BECAUSE APPARENTLY THIS IS THE INTERNET HILL I WANNA DIE ON

Please don’t read if you can’t take some hard truth served cold

Part 1: Kris Wu Yi Fan is an “entitled child”
Because apparently this is the hill I wanna die on, or something, I’mma have to call out the level of hypocrisy and entitlement in the fans who are all about labeling Kris Kevin Wu Yi Fan Li a selfish human being for, essentially, wanting to quit his really high profile job before an important team deadline. There’s all this stuff from fans calling him childish, lazy, dead to them, whatever, and I just literally read a tweet from someone I’d have previously thought was a p sane, reasonable person that read “myocarditis isn’t even a serious untreatable disease wtf” and like, DAMN. (As a medical student, I’d like to say uh, yes it is serious. And secondly, if you or your loved ones are diagnosed with myocarditis SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP.)
I wanna give y’all the benefit of the doubt and say you are proponents of idk, basic human rights, and would protest labor standards that would lead to emotional and physical distress in basically any other working context at any other job in the world so like, why is this any different?
(AND IF YOUR ANSWER IS HONESTLY BECAUSE IT HURTS THE FEELINGS OF/MAKES LIFE A LITTLE HARDER FOR YOUR OPPAS, ON ANY LEVEL, I WANT YOU TO TAKE TWELVE STEPS BACK AND REEVALUATE YOUR LIFE.)

The fact that this job happens to literally revolve around providing us, the fans, with personal entertainment and joy, only makes this all the more entitled. 

We’re not unaware this stuff has been going on. How many jokes do we make about SME (and other entertainment companies, surely) and its treatment of its employees: intense training period, weirdly parochial non-dating policy, live-in manager dorm life, incredibly intense back to back schedules, uncontrolled sasaeng activity, repeated proof and indication that these kids are expected to pull through despite illness and injury as a celebrity “culture”, idols themselves nonchalantly mentioning that they only sleep a couple hours a night, on average, or that they starve themselves before important events and all as a part of an entertainment industry. Like, to provide the public with a little fun in their lives. AND they earn very little to nothing in the way of real wages for years and years of this.

(Not even gonna address the people who are still LOL OMGGG PLS STOP TRYING TO RIP ON SM THAT’S SO OLD, because honestly if one or more lawsuits occurring in every single generation: HOT, Shinhwa, Dbsk, Super Junior, Exo, is not enough of an indicator to you that there is something seriously wrong with the system that continues to be unaddressed, nothing will, and god bless you.) 

There isn’t anything to glorify about this. If the other eleven members continue to push on in whatever conditions, giving statements that there’s nothing wrong between them and the company, praising a standard of “hard work to achieve their dreams” (a part of SM culture that is so ingrained and underlined that they released an entire documentary about three of their golden boys living out just this theme) then they’ve made up their minds and are able to shoulder the standards of a fundamentally flawed system and we can only wish them the best. And maybe continue to enjoy the music and entertainment after yet another wake up call that everything is not just brotherhood and dreams and idk cute gimmicks on tv shows. 

This DOES NOT make the other eleven better people than Kris. It does not make them stronger, or harder, or wiser or whatever the f. This DOES NOT make Kris a selfish childish person for wanting out, lord. This was probably the product of idk, six years of disillusionment but he could’ve woken up one morning and realized that he was 23 years old and where he once was healthy he now had an inflamed heart that he had to sneak away to get diagnosed on his own dang time. That the eleven other people in his team were living life from a perspective he could no longer get behind and he’d left and been brought back before and tried to work it through for the team and Exo is One and Exo Let’s Love and all that and the day to day of it just wasn’t living out. 
Basically, if you as a fan want to refuse one of the members the right to leave, because it puts greater pressure on the other eleven over-worked, over-stressed, under-rested members I’m gonna need to you to take every single seat in the whole dang building and maybe reassess why you want those people to be over-worked, over-stressed, and under-rested FOR YOU in the first place.
Part 2: But I just don’t approve of the WAY he left, or WHEN, or whatever
And to that, I say: It depends on the perspective you’re coming in from.
First, we’d have to agree that this is a case of a person getting out of a bad situation (see above). If you don’t think that’s the case, because the guy got through whatever five years of training before the fame, before anything, and is leaving at the height of the group’s popularity, while potentially ill, because of laziness or childishness, then goodnight and goodluck, I guess.

From there, have you ever heard of or known anyone getting out of a bad situation? I’m assuming yes, because homes, institutions, whatever, this exists everywhere. People getting out of bad places LEAVE, that’s the thing. And if you agree that the situation was bad, you don’t tell them they can’t, or when they should, or who they should tell first. ESPECIALLY if they’ve tried to leave before in one or more instances, more quietly, in a different manner, at, as you would say, “a better time”, and have been dragged back by the entity they are trying to escape from, convinced to stay by people around them they care about, who profess to care about them. 

ESPECIALLY if you are just a random sitting behind a computer somewhere, who benefited from or enjoyed the job the person’s trying to escape. Damn. 

(Is no one really creeped out by the PR “irresponsible to the fans” pronouncement? Like, I don’t want anyone to continue to sing and dance against their will because they’re responsible to ME, jc.)

Second, are we really, I mean really, arguing on BEHALF of SM here? Uhh, as the victim? Because the timing surprised them, or is inconvenient for them? You’re right, it’s not NICE that Kris left now. But this is a tactical escape from a powerful entity. Like, that’s how it’s done, and it’s not necessarily a moral or “nice” thing, but uhh how does someone nicely extricate themselves from a very powerful company that has them in a binding contract anyway? Looking back at DBSK, Hangeng, etc., all legal precedent would suggest you can’t, because the system is inherently hard to bust out of. 

He could’ve told his bandmates/teammates/friends and coworkers that he was leaving, but again, as some random sitting behind a computer who has no claims on THEIR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS man, I don’t get to throw a temper tantrum about it because I don’t get to dictate how close they are, or should have been, or whether the others should’ve known he was sad, or whatever the f. 

The members have the prerogative to feel ANY SORTA WAY about this whole, awful situation. So does Kris. As NUGU FANS with our faces pressed up against the windows of their lives, fans who don’t bear any sort of relation to these people other than to be primary benefactors of their jobs, who don’t know anything about their relationships other than what we can glean from ours and other’s potentially unhealthy preoccupations are we really gonna stand up right now and yell to the masses how so and so should’ve TOLD US, should’ve TOLD THEM, MYOCARDITIS AIN’T BAD ENOUGH, etc.

Everyone ragging on about how what Kris did is “cold”… idk it’s pretty funny. Do you know this dude? Do you know the people who you’re all up in arms over, spitting vitriol to defend because one of their friends and coworkers quit his job unexpectedly on them after being dragged back a couple times? You’re the equivalent of the random busting in on some corporate meeting telling the guy trying to leave that he’s a jerk for hurting the feelings of everyone there, or the stranger off the street running into some house to tell the dude trying to run away from a bad situation that he really should tell like, SOMEBODY he’s trying to leave, or risk you calling him an . 

Idk, it’s a messy situation all around. People are right to be hurt, or angry, or whatever, but when fans start that game about how some dude they don’t know should have PUSHED THROUGH the difficulties of the job where he sings and dances for them, or insist that he should’ve extricated himself from that job in a way that was nicer to THE OTHER DUDES THEY DON’T KNOW, that’s where I draw the line.