08. Tangled Earphones
Pop abroad and pop at home
Hi there. Welcome to Active Faults.
Following on from the last issue which peered at a Chinese K-Pop fan’s experience, I want to talk about the industry itself and especially as juxtaposed with “mainland entertainment” or neiyu (内娱). Pop abroad and pop at home forms not a binary, but an enmeshment, a blob of earphone wires that gets more tangled the more you pick at it.
Let’s pick at it.
Around the Clock
We don’t talk enough about how K-Pop idols never need to sleep.
Well, obviously they do. But they can go on for days on end, sometimes a few weeks in promotion periods (also known as comebacks) functioning on 2-3 hours of sleep per day, more or less. And by function, I mean intense singing, dancing and filming. Doing live streams, fan signs, photoshoots and routine practices.
There’s a running joke amongst Chinese K-Pop fans that Korean idols seemed to have gone a step ahead in the Grand Scheme of Evolution, no longer craving sleep as much. They are the closest we humans can get to white-crowned sparrows that Jonathan Crary mentioned in his polemic “24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep”. During migration, these creatures can stay awake for 7 days and are research subjects of military scientists on their quest to train sleepless soldiers.
I thought of Crary’s work when I stayed up until 3 am every day for a month, just to get acquainted with a group’s past media presences and up to date with fresh content released in the meantime. Or when I see fans shadow the idol around the clock by attending every event scheduled that day: a music show, mini-concert called a showcase, and another music show. How fans themselves are mirroring the idol’s sleeplessness and exhaustion, synchronising their lives with the idol’s as they demonstrate support. We too are “ultimately disposable units that keep economies running”, views tripling and streams soaring.
That synchronization doesn’t stop there. With how systematized K-Pop is, day-to-day fanning consists of a series of regimented actions that are in anticipation and in response to the idol’s equally regimented work schedules. Before a comeback which will always be announced a few months in advance, K-Pop fans in China would host what Twitter calls “streaming parties”, practising effective streaming techniques with released discography like in a mock exam. They’d get their music app accounts ready to vote on different ranking tables once it’s go-time.
In their private lives, fans would start to manage their finances accordingly upon news of comebacks. They’d ballpark a figure of expense based on how much they’ve spent on previous comebacks and start to either save up by setting a part of their income aside or make more by taking up new hustles.
As more information about the comeback becomes available, fans would try to pinpoint and plan in detail exactly how much they’d spend on albums, merch, concerts and fan signs. In super topics of the group, you’ll see Chinese K-Pop fans chatting to each other about what to buy and what to pass, or how to get the best bargain with shipping costs way before new music is released.
Once a comeback is over, touring might start. The usual ensues. Getting tickets, selling tickets, swapping tickets; inevitable travel arrangements, taking days off work; networking with other fellow fans online and offline, producing and giving out unofficial merch (‘freebies’). After that, another album will be ready. The basics are clockwork (provided that the group continues to thrive, that is). These rituals are in place because it’s part of the deal. As indicated by the diagram in the last issue, the mutual dependence of fans, artists and companies form a three-way contract built on (always half-hearted) trust. Each party performs its choreo to achieve its ends while trusting others to do the same.
So, what are neiyu fans doing at this time?
Always Angry
For starters, they are probably angry about something.
Most neiyu fans are almost always “protecting their rights” or, in Chinese, “维权”. The use of “rights” in this context is an interesting one: it refers to their right to receive material or immaterial service from the idol, which in turn extends to the idols’ right to exist for that service to be provided. Fan-idol rights are mingled into one and the target of claim-making is normally the company who needs to do better at promotion. Constantly vigilant about potential obstacles their idol could face, they are ready to tackle them with organized efforts so that they can enjoy the idol’s success as fans.
I’ve covered fans’ rights-protecting for those who failed to debut through Produce Camp, but not the rights-protecting for those who won. The official Weibo of INTO1, the boy group formed by Produce’s 11 finalists, has been flooded with 维权 comments since their first day on the job. Sometimes it’s about the positions occupied by the boys in a photo (the winner Liu Yu is “not centre enough”). Sometimes it’s the number of lines a member get in a song, the length of one’s screen time in a music video, or one’s clothing, hair, or makeup is less than eye-catching at an award show.
Other times, fans’ grievances point to shortcomings of the wider industry. A fixed structure that guarantees the coexistence of all parties and sustainable growth is not in sight. They rightly dispute neiyu’s failure to invest in properly training the idols before their debut, not treating them as long-term assets to protect and nurture.
They also point out neiyu’s lack of music shows where idol groups can, well, do their job: promote their songs and more importantly, deliver live performances to attract more fans. That lack has resulted in the tendency for companies to produce music that’s not meant to be repetitively listened to, but only bought and streamed. The tracks are not designed to be performed on various stages.
This eventually led to a worsening reputation of idol songs being tacky, cringey and distasteful earworms, creating an echo chamber where only their fans would listen to the idol’s music (sometimes not without being critical too).
By association, neiyu fans are also complaining about the company’s commercial exploitation of idols and their fans alike. A heavier focus on gigs like magazine covers or brand sponsors is seen as “garlic chive cutting”, baiting fans to purchase certain commodities, financially draining the fandom and letting thousands feel used.
Because it’s not about the music, neiyu idols become pretty figurines. They are being sent to star in low-budget wangju (untelevised dramas airing only on OTT platforms) or cameo in reality programmes for exposure, hence the public sideswipe at idols’ acting skills or their personality. Fans get increasingly disappointed at these attacks from non-fans and the company’s decision to knowingly throw them under scrutiny.
In the end, it looks a bit like this: the public dismisses the idols and their defensive fans. The company earns millions. The idols get by, where some are thought to be uncommitted and others lament their lack of opportunities.
Camps
I’m definitely not saying that K-Pop is perfect and impervious to criticism. A systematised industry means less human idols: sleeplessness is but a fraction of what K-Pop idols need to endure. Nor am I saying that Chinese K-Pop fans never protest because they get it easier. The two worlds get their fair share of house-falling celebrities, garlic-chive-cutting behaviours, and fan grievances.
Chinese K-Pop fans face a distinct set of challenges: feelings of exclusion, unspoken doubts of being secretly loathed by their idols for their Chinese-ness, anti-China attacks from Korean and international fan communities, and contempt from neiyu fans at their chongyangmeiwai-ness.
A glimpse of their emotional toil can be found in the Weibo account, @kpop脱粉回踩bot, that’s dedicated to posting DM submissions from Chinese K-Pop fans who decided to “unfan-and-hit-back” (脱粉回踩). It’s the act where a fan, out of anger and hurt, chooses to un-fan and berate their previously beloved celebrity for doing something they see as insulting.
Meanwhile, I’m also not saying that neiyu doesn’t have genuinely talented idols, or that neiyu/C-Pop lack good music (subscribe to the excellent
to find out).I’m saying that if the fan-artist-company dynamics in the K-Pop industry take on remnants of the checks and balances model, neiyu takes after the political fabrics in which it’s embedded. Fanquan feel like there’s an overarching force at play that always get the upper hand. Look everywhere and the general mood is one of frustration, a powerlessness that stems from not getting what they think they deserve.
That force affects both Chinese K-Pop fans and neiyu fans and that’s where the tension lies. Under Korea-Ban, Chinese K-Pop fans tread carefully because they are in muddy waters, and neiyu can be highly critical of K-Pop on the internet. Neiyu sees the rise of K-Pop and feels like second-best. Both are unsatisfied, somewhat thwarted and on edge, sharing similar sentiments but forming two camps.
This past week saw the disbandment of INTO1 (neiyu’s last idol group) and the release of a Chinese-classics-inspired song “SUPER” by the K-Pop group SEVENTEEN. A Weibo user wrote: “[SEVENTEEN] is stealing Chinese culture” and appropriating the classical text. Chinese SEVENTEEN fans wrote back saying the group has done no wrong and correctly cited the source. One fan commented after checking the user’s profile: “You a fan of Liu Yu? No wonder you’ve got so much time on your hands. Go and promo his stuff harder, he’s flopping”.
I’ll just leave it at that.