"I always knew they were awful" "I always got bad vibes from them" and comment like these are too common
Every time a scandal about an idol comes out, there are four things I can count on.
- People hating on the idol and demanding they leave the company, sending threats, attacking them on Twitter, etc.
- People defending the idol, saying they did nothing wrong and that their fans know them, they'd never to anything like this
- People staying neutral, not doing much on the situation until they get more information.
- And the people who say, "I knew it all along."
See, there's a major problem with this. First of all, no. You didn't know all along. How could you? Idols (and celebrities and people in general) have many personas. Idols in particular rely on a heavy "perfect" persona, and the company enforces this. They probably won't show times where the idol shows disrespect, anger, sadness, stuff like that. We get this perfectly curated image by an entertainment company of the perfect idol. So if you are seeing the best parts of someone's life, them having fun with their friends, them performing onstage, them thanking their fans, and only these parts, how could you know that they were a terrible person because of the scandal?
Another major problem is the fact that it's typically a scandal that hasn't been confirmed when you see these comments. When Woojin was being accused of stuff, I saw a ton of comments like "he's ugly anyways and i always hated him" and "I knew he was a bad person, I just knew it." These people were just looking for an excuse to hate him. Similar to Garam. There were so many comments of, "Even before the big scandal, I didn't like her" and especially "she's definitely a bully, I just know it." She was recently proven innocent by the SVC. So no. You didn't know.
However, now let's look at an example of times where the claims were true. Seeing comments online during the Burning Sun scandal of "I never liked him anyway" and "I always knew he was a bad person" was very common. He was an idol, so he had an image as a public figure to uphold.
For a more broad example, I'll use J.K. Rowling. She recently let it be known how transphobic she is online. She's spread hate towards trans people online and has also had a lot of other stuff about her writing criticized based on the content matter. However, when all this came out, so many people were like "I always knew she was terrible" "I never liked her, she seemed like a bad person" "why didn't anyone else know how terrible she was till now lol" like really? You're going to tell that to all the trans kids who grew up reading Harry Potter as a child that they should have known that the author of their favorite book was a bad person? You're going to tell them that they're stupid for not picking up on the practically invisible clues that the person they were a fan of was transphobic? That's not just attacking the public figure, that's attacking anyone who was a fan in the past, whether they are now or not.
Part of why I think people do this is to sort of convince themselves that they were never really a fan. They never really supported this person, so they don't have to feel guilty about giving them a platform. Another reason could be that they want to always be right, kind of like people who edit a Wikipedia article mid-debate so no one knows they're wrong.
Like holding idols accountable for their actions, fans should also be held accountable for theirs. However, I don't think stanning someone in the past who just now was revealed to be an awful person is a bad thing. How could someone who only sees the good in someone see how bad they really are? It was an honest mistake, paired with a deception. And a damn good one at that.
Those are my thoughts on this. I'm just sick of seeing that comment everywhere whenever another scandal pops up.
Note: originally posted on r/kpoprants but moved it here.