I just had an out of body experience reading through hundreds of tweets and posts through threads and threads of the BlackPink contract re-signing.
First and foremost I’m guilty of speculating and “knowing what’s best” for the girls, I’m guilty of defending why they shouldn’t sign back pretty loudly, honestly. I’ve seen people defend YG, I’ve seen people attack YG.
It feels so strange that all of us are talking about these 5 separate entities, the 4 girls and 1 YG (the man/the myth/the entire company that embodies his decisions because they vote on them) as if we know them personally. Even if we look at one of the girls, Rosé, there’s so much more behind the scenes. There’s her parents, her dog, her managers, her staff, her friends and her off stage persona. We don’t know anything about any of those interactions and she’s reading through these comments trying to form her own decision, or grappling with her decision that she’s already made, just like every other human. I can go on twitter at any given moment and look up “blackpink” and in the first loaded tweets something about their contract comes up. Every. Single. Day. I’m starting to change my tune on this situation, and probably more situation’s regardless of the celebrity, to be more empathic.
There’s a lot of speculation that runs around about what could possibly be holding them up, or what stops the girls from coming back, or what comeback schedule the girls deserve, or how they personally feel and it just is all wrong. Its all maybe a little right, but its all definitely a lot more wrong.
Let’s take a look at the “money” (no pun intended because it was accidental, but i like the coincidence) making discussion, Lisa.
She’s a sl*t, she’s got a “dirty spoon” in her mouth, she’s a foreign invader, she’s a gold digger and she’s a mega-successful popstar. She’s juggling these brandings from the public, along with extreme praise from her supporters and this is truly where my empathy lies the deepest. I can’t imagine being Lisa. If it was me in that situation, I can see wanting to stay to continue my success JUST to prove the public wrong. But I can also see wanting to quit completely just to escape the scrutiny that probably only Britney Spears understands. She’s dealt with and is dealing with those constant comments and is now also taking on the flood of support for and against re-signing and I can’t help but wonder….
What do they really want?
Thank you, selfmate for asking this question.
This has been running through my mind so much recently with western artists. After reading Britney’s book, and now I’m moving onto Julia Fox’s… I’m starting to really wonder. Where is the line?
There’s an invisible demarcation that indicates where the celebrity space exists, where the celebrity actually exists, where the fans as individuals think, where the mob mentality lies and lastly, where the rumors create speculation.
This situation is so nuanced and KPop is so secretive, while at the same time evolving at such a rapid pace that there really is no way to really understand what is going on inside of these conglomerate buildings.
Can’t help but wonder, no matter what your intentions are, is trying to add your opinion, and by extension more weight to each side of this scale, really what they want?
I think this is where the line starts. Speculation about a celebrity as a person, beyond what we’ve explicitly been told, is where the parasocial relationship truly begins to breakdown into toxicity. People are people regardless of your hopes and dreams for them. Regardless of what plays through your headphones everyday, or what video you stream on YouTube, those dancers, the singers, the production staff, their CEOs. They all go home, they all experience loss, they all get anxious when making a personal decision. They all get anxious when somebody criticizes them on a personal level. Its one thing to critique management, maybe scheduling if its warranted, or even performance… but personal choice? No.
There’s a line that needs to be redrawn because we’re currently trampling it. I hope that everybody in BlackPink at the end of the day does what they want. I hope that the fans are empathetic enough to celebrate the decision they each come to, and i hope that we all stop fueling this toxic relationship of speculation and rumor and let these people have some peace.
