T-ara were hated because they
were thought to be bullies. That belief sprang up because of their
tweets and then was then reinforced by misleadingly edited video clips.
It was not a result of anything that Hwayoung did, said or wrote. She
made it very clear that she was not bullied and asked people to support
T-ara, who apologized for their immature behaviour and asked the fans to
support Hwayoung. T-ara fans who blame Hwayoung can be divided into
various categories.
1) Can't forgive T-ara for their tweets
They can't forgive T-ara for embarrassing and disappointing them by
making themselves look like bullies, so they want to transfer their
anger onto someone else. By insisting that it's all Hwayoung's fault
they sidestep the problem of needing to forgive them and can simply hate
Hwayoung instead.
2) Believe T-ara bullied Hwayoung
They believe the bullying was real. They don't actually care about that
(I've even seen some comment that they would have bullied her), but
they're afraid that Hwayoung will reveal the truth and T-ara will be
proven guilty, so they try to discredit her. They shouldn't worry,
though. Hwayoung has been telling the truth all along.
3) Believe it's Hwayoung's fault
They actually believe the myths that they read, even though they don't
make sense, because they want T-ara to be innocent and the story seems
convenient. They are just too lazy, too complacent, too uncaring or too
stupid to find out and understand the truth. Am I being a bit
harsh? It takes time, diligence and perhaps a particular way of thinking
to sort it out, but many of those people believe that Hwayoung never
denied she was bullied because they didn't bother to find out, and make
hateful comments denouncing her as a snake and saying that she ruined
T-ara's lives. Just like T-ara's haters they don't let their ignorance
stop them spreading hate, so no, I'm not being too harsh. I've made
learning the truth easier by writing the story here, but it still
requires a willingness to consider different viewpoints and reassess
existing beliefs.
4) Believed Hwayoung was bullied but changed their minds
These are the people who are most responsible for T-ara's ordeal. They
encouraged hatred of T-ara by spreading the stories of bullying.
Hwayoung said they weren't true but these people chose to believe that
she was trying to protect her bullies. When the “anonymous former staff
member” spoke out after Taxi they jumped onto the anti-Hwayoung
bandwagon and accused her of deceiving the nation, even though she had
never supported their belief. It's so much easier to blame her than to accept that it was their mistake.
The haters themselves say that they know the what happened because the
truth was revealed by the staff in February 2017 and by the CEO, Kim
Kwang Soo, in May 2018, but their version of the story is partial in
both senses – both incomplete and biased. If you compare what Hwayoung,
Areum and the original members have said it's difficult to find any
disagreement among them, but the Hwayoung haters ignore all of that and
concentrate on the stories from the staff, who didn't get on with
Hwayoung, and the CEO, who fired her and made the problem much worse.
They have their own reasons for portraying Hwayoung as a troublemaker.
It makes the staff look innocent when it's possible that they were more
responsible for their bad relationship with Hwayoung than she was, it
distracts attention from the disastrous management decisions of KKS, and
of course they all want to protect T-ara's image.
The issues of the injury, the nails and the rest are really just about
making excuses. The fact is that even if all those allegations against
Hwayoung were true they wouldn't give anyone a reason to suspect T-ara
of bullying. T-ara did that themselves with their tweets, which were not
a legitimate expression of frustration, but at best a very foolish and
thoughtless move which was bound to be hurtful and divisive, and looks
like an attempt to humiliate a fellow member. Following it up by
demanding a public apology just reinforces the impression that for those
few days they were behaving in a bullying manner. Apparently they
realized what they had done wrong and changed their attitude, enabling
them to have a productive conversation with Hwayoung before the Music
Bank rehearsal two days later.
The day after Hwayoung's statement T-ara posted a letter on their
website apologizing for making their dispute public through Twitter and
saying they could have avoided the whole scandal by behaving in a more
mature way. Despite that, some fans can't accept that T-ara did anything
wrong and are desperate to present them as perfectly innocent. They
feel aggrieved that their group's reputation was ruined and someone has
to take the blame. It can't be the netizens who made false accusations
because that doesn't deal with the problem of T-ara giving them the
opportunity, so it has to be Hwayoung. They claim that she drove them to
write their tweets by refusing to talk to them, and accuse her of
pretending she was bullied. They even argue that she only said T-ara
didn't bully her to make the public think that she is a wonderful person
who is kind to her bullies. To put it another way, they claimed that she
said she wasn't bullied because she wanted people to believe she was,
that she told the truth because she wanted the public to believe a lie
that she didn't tell them, and they are still making that claim now. So
what do they expect her to say if she wants people to believe she wasn't
bullied? Simple: "It was all my fault. I was the bully." Anything less
is regarded as playing victim and an accusation of bullying.
The idea that she wanted to protect T-ara is one that they find
troublesome. Their whitewash hangs so heavily on Hwayoung being a lazy,
lying, bullying bitch who was determined to destroy them that it
completely collapses if her statements are seen as sincere.* That means
that everything she has done to help T-ara has to be interpreted as a
sly attack designed to ruin them, and if she says she cried after she
had to leave the group, as any normal person would expect, that is
playing the victim and implying that she was bullied.
Some fans are so twisted that they hate me for not hating Hwayoung or T-ara. Mish mish wrote,
“real crime here is people like you. i prefer clear cut fans or
straightforward antis. but you...you are the sick kind. bouncing from
side to side pretending to be an intellectual.”**
My guess is that she belongs in Category 4. She used be one of T-ara's
antis and that's why she hates me instead of them. She can't accept
responsibility for believing that T-ara were bullies, but if I show that
it's not Hwayoung's fault then it must be her own fault, and for
someone who claims to love T-ara that is a problem.
* Is that too much alliteration?
** I don't bounce from side to side; I'm with T-ara and Hwayoung who
have been on the same side for six years, and I the only thing I pretend to be is a nightjar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZAH1mu-6IY&lc=Ugw_B-qZCtu1ltxaWJJ4AaABAg.8hqkBR4ot-m8ijFWVdlkzT
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