i’m so proud that super junior won the tca’s choice international artist award–beating others like one direction– but what really bothers me is how only our fandom is acknowledging it. when just a few days ago people were talking about how “united” we all were and that “kpop fandom is a family” and voted for and defended any t-ara and queens from racist remarks because a “kpop won the award”, but when the same thing happens to super junior? nothing. in fact, they’re questioning our win.
like if you that isn’t an obvious indicator of how prejudiced the international fandom is to super junior, i don’t know what is.
yes to all of this. literally two seconds after it was announced that super junior won, all anyone could say was ‘wtf they were inactive, why were they nominated at all’ or ‘they’re not even teens’ (which, by the way, is absolutely ridiculous, sj is only a few years older than snsd and 2ne1 and they’re both 2nd gen idols, and yeah they’re not teens but fyi, you don’t have to be a teen to be nominated, teen choice just means the voting is done by the teens and tons of other people as old/older than sj win these awards) or ‘this is bullshit and obviously rigged - snsd won the twitter vote’ (which again, wasn’t the be all/end all of this vote, it was various sns platforms and the website too and there was no way to see the total number of votes before they told us the results, AND having the most tweets means nothing since only one tweet per account per day counted). it’s so damn annoying and the thing is, if sj had lost, sj would have still congratulated the winning group if it was a kpop group (bc they’re classy but also setting the example for fans in general) and even if they hadn’t, we would have done what those posts wanted, had pride that a kpop group won, and gave one direction their first loss in a teen choice award ever. we would have actually been united in the victory even though our group lost. but literally no one cares about sj and the rare congratulations i have seen have been halfhearted at best. and they’re acting like the award was relevant before but all of a sudden, now it’s irrelevant because super junior is irrelevant, but if super junior is irrelevant, then how did they win two tcas over every kpop group nominated and huge western acts? the hypocrisy is unreal.
it’s also hilarious (read: very very sad :/ ) to me that even though sj is receiving so much publicity in korea, not a single other person (other than the u.s. embassy) has congratulated them, not a single other kpop group or member, and not sm (publicly anyway), when sj tweets about other groups and those groups’ achievements all the time, especially if it was something that was in the news as much as this is in korea, and especially if it was a labelmate because they actually are that classy. but i’ve learned that for the amount sj promotes everyone else, it’s rare that anyone celebrates sj. i wouldn’t even be surprised if the reason korea is celebrating sj generally right now is because even if it’s sj, it’s still a kpop group, a south korean group, that won a tca in the u.s. and they’re the first (so it’s more national pride than sj pride). but anyway, sj would have had the class to congratulate the winner and we as a fandom would have followed. but no, ofc no one else, no group or fandom, is doing the same for us bc sj is ‘beyond problematic’ and every other group, nominated or not, is totally angelic and that’s just the way things are. :/
to be honest, i expected the hypocrisy. all those ‘we’re united, let’s make a kpop group win’ had sj tacked on at the very end, like ‘VOTE SNSD OR 2NE1 or i guess sj’ when sj was the first group nominated (since the international category was created bc of sj/elf) and the first listed on teen choice’s website. and then when people were talking about how, days before teen choice aired, that it was obviously snsd who won (literally everyone expected it and they were talking about it like this was officially announced) because they’re the most relevant. and it’s hilarious to me how these people use the korean digital charts to decide who is relevant globally, like melon is any indication of how large a fandom is (but ofc sj is too old and problematic and flopping to have fans, right? sold out asia world tour concerts and most sold full length albums and all come directly from the digital charts, right?) or how popular a group is.
and even though i imagine most people would still react this way regardless because they cling to any reason to hate sj, this is what i hate about how sm doesn’t promote sj or how the awards last year were bullshit because maybe if they knew that sj sold more albums last year than the groups nominated against them, they’d realize it’s a little… delusional to call them irrelevant.
none of those fandoms wanted unity - they wanted to win and maybe they’re not resorting to the racism 1d’s fans are because they can’t, but they’re still reacting nearly as badly as 1d fans and it’s ridiculous. if it’s such an irrelevant award then why are they so pressed and why won’t they just be happy for us/sj and move on with their lives? it’s like they were so content living in their ‘super junior has no fans and was never a threat to our idols and is now irrelevant and flopping hard’ bubble for so long that now that it’s been burst on a bit of a global scale, they can’t handle it.
For the record, SM did actually announce and congratulate Super Junior for the win in the Teen Choice Awards, and it’s not like there’s not a single person from Blackjacks/Queens/Sones who are congratulating SJ and ELF, because there are. But overwhelmingly, I agree with the statements made in these arguments. Super Junior spends so much time and energy promoting their hoobaes, and they get jack squat in return. It’s so, so wildly unfair.
The hypocrisy radiates from the groups who didn’t win the award. “ENJOY YOUR STUPID LITTLE AWARD IT’S NOT LIKE YOU ACTUALLY WON IT ANYWAY CHEATERS” If it’s such a “stupid little award” why are you so pissed that you didn’t win it?
are you on twitter because, look at the tweet in which the results were released. the only congratulations we got were from our own ELF themselves, with maybe one or two non-ELF congratulating us. in fact, you see more salty non-ELF, not naming which fandoms but you can infer, calling tca “rigged” or a “bad award show” because their favs didn’t win. hell, fans of other groups who weren;t even nominated were bashing super junior over their talent and looks.
i’m not going to argue with you if there were non-ELF who congratulated us or not. i was talking about fandoms; the majority of the fanbase. not one fandom truly congratulated us.
but that isn’t the point, i could care less if they congratulated us or not, if they voted for us or not. they didn’t but again, what i’m pointing out was that the whole “kpop fandom is a family” thing did not include super junior. the entire point of my post is to show the blatant exclusion. Super Junior and ELF triumphing over big names in an award show that we were at a disadvantage and taking back 2 wins for Kpop as a whole was not a cause for celebration because it’s super junior. if it were any other group, everything would be fine and dandy. we’ve seen it just a few days ago with t-ara and queens. if it were any other group, they’ll be more people calling western artistes’ fans on their racism and white supremist bullshit. it wasn’t just directioners coming at us, even little monsters were pissed off that elf won best fandom. and things got ugly, racist ugly.
only ELF defended Super Junior and defended our own fandom from racist remarks while the international kpop fandom, who literally just a few days ago were singing “kpop fandom is a family“, stayed mum.
see that? that’s the point, the international kpop fandom is prejudiced against super junior and this was just another example of that. this baseless hate on Super Junior is a long running issue that they refuse to acknowledge. It seems like ELF and Super Junior truly only have each other.
No, believe me, I agree with all of that, and I think it’s absolute, utter bullshit. By the non-ELF congratulations, I meant that when I was in the choice fandom tag on twitter (which, I am on twitter, btw!) I did see a handful of other people congratulating us on our win. By pointing them out I wasn’t trying to make the problem seem any less significant, only that there are some people amongst the other fandoms who do actually recognize Super Junior, for what it’s worth. Few and far between though they are, they’re out there, and it makes all of this (at least for me) the slightest bit more bearable. But not by a whole lot.
You’re absolutely right in that as whole, Super Junior and ELF are at the very bottom of the totem pole, and unrightfully so, because Super Junior has paved the way for kpop, not just in Korea but into the international market. Without Super Junior, all of these other kpop groups wouldn’t be half as successful as they are. It makes me so angry to see the prejudice against us, and for no other reason than that they need someone to hate, and it happens to be Super Junior. And it makes my blood boil to see not only the disgusting hate the western fandoms are throwing at us, but the sheer hypocrisy amongst the kpop fandom, international AND Korean. It’s just so unfair.