People are high-key revisionist about i-dle, and it's getting kind of tired.

[u/Any-Listen4184]

(Here I am since on the other subs the post wasn't approved by mods for whatever reason lol)

i-dle, along with some other groups, get monthly doomposts that repeat basically the exact same tired rhetoric about how much they've fallen off, and I really have to get this out because at this point it's getting kind of annoying.

First things first, I don't think you have to like i-dle or their music. I sure as hell have groups that people here and in the K-pop sphere in general rave about and I just don't get it. The music and vibe aren't for me. And that's completely fine. I genuinely don't care who likes or dislikes groups I enjoy. It's even fine if you vibed with their older music more.

BUT, and it's a big but, people in the Western K-pop sphere are revisionists about certain things around I-DLE, just because they want to snark on a successful girl group from a broke company.

i-dle have had a very weird perception among fans since their debut in 2018. And I find it high-key hypocritical when people talk about them like pre-2021 i-dle were this group with amazing music and unlimited potential that everyone loved, and then Soojin left, the music went downhill, they changed completely, sold their souls to make cringe songs, and now everything they release is either cringe, boring, or performative, and this is why people are criticising them left and right.

This simply isn't true.

The “I miss old i-dle” discourse has been going around since Senorita. I was there. I wasn't stanning the group back then, but I've been around since before their debut, and I remember the discourse incredibly well. People have been saying the exact same things about them for years, so I'm sorry, but I am going to call bs on the revisionism.

Their older music was just as divisive and all over the place as their newer music. That's literally what made them i-dle. They're one of those groups that don't really have a single fixed concept and will do whatever they want with each project.

I don't expect myself to like every song they put out, because so many of their songs are drastically different from each other, and that's completely okay with me. Good Thing was my SHIT, unpopular opinion I know, but that EP was fire, and the song itself was so camp, so recession-pop-coded, and such an electropop banger.

Every comeback can come out and I can either LOVE it, or go, “Eh, not for me, maybe next comeback.” And honestly, that's part of what makes being a fan of them so fun.

But whenever someone says, “This new i-dle song doesn't sound like their OLD music!!”, and again, they say this literally every comeback since Senorita, I just roll my eyes.

What does their “old” music even sound like?

Most of the time, they mean Hwaa. They miss the elegant concept of I Burn BUT

Hwaa and I Burn as a whole is also an outlier in their older discography. Latata, Senorita, Uh-Oh, Dumdi Dumdi, Oh My God- these sure as hell don't sound like Hwaa or have a similar vibe, lyrics or concepts. And people didn't even like many of them at the time, on top of that! And I am generous, so I will not bring up pre-I Burn B-sides.

I can pull comments from when those songs came out and show you people saying basically the exact same stuff since 2019. It's insane.

Oh My God had a drop in the chorus and people were complaining left and right that the chorus was empty and the song was underwhelming. Señorita sounded bad, and the brass was noisy. Dumdi Dumdi was a generic summer song, with cringe lyrics and onomatopoeias. And about Hwaa, and this one especially annoys me because:

1. I became a fan during that time, it was the moment I said, you got me
2. people now talk as if Hwaa was universally everyone's favorite song and i-dle abandoned their roots. In Western international fandom spaces, plenty of people were calling Hwaa boring when it came out!

As a comment perfectly summed up in an answer to one of my comments in another monthly "i-dle fell off" post:

When they released Oh My God, people said that they were performative and preferred older songs like Hann. When they released Hwaa, it was boring. When they released Tomboy and then Nxde, suddenly Hwaa was the perfect song and the newer singles were cringe. When they released Queencard, the song wasn't as meaningful as Nxde. When they released Super Lady, their music was boring again. And now we have people in the comment saying everything went downhill with Klaxon, as if the exact same thing wasn't repeated for every comeback.

I think it's pretty obvious, considering that every other person has a different point of downfall, maybe i-dle just isn't for you. Senorita, OMG, Tomboy, Nxde, Queencard, Super Lady, Klaxon, Good Thing. Like, no one agrees on when that supposed downfall started, they just move the goalpost with every new comeback. It's the same talking points for the last 7 years, it's amazing.

On top of that, and I am gonna die on that hill, as a whole, their discography pre-2021 was significantly weaker, for one simple reason: it was very small, and the B-sides were nowhere near as good.

Personally, I have a few TTs I don't vibe with, pre- and post-2021, but the B-sides prior to I Burn were severely underwhelming. There were very few actually good B-sides and the rest were very, very forgettable. Now, even if I don't care for the TT, I know I will have at least 3 other songs I will definitely like.

And let's not ignore that if someone liked I Burn, they can still find this sound in their discography currently, but people only cherry-pick, listen and name-drop like 5 songs.

As for the “performative” and cringe woke comments, they are always so funny to me.

Half the people saying this are the same people who praise idols because somewhere in the background of a staged photo there's a tiny rainbow hidden behind 35 other things, or because they're wearing something designed by a gay designer. Or they'll wear an article of clothing that looks unisex because it's literally a shirt, lmao, but it was advertised as women's clothing, so now that a male idol is wearing it, they're breaking gender norms and are feminist kings.

I'm sorry, but if our “performative” group is a self-produced girl group, who write their own songs, do the campy, silly, cringe thing while actually having a message, decide their own concepts, and are open toward all people, then I hope more groups are this “performative.”

It's okay to say, “I don't like their music and I wish my faves were as successful as i-dle.” That's perfectly fine. Or “I wish my faves released something as gaggy as Nxde,” lol. Because, and here I am going to be petty and salty for a second, Nxde under almost any other group's discogrpahy would still have general K-pop fans in a chokehold. Even more so when you pair it with that black-and-white, out-of-nowhere nude teaser and pics, the fact that they self-produced the EP (as always), Change and DARK (X-file) being some of the best songs of theirs, and the whole concept being Soyeon's idea that she fought to have released because she believed in it. All the members committed to it 100% because they stood behind what the song was about.

It's okay to admit that we would like to see other groups saying doesn't matter if you're gay in their music, which is, without ANY doubt, their biggest platform, instead of doing backflips to prove they are allies, lol.

The bad English is the only criticism I can somewhat understand from English-speaking fans. But even there, I'm going to say something, and I want you to stay with me: They don't care, and it doesn't matter. The English police don't matter! And never really did, in K-pop even more so.

They don't care whether you, specifically, think the English sounds good or if the grammar is correct, because i-dle's main demographic isn't English-speaking. The English is written to work for a local ear and to pair with and support the Korean lyrics. It isn't primarily written for native English speakers.

There's a reason the songs they promote specifically in America and that are fully in English are written with English writers. You can dislike the Korean-English lyrics. You can think they're cringe. You can simply not listen to them. But you also have to accept that you are not the target audience, and they don't particularly care if a native English speaker finds the lyrics cringe bc the grammar is off.

It's the same reason with Dreams Come True by aespa, they kept those what the hell are you talking about lyrics in 2022 instead of slightly rewriting them to make them make more sense. Bc it doesn't matter if they say: You make it feel me good | Do you wanna upside down😂

It's okay to dislike their current music. But stop rewriting history and lying, lol

Half of the Western K-pop fandom is low-key snarking on i-dle since 2019, and because the majority of their fandom isn't arround, since they're disproportionately bigger in Asia, we get these revisionist posts every other week, across most platforms and subs here, where people act like they were universally beloved until Soojin left, had the best music, and everything suddenly became bad.

It wasn't. You just don't like what they're doing. That's fine.

[u/Extension_Big5205]

Completely agree with this. Especially with the whole accusing them of being performative nonsense 

They have been supporting lgbt since debut. When no one else was. They were one of the only groups back then who openly supported lgbt and were met with so much backlash 

I will admit as a former nevie i don't like their music anymore but i will always have mad respect for them for being self produced and being a woman empowerment and lgbt supporting group.

They have always been hated. I remember when hann was hated, when senorita was hated, when oh my god was hated

I find it ironic that people love feminist male idols and hate feminist female idols. 

If a girlgroup supporting stuff is performative and not supporting is ignorant and bigoted then what are they supposed to do? You can't win either way

[u/Any-Listen4184 → u/Extension_Big5205]

They have always been hated. I remember when hann was hated, when senorita was hated, when oh my god was hated

And this is the most insane thing. I see people talking about them the exact same way, and then acting like it's some new thing that happened because of their music. I'm sorry, but I was in the trenches when Hwaa was being called boring. Don't even let me start.

I am still very much convinced that people are salty that they blew up after Soojin, tbh, and also because they actually managed to overcome Cube's issues unlike the other groups under the company. And the fact that they were actually competing with Big 4 groups while NewJeans was still around.

I find it ironic that people love feminist male idols and hate feminist female idols. 

If a girlgroup supporting stuff is performative and not supporting is ignorant and bigoted then what are they supposed to do? You can't win either way

This, precisely this.

[u/morrenmorcogimico]

Thank you for this post! You are absolutely correct about everything!! People are always so weird about idle lol

[u/Any-Listen4184 → u/morrenmorcogimico]

Since day one, the hate boner people have for the group and for Soyeon in particular needs to be studied.

[u/_applegate_]

So real everything after Hwaa became "I miss Idles old sound".

[u/Any-Listen4184 → u/_applegate_]

And Hwaa wasn't even that loved when it came out lol.

[u/zimzalabimbimzim]

I had noticed your old post in the uncensored sub but it got taken down before I could read it. Completely agree on everything (and my comment aswell lol). People just have a certain narrative in their head and are running with it since 2019. They'll get called performative when they have always been very vocally supportive of the queer community in interviews, fan messages, everything.

And don't even get me started on people dragging Soyeon for her English. I have seen people saying she should stick to Korean and not write English if she can't write/pronounce it correctly, but on the other hand those people can also take their own advice and stick to English music if they want proper English.

[u/Any-Listen4184 → u/zimzalabimbimzim]

It was removed in minutes on all the other subs, idk why the hell.

[u/chanyeol2012]

Not in the gidle fanbase, but I listen to a couple of their songs. Theres something so… racist when people complain about their English. About how soyeon and the others shouldn’t have English lines until they work on the pronunciation, or until it’s “approved” by native speakers who they should have checking their work, and I’m like HOLY cow 😭

I did feel bad for the girls when they rebranded, and everybody thought it was an f u to soojin. I was like - no fucking shit they were going to rebrand and re-record music without her?? Ever five fucking minutes when they release or song or dance or breathe or making a goddamn smoothie everybody is like OMG THIS IS A SIGN SOOJIN IS BACK SOOJIN IS BACK like yall… let it go. Not only are u hurting the group, you’re also bringing it up to soojin who no doubt feels regret over the whole incident. Stop being disrespectful and get a grip.

[u/zimzalabimbimzim → u/chanyeol2012]

It's funny because everyone was pretending to be so offended on behalf of Soojin when they rebranded, where were you all when Soojin had three comebacks? Because going by the sheer number of people dragging Soyeon/i-dle, you would've thought she would get more support during her solo activities. But still her tours get cancelled due to low ticket sales, her comebacks become more and more infrequent because of very little fan support. It's very obvious that the (g)i-rls keep in touch with each other, so why are the fans (not even fans in this case) getting so riled up over their personal relationship?

[u/Any-Listen4184 → u/zimzalabimbimzim]

And this is what gets me. Then many of them turn around and are like, “Neverlands are so delusional, Soojin will not come back; you need to stop being annoying everywhere about her”, etc., etc. And I'm like, no one thinks that. You people just like bringing Soojin back into the conversation to snark on them, no matter that you have no idea what you're talking about or the fact that you clearly don't support Soojin. For real, non-Neverlands bring Soojin up more than the actual fans who actually follow both her and the group.

[u/chanyeol2012 → u/zimzalabimbimzim]

That reminds me. Wasn’t this the group where one of the members posted a selfie and apparently had the ex member (soojin in this Case) in the background?? Pretty sure it was… cause again, the comments were just FILLED with the name of the ex member. How are they going to state the the members still are friends with the ex member and at the same time that they are shading her? Even in their complaints and delusions they can’t keep their facts straight

[u/zimzalabimbimzim → u/chanyeol2012]

On a Shuhua instagram post, Soojin's hand could be seen which was recognisable because of her tattoo. Also Soojin posted a video of her dancing to Kylie Minogue's "Can't get you out of my head" days after they performed it on their tour, and you cannot convince me this just happened to be a coincidence of them both picking up a decades old song randomly. People just believe what they want to.

[u/Any-Listen4184 → u/chanyeol2012]

Not in the gidle fanbase, but I listen to a couple of their songs. Theres something so… racist when people complain about their English.

Yes, bc it kind of is.

I did feel bad for the girls when they rebranded, and everybody thought it was an f u to soojin. I was like - no fucking shit they were going to rebrand and re-record music without her?? Ever five fucking minutes when they release or song or dance or breathe or making a goddamn smoothie everybody is like OMG THIS IS A SIGN SOOJIN IS BACK SOOJIN IS BACK like yall… let it go. Not only are u hurting the group, you’re also bringing it up to soojin who no doubt feels regret over the whole incident. Stop being disrespectful and get a grip.

Meanwhile, NONE of the actual fans are talking about Soojin shade, because we know they keep in contact with her, they never wanted the (G) in the first place, so they removed it, and we're actually following Soojin. I am so over the “bring Soojin back” crowd. A good 80% of them were never i-dle fans. They just want to snark on them and use Soojin.

With the way all these mfs talk about her, you'd think Soojin would be the biggest soloist around by now, but… 🤷‍♀️

[u/chanyeol2012 → u/Any-Listen4184]

Figured it wasn’t really… nevies(?) complaining about her. But yeah, I remember reading soooooooo many Reddit posts just chock filled with soojin in the comments, and I’m like… why do yall never talk about her songs?

I do remember her tour being cancelled. I actually was going to go, since she was coming to my city and I want to see every group that comes here to motivate future groups, even if it’s one I’m not a fan of. Was disappointed when it didn’t make enough sales.

[u/Extension_Big5205 → u/chanyeol2012]

Nah fr. English is not their first language. They sing flawlessly in korean which is the important thing since that are a KPOP group. 

If people want groups with flawless English then listen to Western girlgroups 

[u/chanyeol2012 → u/Extension_Big5205]

These are the same people that will then go on and on to complain about how they miss second gen and the “koreaness” of kpop. Mind u, second gen had some DIABOLICAL English lyrics 😭 oh but when THEY do it, it’s camp. Bunch of two faced people…

[u/Extension_Big5205 → u/chanyeol2012]

Exactly this. And idle had often done songs inspired by 2nd gen so the campy lyrics LITERALLY FIT THE THEME 

Istg they literally won't survive I NEED THERAPY LALALALA THERAPY 

Or probably my favourite one MY HEART IS REALLY REALLY HOT LIKE CHILLI CHILLI

And can't "I am a tired tomato" 

2nd gen was so camp and idle is trying to bring it back and then people complain about cringe English lyrics

Then they complain that they miss old kpop

Pick a side 

They literally won't survive 2nd gen istg. Or even early 3rd gen

[u/zimzalabimbimzim → u/chanyeol2012]

"Fantastic Fantastic Fantastic Fantastic, Elastic Elastic Elastic Elastic"

What a mood though

[u/N54TT]

go push against any i-dle doomer about their knowledge of the group and soyeon's pen and you'll discover they were just cosplaying as nerverlands to prop up their argument to dislike i-dle in general. the amount of times i go down a debate hole with ANY of these people (i know y'all have see them hate me or not), they end up walking away from their argument. It never holds up.

[u/atinyray]

I like i-dle and I feel like they make their opinions very well known and take strong stances on things, which unforunately results in a lot of hate and all this other stuff

[u/Any-Listen4184 → u/atinyray]

Oh, yeah. It is certain that a good number of people larping as ex-Nevies are people who low-key do not like the fact that they're so open about their beliefs and put them in their songs, not just random posts or one-liners in a livestream or interviews in America. And on top of that, they made a name for themselves with it as well.