aespa at debut had all eyes on them which technically is good, but they received so much hate, people spread nasty rumors about them, strongly criticized their looks even going to the low point of using their childhood pictures to talk shit about them, they laughed when BM didnt do well, BM received the worst reception out of all 4th gen songs in SK, etc. Then Next Level happened and bam, they like doubled the size of their fandom.
But with Ive, even though they also had huge hype, their debut was far more well received, and while the hate they are getting is nowhere near the hate aespa received, so many people want to downplay or question their success, i already lost count of the type of comments Ive seen like this, like they are only doing well because of the former izone members, which is stupid because it might have been responsible for attracting attention to them but that alone would never translate to the success that their debut was. or that Starship might be paying spotify and melon so they can chart which makes even less sense, because if that was the case they would have done the same for WJSN, Monsta X and Cravity. Now I lost count of how many people already expect Ive to do worse on their first cb because of "pd curse" and that "their initial hype will fade because people only checked them for WY and YJ".
So i guess this is how it works:
If a group comes from big3, people expect them to exceed at everything, they will nitpick ANYTHING just to criticize the group from visuals to skills etc, and if they do poorly on charts even if its better than average they become target of hate and jokes, such as we've seen happen to nct (not anymore), treasure, etc.
But for nonbig3 group it's the opposite, if they manage to achieve strong success people look like they hope for their downfall, downplay their success or even go to the point of accusing them of sajaegi and such. Most obvious case ig it's bts, but theres also sistar that was accused of sajaegi. Im sure theres other examples but my mind is blank rn.
Kpop stans are elitist asf
