I dropped Her Private Life because I also couldn’t relate. I consider myself a fangirl but I do more normal fangirl things like watching their MVs and variety appearances, going to their concerts, and sometimes voting for them in awards.

I believe fangirls in Korea really do those things, albeit a very small percentage. The idol culture created through K-pop is very unhealthy, but the psychological nature of obsessive fangirls has manifested itself in many different ways throughout history. There is just something wrong with this part of our society if I was to be very pessimistic about it.

I honestly cannot understand why anybody would want to be famous in that environment. It seems that they end up with no privacy and therefore no private life whatsoever.

I’m totally in it for Kim Jae Wook. As for the expensive gifts, beanies have said that the people who run the fan sites take in money from fans for the gifts. Some groups/idols/actors have declined gifts (especially once they’ve become famous) or ask that donations be made to charities instead.

i was hoping the show would use this opportunity to address toxic fan behavior.

but nah, gurl throws herself in front of van. afterwards nothing. “she’s fine, she’s just a pure girl who loved him from a distance” 🙄 liek hello, she could be in need of serious psych help here!

assault happens. nothing. case settled… coz she identifies with her attackers. 🤢 hello there?

i want to stick with it, hopeful that they’d somehow show the crazies that there’s more to life than pining after a boy who can sing & dance or act. admiration is a beautiful thing. but this is show is really making it hard. :/

Yea. It was very disturbing. If it even reflects a small fraction of Fangirls it’s atill disturbing. And so far the show seems to be brushing it off like it’s expected.
Am very close to dropping it.

I’ll try to mince my words but the depiction of the fangirls in this drama in nothing short of pathetic. What’s more sad is that this portrayal is in no way an exaggeration.

It’s even sadder because most of the people in this category are misguided teens. I’ll just never understand declaring an idol/boy-band/teen heartthrob to be the reason you live and doing just the extreme (like self-harm…) when the object of your obsession does something out of the box you’ve put them in.

That kind of behavior shouldn’t be encouraged. It’s obvious what these celebrities are to these fans. They’re an escape from whatever is crumbling their real lives. It’s not a normal type of behavior- it’s pathologic!

I feel the Idol world also encourages it. While I don’t agree with these crazy fans, I don’t necessarily think their reactions are far-fetched either. It’s kinda like ‘if a girlfriend is crazy, let me see her boyfriend. He’s doing something!’

I read an interesting article on how the Kpop world is about image building. You build a certain image of perfection and beauty and sell that image to your audience. You sell lies and promises telling them that you’re only theirs and no-one else’s.
Obviously it’s a lie. We know that! You know that! Your crazy audience (at least most) also knows that but it’s a truth you and your fans ignore in order to live in the ‘perfect world where I exist for your affection’ so then you break the facade and you wonder why they’re angry or crazy.

I don’t agree with these fans. I think it’s such a toxic culture to feel so entitled to another human being and to place all your own happiness on a stranger’s actions but the Kpop world encourages this sort of toxic dedication.

That’s why you’ll some them say ‘idols can date but they just shouldn’t be caught!’

The only part of The fan girl/boy culture in S.Korea that I can sort of relate to is if a person feels like they’ve hit a bottomless depressive pit and find hope again in the work of an artist that they see as their “pick me up”, other than that, I don’t see the point—nor stand by— any of it… Wanting to die (whether that be standing in front of a moving truck), spending loads of money for gifts, taking out loans for gifts, getting plastic surgery to look like your bias, becoming a sasaeng, becoming a stalker, doing something out of line to ‘send a signal’ because you like or dislike an artist (i.e. The Yunho poisoning incident, or the ‘someone-sending-Yunho-a-contaminated- sanitary-pad’ incident, Taeyeon getting threats for dating Baekhyun, APink getting bomb threats from a pissed off “fan”… There’s so many things) sadly isn’t uncommon