distant back shot, sharing it between the ten of us in the chat rooms. We didn’t dare bring it out because that just drew bashing. I am really grateful to Taouch for helping us believe in him when we were about to give up! All that Tao has achieved now he fought for by himself. Maybe it comes a little too late too slow, but he will be standing at the top one day!’
‘People often said to me: Huang Zitao still has fans?’
‘If you haven’t experienced it, then you really couldn’t believe it. Back then we got hate everyday, we couldn’t even argue back. There were literally no photos of him, and we laughed ironically about ‘looking for Tao-tao in the photo edges’. When fansites put logos over his face, we couldn’t speak out. When I heard Taouch say, ‘we’ll follow you down this path even if we have to kneel’, my heart was filled with sorrow and pride. We did it. He also did it.’
CR: Orginal post with added information from {Tao-fans, please click!} & {Weibo} Translated and organised by me. Photo by TikTakTao.
(PS currently working with canwenotmafeels on translating the longer and fuller version. Thank you.)
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