Being in a K-pop community may be fun as you get to find people of similar interests as you, allowing one to connect for the better. Unfortunately, there will be instances where some fans may not get along with other fans from a different fandom. A notion that is applicable to a recent case in which Stray Kids (스트레이 키즈) fans argued with EXO (엑소) fans over which group has the better appearance.
Over the weekend, a Korean news account known as Pannchoa posted an image of the boy group EXO K (엑소케이), the Korean sub-unit for EXO, simply asking whether there will be a visual boy group similar to the latter. Another Twitter user under the handle @/snwoostar responded with an image of Stray Kids, stating that the group is the first to look visually better than EXO.
Surely, such a statement garnered the community’s attention, igniting a fan war between the two group’s fandoms. Thus, EXO’s fans began by flooding the comment section with pictures of the members, claiming that their group has talent and visuals altogether as a form of protest. Even so, several fans of different groups disagreed, mentioning how there are other groups with better-looking members.
Meanwhile, the majority of fans from both fandoms added in the Quote Tweet section that the entirety of the post is a setup, with a few claiming that the owner of the account is not even a Stray Kids fan. Apparently, it is common within the K-pop community for certain fandoms to have troll accounts of their own in order to gain easy views as well as direct attention to their favourite group.
Therefore, most fans did not take the post seriously as they knew the real intention behind the statement made. Despite this, a few EXO fans fell for the bait and were actually cursing the account. Hence, it is wise for fans to be aware of these clickbaits or even online trolls in general as they seek virality and mere attention.
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Ariani Soraya contributed to this article.
