star of the peninsula

"Is this going to happen so fast?"

"A few photos, a little writing and less than a week of fermentation are enough to create such an exaggerated effect?"

"South Korean society is already quite magical. It's understandable that the pressure the society is facing now makes people on the Internet even more magical. The problem is that it's too exaggerated for FNC to let the captain quit the group without saying a word."

"..."

Chen Chen was lying on the floor, watching the biggest gossip in Korean entertainment in July and commenting aloud.

The AOA bullying incident started to explode in early July, and Shin Jimin, the person involved, quit AOA on July 5th. Her efficiency was astonishing.

In fact, Chen Chen had seen this matter "before", but he didn't know that the incident that caused such a big stir at the time was over in just a few days. Now he felt surprised when he experienced it again.

"Is it possible that FNC doesn't have the energy to deal with this anymore?" Park Jin-young, who was practicing with him, was playing with his phone as if nothing had happened. He also received the message and of course knew what Chen Chen was talking about. "The new girl group has debuted for more than a year and there is no improvement at all. All they have is members leaving the group one after another. If FNC spends resources on the old group at this time, they will really have no successor."

"Even so, AOA is one of FNC's most profitable groups, right?" Chen Chen asked in confusion, "They must be worth saving."

"Maybe it's too late to save them." Park Jin-young couldn't help laughing as he spoke. "FTISLAND's Choi Jong-hoon left the group due to a scandal and he'll probably be in jail in a few months. CNBLUE's Lee Jong-hyun left the group due to a scandal, which wasn't as troublesome as the above, but they were in the same group. N.Flying's Kwon Kwang-jin left the group due to a scandal, which was a bit unfair, as he left the group because of dating with fans. It wasn't as serious as the previous ones, but it was disgusting enough for the company anyway. And now there's the internal bullying in AOA. I guess FNC is tired of it. I don't care if they want to leave or not."

"Really?" Chen Chen considered these people and felt speechless. "FNC is really good at selecting members. They can accurately hit every one of them!"

"The fact that our reputation has deteriorated in the past two years is one thing," Park Jin-young continued, "but more importantly, we don't have enough resources."

"SF9, a boy band that debuted four years ago, only won first place on its first three music shows in January this year. They need to be given resources. It seems like they are finally getting better, and it would be a bit exaggerated not to give them resources."

"Then three months later, a new boy band debuted."

"A new group also needs to prepare resources. A boy group requires more resources and the cost of preparation is also higher."

"Taking all the circumstances into account, I don't think FNC would spend resources to save AOA, which had a brief period of glory after "Queendoom" but then fell again," Park Jin-young concluded. "The cost is high and the benefits are almost nonexistent. After all, bullying is the most unsolvable problem."

"Tell me more about it." Chen Chen asked curiously, "Why can't bullying be solved?"

"It's simple, because it's a subjective thing," Park Jin-young replied. "Everyone has a different view on bullying, and as the concept has expanded over the years, it has almost become a point in South Korea where if I think you are bullying me, then you are bullying me."

"for example."

"For example, if two parties in a work connection feel that their philosophies diverge, they engage in a heated discussion. If one party thinks it is a normal discussion and the other party thinks the other party is bullying them, netizens will characterize this as bullying because attitude can be used as an excuse."

"In heated discussions, attitude problems are bound to arise. This is almost inevitable, and attitude is an invincible excuse."

"That's it. If I think I'm being bullied, then you're bullying me." "In order to label this behavior as bullying, netizens have created a term called 'unconscious bullying', saying that even though you didn't have the subjective intention, what you did was bullying."

"You didn't have the subjective intention to bully me, but I subjectively thought that you bullied me. What a bullshit." Park Jin-young sighed, "Bullying should be eliminated. It is indeed a very bad thing. But if this word continues to develop in such an unreliable way, the real bullying will be covered up by all kinds of trivial matters."

"When an artist says something wrong or does something inappropriate, it's criticized online as bullying. The discussion of this kind of thing can overshadow a hundred real bullying situations that actually happen to ordinary people." Park Jin-young looked at Chen Chen. "It's terrible that the voices of the people who really need attention are occupied by all kinds of fake bullying gossip, right?"

"This is terrible, but there is really no way to solve it." Chen Chen understood what Park Jin-young meant through his words and his own experience in South Korea. "No one can resist the temptation of being a judge on the Internet, at least 80% of Internet users can't."

It’s not that Chen Chen wants to shift the blame to netizens, but it is true that the Internet has ushered in the "short essay era", and the short essay era has raised the topic of bullying too high, to the point where once this topic is involved, there are almost no normal people involved.

Everyone wants to be a judge, and wants to judge those "big shots" whom they rarely meet. They want to use the action of stepping on the big shots to prove how pure and noble their own morality is in this dark Internet, so high that they can step on the heads of such people.

Chen Chen himself doesn't do such things, but he knows very well how many people would be fascinated by such things.

“Have you ever been bullied?”

Park Jin-young asked suddenly.

"No." Chen Chen answered subconsciously, but he suddenly laughed after the answer came out of his mouth, "No, if it is based on today's standards, I have been bullied, and I have been bullied a lot."

"But I never thought of it as bullying. I just thought of it as difficulties in life that must be overcome." Chen Chen laughed dumbly, "What a bullshit! It turns out that life has bullied me, the company has bullied me, my seniors have bullied me, and South Korean society has bullied me, hahahaha."

Some people, when faced with difficulties, are unwilling to admit that it is their own problem and choose to blame others, society, or the country. They then add the fashionable word "bullying", as if this way they can be defeated with a clear conscience and then complain about everything.

Thinking about it now, it’s quite speechless, even a little funny.

"I am a person who can afford to lose. If I didn't think it was bullying at the time, I wouldn't add my own opinion later." Chen Chen sighed: "If I thought the other party was bullying me and I was just not strong enough to fight back, then I would have 'bullied' back later, whether with the help of the Internet or with my own strength."

"It's really stupid to not think anything of it at the time but now think 'oh, your behavior seemed like bullying' and then take revenge on you."

"How about it, Brother Zhenying?" Chen Chen looked at Park Zhenying proudly, "I'm cool and handsome, right?!"

"What do you mean by cool and handsome? You are just a normal person."

Park Jin-young made his comment.

...(End of chapter)