お姫様⁷ 🌸🍉 IS SEEING BTS

Two days ago, I posted about the difficulty Joon & Hobi face in making any kind of statement that could satisfy everyone. The responses were interesting, including the ones that disagreed with me. You won't have seen all of the responses, but I did, and it was fascinating to see the range of views. A number of people said some version of: “They should have said SOMETHING.” So I looked at what people responding to that post actually suggested that “something” should be. WHAT SHOULD THEY SAY OR DO? • An apology. • An acknowledgement, but not necessarily an apology. • An explanation of why they attended. • An explanation of what they knew. • A simple statement that there is never an excuse for violence against women. • Reassurance about their values. • A message specifically acknowledging fans who were hurt. • A Live addressing it directly. • A subtle message during a Live. • An immediate statement saying they were aware of the concerns and looking into them. • A donation to an organisation supporting women affected by violence. • Changed behaviour rather than words. • No statement at all. WHEN SHOULD THEY SAY IT? There was no agreement about timing either. • They should have spoken immediately. • They needed time to reflect. • A couple of days would have been reasonable. • It’s not too late now. • It’s already too late now. WHAT DOES THEIR SILENCE MEAN? There was no agreement about that either. • Silence is wise. • Silence avoids feeding the controversy. • Silence means they’re listening but choosing not to respond publicly. • Silence makes them look complicit. • Silence means they don’t care. • Silence feels like betrayal. WHAT DO THEY KNOW, THINK OR FEEL? Throughout the responses, there were many, many assumptions being made about Joon and Hobi. • They knew CB’s history. • They didn’t know the extent of it. • They understand why people are upset. • They don’t understand why people are upset. • They’re taking time to reflect. • They’re deliberately ignoring the situation. • They’re following PR advice. • They’re receiving terrible PR advice. • They don’t care. • They care but know that speaking could make things worse. Some of those things may be true. Some may not be. We simply don’t know. WHAT DOES EVERYONE ELSE WANT? There were also plenty of assumptions about what other people in the fandom think, feel or would accept. • ARMY just want them to acknowledge what happened. • Most people would accept a simple statement. • Hurt fans would accept a good-faith effort and move on. • Fans who love them just want to know they’ve been heard. • The people demanding a statement will never be satisfied. • The people still angry are mostly antis or people acting in bad faith. • Genuine ARMY would accept an apology. • Genuine ARMY don’t need an apology. • People asking for an apology want accountability. • People asking for an apology want humiliation. But the responses themselves show that ARMY do not all want the same thing. None of us can speak for an entire fandom. WHAT EXACTLY SHOULD THEY APOLOGISE FOR? Even among people who wanted an apology, there wasn’t agreement about that. • Attending the concert? • Associating publicly with CB? • What they knew or didn’t know beforehand? • Posting afterwards? • The impact on fans? • Not responding sooner? I’m not listing these to ridicule any of them. These are real responses from people with genuinely different expectations, experiences and feelings about the same situation. Some are completely compatible with each other. Others directly contradict one another. And these came from the responses to just one fan’s post across two platforms. So when we say they should simply “say something,” I think it’s worth recognising just how many different versions of something people are actually asking for, and how much of the conversation surrounding that demand is being built on things none of us can actually know. Imagine trying to construct the statement.