Am I the only one noticing a horrendous number of akgaes in the fandom or is this a regular occurrence in new gen kpop?

For the past few years I've sort of drifted in and out of the kpop scene, and the longest I've ever lingered around was back before the second generation girl group apocalypse started happening. You can imagine my surprise coming back and finding out a large chunk of the groups I stanned had disbanded. ಠ_ಠ

My current female bias groups are f(x) and BlackPink and I adore the heck out of these two. Yet the differences in their fandoms are apparent (at least from what I've seen). I've stanned f(x) since their debut in '09 with my ultimate bias being Krystal and I've never come across vicious akgaes because generally people loved them as one despite having biases. Sure, once in a while I'd come across antis but they'd get shut down real quick.

My experience with BlackPink has not been so pleasant. On almost every video you click on of BP, be it variety shows, vlives, music videos, dance practice—it's flooded with arguments and always the most nonsensical ones. There are arguments over who dances better, who sings better, who raps better, who looks the prettiest, who should be promoted more, what positions they have or should have - it's ridiculous. For example: it's been established over and over again that Jennie is BP's main rapper - always has been - and just decided to use her vocal abilities for the past two comebacks (PWF and AIIYL) yet something as small as that caused a huge argument over whether Jennie was main rapper or Lisa. I get how someone new to BP who only listened to those two recent songs would be confused but it's been made such a big deal of with people actually bashing Jennie and Lisa from both sides, arguing that one is worse than the other. Like for 's sake, who cares? 

I feel like some Blinks are so desperate to raise their bias above everyone else that they're not even there for the group or the music anymore. You hardly ever see comments on their videos being related to the actual videos anymore, it's just spammed with people trying to get their bias's names out there (i.e. LISA LISA LISA JENNIE JENNIE JENNIE JISOO JISOO JISOO ROSE ROSE ROSE) - great that you're supporting your bias but when one goes to a comment section, they expect some sort of discussion going on (and yet when there are discussions, they're usually petty arguments).

[For those who don't know—akgaes are people (often with behavioural issues) who stan one particular member and will go out of their way to put down anyone who isn't them, including the members of their own group and members of other groups if they feel like they're a threat to their bias's success. EX: Lisa has a lot of Thai akgaes who hate on the Korean members of BP and actively went out of their way to dislike all of Twice's MVs]

I personally bias the maknae line of BP so hard - which makes it doubly worse that their akgaes are the most prominent. To be entirely objective - Lisa's akgaes tend to be the worst. Yes, that's coming from a Rosé-biased person but that doesn't take away from the truth of it. It's expected - Lisa has the largest number of international fans, hence, a larger portion of emotionally unstable idiots stanning her. I've seen so many comments from Lisa stans actively trying to victimize her - accusing Jennie of bullying Lisa as they joke around, saying YG is unfair to Lisa because she needs more promotions,  saying Lisa should be main rapper not Jennie, saying Jisoo shouldn't be lead vocal because Lisa sings better than her, begging for photos of Lisa under IG updates of the other members, asking for Lisa during other member's vlives. Ya'll need to take a seat. I thirst for Lisa too but some of you are acting salty and dehydrated.

When you try to point any of this out, Lisa stans get defensive and say “uM stans of other members do the same thing, why are you singling us out??” — (1) just because other people do it doesn't mean you have to join them in their thirsty conquest and (2) because there's no doubt Lisa's fanbase outnumbers the rest of them. You'll come across other akgaes once in a blue moon but Lisa's are everywhere. Yes, we know NOT ALL Lisa stans but a hefty amount. Enough to make people not want to stan Lisa (which is unfortunate) and enough to turn people away from loving BlackPink.   

And then there are ship wars. [pause to heave the longest sigh known to man]

I've recently become a fan of  some blacksonyeondan/blackbangtan (BTS and BlackPink) ships because I really do think some of the members would be super compatible and they're fun to write about. But this fandom sometimes gets so petty and out of hand that I don't even want to associate with the entire group. I thought it would be like a revival of my f(EXO) or f(SHINee) days when shippers (from what I knew) actually respected each other — you wouldn't really find a KaiStal shipper hating on, say, KaiSul because at the time both ships were CRACK AF. The biggest KaiStal interaction we had back in the day was a fancam of Kai and Krystal who happened to stand next to each other at an SMTown concert and held hands for the final bow. It made our hearts flutter but nobody ever took it as "OMG Kai and Krystal are totally dating" - we acknowledged that it was entirely coincidental. 

Things have changed (or maybe I haven't noticed). A lot of blackbangtan ships seem to be shipped by BlackPink akgaes who either desperately want their BP bias with their BTS bias or for their BP bias to be shipped with every guy who so much as looks at them. I understand what it's like to bias someone so much that every ship seems appealing (how I felt with Krystal) and that's fine, ship watever, it's nobody's business. But then things start going downhill because these shippers, to put it frankly, are like dehydrated people stranded in the Sahara desert - crazed and delusional. 

There are wars - actual arguments and malicious comments - about ships that haven't even come close to being "real". The most BPxBTS interactions we've had are vague glances and reaction videos and somehow that much has driven people to bash each other. Comments under unrelated content about how "real" their ship is and how "fake" the ship they don't like is. It's fine to be delusional to the point of thinking "hmm he glanced at her a lot, he must like her" WITHIN your own group of delulus but to go out and actively diss and report people who think otherwise is straight up idiotic.

Jungkook/Lisa (lizkook) shippers are the most prominent in the blackbangtan world and quite frankly, I haven't seen a group of people this crazed about an OTP since G-Dragon/Dara (daragon). Yes, I've seen rosekook shippers (unfortunately) hate on lizkook but not nearly as often as I've seen the vice versa. Again, attributed to the difference in fandom size. Go to any massive Blackbangtan following (IG, fb, twitter), find any post about rosekook and you're guaranteed to see it flooded with spam from lizkook shippers about how they don't want to see this, how there needs to be more lizkook, how the person posting is clearly Rosé biased even though they've posted plenty of lizkook things in the past and only posted rosekook this once upon request. The victim complex is so strong I can't even fathom it. ಠ_ಠ  

The parallels between daragon and lizkook are scary (I feel like history is repeating itself). The moment 2NE1 debuted, people thought Dara was the female version of GD and shipped them so hard it took forever for the hype to die down (in addition, Dara was the most beloved member of her group and GD the most beloved of his). Every time GD would wear the same article of clothing or happen to glance her way, people would scream "DARAGON IS REAL" and consistently shove it down everyone's throats. They would find even the littlest things to link them to each other, spammed about the ship under videos/photos completely unrelated to them, stood outside of BIGBANG concerts with Daragon signs (harrassing them), and stirred up a bunch of dating rumours. It was the worst shipping fandom I've ever come across and turned what could have been a cute ship into the most intolerable one.

I've considered the demographic of the fandom - how so many fans are really young, hormonal and problematic, but does this excuse their ignorance or call for properly telling them off? I was also pretty young when I got into this whole biases and ships business but I wasn't nearly as fanatic as some of these kids are acting. Have things changed since second gen or has it always been like this?

This whole shipping thing has gone from "innocent thing that pops up once in a while" to "holy it's like the plague that's spread everywhere". A YG solo artist (ONE/Jaewon) recently debuted and I was utterly irritated by the level of disrespect on his debut MV. Apparently people thought him and Jennie would make a cute pair and just started spamming about it under HIS music video. It's not just one or two top comments about how he and Jennie should totally hook up/collab, it's an almost infinite scroll through comments about Jennie before you reach anything related to the actual content of the video. I don't care if you ship One and Jennie - knock yourselves out - but to actively mention another person instead of appreciating the work of the artist is beyond rude. He's prepared for years for his debut and people are seriously going to disregard that because they find him attractive and want to ship him with someone? If you want to ship it, make your own damn video and spazz under there.

Shipping in 2017 has become such a turnoff, it really makes me not want to have any part of it. 

+EXTRA: What do people want when they ship people together?

I kept thinking back to this video while going through the absolute mess of comment sections because Dan Howell is my platonic soulmate and I totally agree with these theories. I believe all three categories he mentioned are why people ship what they ship. I fall under the last one - I find it cute, entertaining, and inspiring to see interactions between two people that I think would be a really good match (whether or not they become canon, I really don't care because these are real people we're talking about, not characters, so it's none of my business). 

However, with the large population of female fans who stan both BlackPink (or any other girl group) as well as BTS, they probably fall under the first category - wanting to be one of the people in the relationship. Most of us understand how crazed fangirls get when their celebrity crush ends up with another girl, and in the kpop world, dating - as the wise Heechul once said - is the biggest crime an idol can commit. It's a lot chiller in the States, obviously, with celebrities openly dating whoever the they want because it's their life and they're not there to be bachelors forever for the satisfaction of their fans. Sure Selena Gomez got a ton of hate and death threats from Bieber fans but that didn't stop them from locking lips on beaches and grinding on each other at clubs. Yet when Taeyeon so much as posted a picture of two mini oreos on top of each other as an inside joke to her boyfriend, people started sending her pictures of crushed up oreos and ones they've flushed down the toilet (I'm sorry, I just found that funny - I'm a horrible person). It got to the point where the two of them were spotted crying/looking absolutely sullen at airports. 

And that's where Dan Howell's statement comes through. When one ships their female bias with the man of their dreams, it's almost like their female bias is an extension of themselves. It's like a twisted kind of love - it's like knowing you'll never have a chance with your crush so you encourage your best friend whom you love and trust to date him instead. I once tried to write a fanfic about this once (which never got finished because it became a mess) where Amber suffers from a one-sided love for Krystal and entrusts Kai to make her happy instead (you can see why I cringed and gave up). This is why I think so many girls get obnoxious as hell when people try to ship their BTS bias with anyone but their female bias. I suppose it feels like cheating somehow(?). These girls are fine when their female bias gets shipped with multiple guys but the moment their male bias gets shipped with other girls, an alarm goes off. It's really sad when you put it into that perspective.

And then there are the "skeptics" - the idiotic war zone expands.

While there are the fangirls who want their oppas to have nothing to do with other girls, fangirls who think their oppas should have everything to do with girls, there's a third party that tries to play the role of the totally logical objective thinkers who will deny everything. They're the ones you'll find mocking shippers, calling them pathetic and trying to debunk their "evidences" because they think it makes them look smart. They're something akin to anti-SJWs who will comment under anything with the word "feminism" in it, bringing up anything they can use against the notion that women are even the slightest bit oppressed in the modern world (i.e. blah blah men can also be , men are more often victims of violence, men get arrested more, blah blah I'm sick of you women constantly acting like men don't face ism) even if the content doesn't remotely suggest anything of the sort. I feel like these "skeptics" get triggered in the same sort of way, bashing people they claim to be "too delulu" and how they're sick of all shippers acting like their OTP is real because of a small interaction. I'd get how they'd be angry if the comments were under non-ship related stuff but when it is stuff specifically intended for people to like the ship, why the hell is it any of their business? It's not even that they simply disagree with the post, they go out of their way to provoke other people (to troll them? possible but a lot of them seem so serious and full of themselves).   

It's really a shame that BP's royal maknae has to suffer the brunt of obsessive stans dragging hate to her - it's really not her fault at all. I don't know why Lisa stans get so offended when this is brought up - shouldn't they be more worried about defending Lisa's rep rather than themselves? Anyway, I just really had to get that off my chest. No hate, just strong criticism. Shipping is supposed to be a fun thing that people use to get a cheap hype off of or use as inspiration for creativity but some of you kids need to quench your thirst and reevaluate your lives.

starcube, out~