Would you mind elaborating on your answer to a recent Enhypen ask in your other blog? You said βThey are constantly underestimated, dismissed, and/or hated.β Iβve picked up on some of this (I-Land origin stuff, HYBE stuff, purportedly bullying Sunoo stuff) but how can anyone hate these boys? Would love to hear your thoughts and fully understand. Thank you!
Yeah I find the guys to be totally lovable as well, but lol, it's k-pop. Most of what people do here is hate. And they don't need a reason for it.
All the reasons you listed also contribute to it, but Iβd like to frame some of those factors like this:
The Enhypen boys just tend to mind their business, live on planes, and dork it out on their floor of the HYBE building. They're a 3 year old group and their worst scandal is the equivalent of JK ranking BTS members' looks in their early years and a decent helping of colorism, but if the setting was their dorms not on variety shows. Not like that's something to be proud of, but so far Enhypen are just the dorky vampires who perform well and make good music. And they are, relatively speaking, unproblematic.
That pisses a lot of people off. More than you'd expect.
There's also the HYBE tax they suffer from, which is when any talents they have is discounted by default by wider k-pop fandom if it comes from a HYBE idol/group. K-pop stans like to pretend like they're above this sort of thing, but the reality is that the Big3 defined the tastes, trends, and norms that persisted in the industry for decades, most k-pop stans were in a sense 'raised' by structures formed by the Big3, and so they've developed a bias for it if for no other reason than familiarity. BigHit and then HYBE are the usurpers of this system (not to be dramatic). HYBE is the 'monopoly', the Korean squid upending the ordained structure and feening to remove "k-" from k-pop. A lot of k-pop stans don't like BTS, ARMYs, and what they think HYBE stands for, and that bias shows up in how they talk about HYBE groups. Imagine there are people who would rather lick a frog than say Jungkook is a better singer and vocalist than Taemin. Or say insane shit like 'performance groups are not talented'. That's the kind of bias we're dealing with here.
Personally, I don't consider the group to be a vocal powerhouse. At least not in the way a k-pop stan would think of a vocal group. I do think Enhypen has stellar vocals for the songs they do. They've improved in live performances since debut and that's always a good sign. Heeseung is one of the best vocalists in 4th gen in my opinion, Sunoo is versatile and both Jay and Jungwon provide significant tonal support to their songs. The other members are evidently average or better than average vocalists. And that's fine. Ni-ki and Heeseung are average rappers but I'd love to hear Jungwon rap more. I feel his voice and the way he pronounces words give him good potential to be a rapper.
And in dancing, Enhypen has to be in the top 3 groups in their generation given it's a core strength for all seven members. Dancers love Enhypen for a reason, the group's choreographies feature more floorwork in one comeback than other group's do their entire careers, and the imagery in their performances creatively tell stories in the most complex ways.
Enhypen's vocal abilities, dance and performance cred, etc will likely be discounted in discussions including their peers unfortunately, until the group becomes too big to be significantly affected by k-pop stan chatter. Back when BTS debuted, everyone acknowledged they were a stellar group. The problems started after everybody realized everybody else felt the same way about BTS, it was only then that sentiment changed. Suddenly the group couldn't be criticized enough (though it's not like War of Hormone helped). Even with all that, BTS kept gaining fans because they were just that good, but it was a major uphill battle against Big3 fandoms. BTS was still being dismissed in 2019... as not being talented or worth the hype, and this was a time the group became the first to sell out Wembley stadium on multiple nights. Some k-pop stans kept up that narrative until BTS was nominated for a Grammy in 2020....
So, anybody expecting a positive reception from k-pop stans towards Enhypen at the stage they're at is probably going to be disappointed. That privilege is left for Big 3 groups, in fact, that's one way Big 3 privilege shows up. For Enhypen fans, I'd say prepare instead for a trajectory is similar to the Nike swoosh logo β
-> massively popular at debut (peak)
-> wider fandom overcorrects and criticism of the group ratchets up (trough)
-> group is constantly undermined (slow recovery)
-> if group continues to peak it forces reluctant acknowledgment from wider k-pop fandom (re-peak).
It's the same thing that happened to NewJeans, how sentiment towards them changed after their first album pre-order numbers dropped. Suddenly, people went from loving Attention and Hype Boy as "fresh and unique", to assertively affirming that the music was 'basic R&B that SM and other groups do all the time and is nothing special'. Suddenly, despite Izone, IVE, Itzy, NMIXX, Classy, Lapulis, StayC, Le Sserafim, etc all debuting maknaes aged 13 - 15 years old, for NewJeans their ages were a fatal flaw necessitating a boycott. Then the Min Heejin reveal and Cookie happened and most people on the fence now had a good reason to criticize the group and reverse bias. Until everybody saw everyone else felt the same, sentiment was very positive. [The only reason NewJeans is still so popular despite generally negative bias from k-pop stans, is because their reach expanded beyond k-pop circles basically at debut. NewJeans already has so many casual fans outside k-pop, that it doesn't matter how intensely the niche sub-set of k-pop stans hate them. ]
This is all before we get into the pathetic clusterfuck that is the impact of akgaes on the group/fandom. And what it's done to Enhypen's fandom.
Anyway, k-pop today is far more competitive, the stans remain just as vicious and cut-throat, and the stakes are higher in a sense. Enhypen will be fine though. This post isn't meant to be alarmist or fuel any paranoia of 'people going after' the group. It's just that for any group that's in their position, it's typical to expect hate and the sort the doesn't make sense. It's up to the fans to focus on the group, highlight the group's talents and performances as much as possible, leave good and critical feedback for the members in lives, comments, etc, and enjoy being fans of a group as talented as these guys. For as long as it works for them.
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