That never-ending war
It’s not really about the war between North and South Korea but it is almost similar since it involves the never-ending bickering between 2 of Korea’s top girl groups’ fans for 5years now. In the early 2000s, it was fans of SES and FinKL but the wars, or rather fanwars were not as dominant as it is between Wonderfuls(Wonder Girls fans) and Sones(SNSD/Girls Generation’s fans).
Recently, an article about JYP’s tweet on the Wonder girls’ upcoming US album had caused some fanwars stir yet again on allkpop just because these 2 girl groups had their eye on US market. I am a wonderful but I love SNSD as well. SNSD filled up that gap of mine when WG left for US. I watched SNSD and loved their variety skills. When WG came back for a battle with SNSD in Korea in 2011, my loyal heart had to stick with WG and I had to endure all the fanwars arising yet again. Enduring or ignoring is what most of us tell ourselves to do but whenever some troll start those wars of using offensive words, one can’t help it but to stand up for your bias.
I have a friend whom I knew as a wonderful some years back but she had migrated to become a Sone when WG was on the low for a few years without many new songs and all. It is inevitable, I don’t blame her. However I suspected she was in a dilemma when the 2 groups promoted together last year. Her tweets on SNSD were all good until WG came back with wonder world and she was silent then on. Finally, she tweeted that she bought the wonder world album and GNO was daebak. A fellow wonderful then said that he thought she left WG already and she said she can’t tweet too much positivity about WG because some of her followers may get sensitive. We all know who those followers are.
Why are fans particularly sensitive when it comes to these 2 girl groups? I don’t see Cassies, ELF, VIPs and Hottests going all out at each other’s throats. How did the wonderful-sone war start and become so intense? The girls of both groups are dear friends with each other and that didn’t stop the fanwars. Yes, both these groups have a strong resume, from making hit songs to breaking into other markets. All these years, you can’t help but see several articles on SNSD vs WG and you could guess how popular these articles were with both fandoms giving their piece and having wars. Sones is one HUGE fandom, I cannot deny that. This fandom grew like wild fire when WG said bye bye to Korea to work their way into the US. There are also several fans like me who love wondergeneration and support both groups. However, the wars were intense during music bank in Nov 2011 and yes, as a wonderful, despite all the endurance I had, I ranted on why WG could have lost due to power of a huge fandom and not due to the quality of an album. Then I found myself asking such similar questions in a lot of real-life situations. Why did the CEO of my co. pick someone else over me to handle that big project even when I was the one who put in the most effort? Why did that Adam Lambert lose American idol when he was obviously the strongest in vocal? Yeah, even Kanye West also couldn’t take it and went up stage, saying out loud that Beyonce deserved that award more than Taylor.
The wonder girls probably stopped asking themselves these questions of fairness ever since they packed their bags and left Korea. If the girls can be happy just to provide us with great music and not care if they won awards against anyone anymore, why can’t their fans feel the same way too? I rest my case. Enough with the fanwars, follow your idols’ gracious sportsmanship. And I’m saying this to ALL fandoms.
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