Anti-Fans

I've never been a huge "fan" of anything. Sure I like music, movies, and sports, but nowhere near what you see at concerts and sporting events. Even when my favorite K-pop artist come to town, I'm too cheap/lazy to move my China trip so I can to see them.

So imagine my surprise when I found an "anti" site solely dedicated to dissing someone, in this case, SNSD. From looking at the site, their goal is disbanding the 9-girl group. Even though I'm not that enthusiastic about entertainers, I can understand fanboys/fangirls who are huge fans of a particular singer/actor. However, it must take a special kind of jackass to spend their time being an anti-fan. The material on the site are pretty immature, with graffiti on photos and mocking subtitles on MV's. I'm not even sure what is their motivation... bad music? Fake image? There are lots of stuff I don't like (gangsta rap, heavy metal, country music) but all you have to do is not listen to it.

This anti-fan phenomenon seems to be very prevalent in South Korea. The entertainment scene also is quite different than in the US. A lot of music/movie stars appear on variety shows and most have personal homepages (usually on Cyworld). Things they say and do are instantly available on the Internet for fans and haters. If a celebrity does anything remotely controversial, they would get thousands of angry emails, often prompting apologies from the celebrity or their management company. There are even reports that anti-fan comments contributed to celebrity suicides in South Korea (which in itself is a huge issue - Korea has the highest suicide rate of OECD countries).

At first, I thought the anti-site was another hoax but I think they're serious; you can never underestimate the stupidity of things you find on the Internet, and come across people you would never ever want to meet in real life. Never has the phrase "Get a life!" been so appropriate.