Critical Eye:akp execs take revenge on ex-employee because she runs a successful site & defends them
K-pop news has been extremely slow recently, as nothing has really caught my eye. Pair that with my busy real life, and there’s a recipe for a lack of posts. On top of that, I haven’t written a critical word about allkpop, Soompi, or any other site for about three months now. My level of fucks given has gone down ten-fold, basically.
So as you can imagine, it must have taken something truly special to motivate me to write today, and it certainly did. A special kind of stupidity.
Short version? Two allkpop executives saw a livestream by a staff member/helper at Netizen Buzz and they both took the time out of their day to maliciously out the person. Why? Because she used to work for allkpop … oh and she defended allkpop in the livestream against the haters. Yup, that’s how you get rewarded.
But some of you want the long version, right? Right.
One of the people involved with Netizen Buzz (she’s not even the main cog) did a livestream yesterday, and it went extremely well. A bunch more people came out than expected, she was overwhelmed taking requests from people, and the viewers were pleasantly surprised by her appearance (lol) and with the fact that she was putting a face/persona to the words/site.
Of course, no fun thing can come and go without somebody being a dipshit. 6Theory Media owner/CEO Johnny Noh and VP Of Content Daniel Lee saw the livestream as well, and they apparently got mad at its existence and decided that it was a good time to out her name and try to make a thing about it.
Note: Why the fuck does site popularity even matter in this context? Sad insight into the thought process going on, really.
As somebody wittier than me once put it, “So if your message ain’t shit, fuck the records you sold, cause if you go platinum, it’s got nothing to do with luck, it just means that a million people are stupid as fuck.”
I’m not naming the name here, but it doesn’t really matter, as everybody who wants to know does know now.
Regardless, the outing and those tweets alone are enough to call them childish and petty. The context there is obviously not one of surprise or shock, but rather simple malicious bitchiness.
That’s an odd reaction for them to have, because the individual in question is a former employee of allkpop. During her time with the company, they consistently praised her as being their top translator, and they entrusted all the important breaking stories to her, along with company press releases and the likes. It was seriously to the point where, despite her just being paid as a translator, they would call or text her during off-hours if there was something important that needed to be done. In addition to all that, she has consistently defended and/or supported allkpop against the constant torrent of people bashing them to her while propping up Netizen Buzz as a superior destination. As a reward, the head honchos of her former company started shit with her by trying to take her down.
So exactly how insecure and threatened did they need to be about her, about the site, and about their general standing to get to this juncture we’re all at now? A talented former employee that you hailed as your best, now starts a blog that gains popularity and your response is to get turtle dick and immediately lash out when you discover her identity on a livestream?
Really?
Of course, OF COURSE. Because this is how the international K-pop scene works behind all the bullshit fronts.
There’s generally been this agreement to keep things out of the personal matters, and since the person in question isn’t hurt or anything, I’ll stick with that, but the fact that people at 6Theory Media felt the need to exact some sort of “revenge” against a former employee that still supports their company despite the fact that she knows a lot of shit about it, speaks more volumes about the workplace environment there than anything that could be said from her or me or anybody else.
That said, the lack of care or apology or any sort of tact from the higherups is amusing, considering many of the writers and editors are embarrassed by this childish bullshit. As more than a few have already apologized both to her and for the execs acting the way they have.
More to the point, we’re all blogs and they’re a company, so why would they go through this? Let’s say they ruin Netizen Buzz or whatever other site, what does that accomplish? She just goes back to her real life and actual job. Yet, in exchange for that, they just generated a ton of bad buzz (as if there wasn’t enough already), outed themselves as caring only about money/views, and have showed current employees how they’ll be treated once they leave.
Plus, I don’t get what the end game is here. I’ve talked to both allkpop and Soompi before about outing me or whatever. I guess that’s always the threat since both sides know who I am (some of you already do too, so whatever), but we agreed to keep shit away from personal record because that’s when it gets messy, as you can see by this minor clusterfuck. So they have my identity and the identity of others, great. Then, we, as a collective, have a lot of old, not-so-nice, archived chats and screencaps and requests and anonymous tipsters e-mails and former employee testimonials, but generally speaking, nobody is out to ruin lives, right? So why put that shit out there for the public? Yet apparently that’s exactly the firestorm they wanted to start and/or risk with this type of dumb shit. It’s just … pointless, really.
If this isn’t an example of how petty and stupid things are behind the scenes, I don’t know what is. And remember, this is how they treat people who have generally supported them. Wrap your head around that shit.
source: asianjunkie
thought that this was kinda interesting since most people here read akp and netizenbuzz on a daily basis. akpoop continues being shitty, what else is new etc.
and OT but what happened to their oh-so-awesome girlgroup? care to explain, johnny?