It hasn’t been a week since the untimely death of ASTRO’s Moonbin, and yet people have started using his name and his group’s name for clout.
On April 24, 2023, GMA Network posted a poll on their online website asking fans who their bias from ASTRO was. To make things even more uncomfortable for fans and non-ASTRO fans to see, the network had Moonbin’s picture in black and white, as opposed to the others who had color.
Of course, fans voiced out their (rightful) anger towards GMA Network, who then deleted the poll and post afterwards.
It was good that the media network immediately acted after seeing the reaction of viewers and AROHAs, yet it shouldn’t have been done in the first place. ASTRO, the K-Pop industry, and the fans have been experiencing such grief over the death of Moonbin, and it was a dick move on GMA’s part to use the time to boost their engagement using his name.
Let this be a reminder for all media outlets out there (including us, of course), to read the room before posting content.
There’s nothing wrong about making a poll on who the readers’ bias is in a K-Pop group, but if it’s made in a time of mourning, disbelief, and trying to accept reality, then that’s when it’s wrong. It wasn’t even that hard to realize that the article and poll was ill-timed—the all-rounder member from ASTRO hasn’t even been buried for days, and that’s when they thought that maybe once he was buried and all, it’s all fine.
This must be how other news outlets see K-Pop fans and K-Pop news—as a source of engagement baiting and clout chasing. Once it’s popular and once people see that they’ve posted it, it’ll immediately get them views on their website.
K-Pop, to them, is probably just a money-making outlet for them to use. No matter how much articles and coverage they make about ASTRO or any other K-Pop group undergoing such grief, it isn’t proof that they’re actually empathizing with the fans or with the group they’re making articles about.
It’s all just for them to generate traffic into their news outlet and for them to rack up their rankings on SEO searches.
Again, POP! would like to send our deepest condolences to the Moon family, ASTRO, the ’98 liners, and AROHAs around the world. Moonbin truly was a beautiful soul, and touched the hearts of many different people—on and off stage.
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