This is just monetising incels, isn’t it?
No, not just incels but hardcore fans and lonely people in general. The marketing strategy of pretending to be single with the goal of seeming somehow available is not gender or country specific and is used in pop music a lot. It´s all about creating a projection screen for fantasies and dreams to increase sales. Just think of boy bands in the 90s.
Yes, but this is happening in the states too yet we don’t have this kind of insanity. For example, onlyfans is basically a website dedicated to monetizing incels. But there’s an implicit understanding that those actresses have their own lives. For some reason, in S.Korea they’re not allowed to have their own lives. It’s bizarre no matter how you look at it.
Not really.
Onlyfans is more or less a strip club. It is not (just) about seeing titties. It is about “the fantasy”. Ask any stripper and the best possible “gimmick” is to be “working my way through (grad/law/nursing/whatever) school” since that lets clients feel like they are “saving” you.
And, on a surface level, that is similar. Pop Idol better not have a boyfriend because she is a permanent virgin and blah blah blah.
But that is where it ends. Because the guy who starts getting overly possessive of a stripper/sex worker/OF model/whatever? We, as a society, think they have issues and there is usually a support structure to get them away from the person they are going to stalk.
Whereas with k-pop (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, j-pop and the like): The support structure encourages that mindset and punishes the performer for daring to ruin “the fantasy”. And, as can be seen here and every other time this happens, “society” encourages that.
And… South Korea is so fucked that it makes Japan look like a good place to be a woman. Like, it is a genuine problem to the point that voice actresses have gotten “cancelled” because someone thought they made a rude gesture that insults men.
The whole idol culture is fucked up and unhealthy to say that least.
Hyper capitalist emotional exploitation.
Take a normal human emotion, feed it through a system optimized to wring out profit, this is what is left.
I really don’t get the mindset of these people, neither do they know their celebrity crush nor will they ever get an actual chance. It does make no difference to them. They could just as well fantasize about their crush leaving their partner for them.
i call it the dark side of idolism.
its a way to extract money very well, but it creates a toxic environment
Simping is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
K-pop agencies are reportedly keen to promote their stars as romantically obtainable, while in Japan many pop stars have “no dating” clauses in their contracts.
Wouldn’t being banned from dating make you the opposite of “romantically obtainable”?
The fans can fantasize about meeting them and they being so smitten that they defy the clause for the fan. There is also an element of collective ownership. If nobody can have her, every one has an equal chance.
You know theirs people actually like that but… Why are people this obsessed over another human? It’s unhealthy.
Why are people this obsessed over another human?
Because enormous sums of money are spent marketing this individual as a form of paid parasocial relationship. You get (fake) emails from her. You get (fake) social media interactions with her. You get a deluge of media telling you that she’s available and interested and looking to meet a guy just like you. You spend hours in line to get tickets to a sold out show. You wait with baited breath for every new media release, which is inevitably a song or movie or other material about her falling in love with a stranger who follows her from afar. This, combined with the endless peer pressure on other women to become this iconic individual.
Idol culture is the social equivalent of playing the lottery. And finding out your idol is “taken” is like hearing you got sold a ticket to a prize that’s already been awarded to someone else.
Incels ruin everything
I mean a lot of idols (or rather, their management companies) try to appeal to incels, so if anything, they’re the reason why these idols are so famous in the first place.
I mean, its a kind-of vicious cycle. I can’t help but think someone fixating on a celebrity that hard hurts their prospects in the dating pool.
