By Jae-Ha Kim
jaehakim.com
October 22, 2019
tl;dr: You’re damned if you respond to people on social media and you’re damned if you don’t.
It’s the kind of innocuous comment people leave for each other after reading an interesting article. As with most of the people on Twitter, I don’t know this person in real life.
Almost a week later, angry K-Pop stans saw that tweet and went on attack mode, accusing me of having written a biased article.
Plot twist: I. Did. Not. Write. It. This should have been obvious to anyone who can read and distinguish between two very different names.
The two most common complaints I saw were:
1. It was unprofessional of me to tweet from my work account. Work account? (답답해)
2. That it was unprofessional to talk back to people screaming obscenities at me. (너무 답답해)
To get perspective, here are some pertinent dates:
• October 13: Super M debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
• October 16: The Korea Herald releases an article titled, “Did Korean sales send SuperM’s debut album to top of Billboard chart?” This is the same day of my above tweet, by the way.
• October 18: Billboard releases an article explaining how the group charted at No. 1.
• October 22: Some of the group’s fans begin to harass me about my now six-day old comment, which I made days before the Billboard article was published. Are you catching my drift here?
In other words, it’s just another Tuesday.
ETA:
A couple of … podcasters took a swing at me on their broadcast. I know this because they tweeted this at me from their sock puppet account before blocking me so I couldn’t reply. Interestingly enough, the Australian woman doing most of the talking professed to being disgusted by bullying. But she seemed to relish smearing my name to her co-host and attributing things to me that I never said.
In other words, it’s just another Wednesday.
ETA Part 2:
I couldn’t hear most of what the man said, because I had to turn the volume down to accommodate the woman’s voice. But they provided a transcript. In other words, it’s just another Thursday.
The male podcaster didn’t talk much. The female goes by AustralianSana and has the same sense of entitlement that many people share: I tweeted at you, so therefore you are obligated to reply to me. As she pointed out several times, it is true that I have 40,000 followers on Twitter. That’s not a lot compared to someone like Rachel Maddow (10 million followers), but it’s a large enough following that I can’t possibly see everything that comes at me. That aside, I am under no obligation to reply to anyone, especially when they don’t hide their contempt for me. This woman’s theory is that I refused to address her tweet (that I never saw) because I’m afraid of losing my followers.
That says more about her obsession with social media clout than anything else. Nothing in my life changes whether I have 10 million followers or 100. I don’t get paid by clicks. This website isn’t monetized and I’ve never accepted ads. I enjoy seeing people share my work, but I get paid the same amount regardless of who likes what.
AustralianSana started off the interview mocking the state of journalism, but she doesn’t seem to understand how it operates. Maybe Ronan Farrow has carte blanche to write about whatever he wants to, but I am not him. Most of us don’t have that kind of privilege to do whatever we want.
This woman spent a good chunk of her entire time misleading people on things that can easily be checked. I was tweeting for over 24 hours? I responded to maybe a dozen tweets over a time span of 8 hours. Is she the only one who’s allowed to sound off at will? More importantly, people who haven’t worked in journalism should not profess to know how newsrooms work. She wants journalists to … show the whistleblower’s emails as proof that they’re not lying?
That isn’t how journalism works. And especially for a story as big as this, there was fact checking involved by people other than the writer. Yes, some articles will have mistakes. Retractions will be given. In the worst case scenarios, publications may be sued. But showing a blurred out email serves absolutely no purpose, because people who don’t want to believe it won’t accept it. They will scream, “That’s not real! It’s Photo Shopped! Drop the names or you’re canceled!”
The pretense of people like her is that I’m a horrible journalist because I’m not talking about BTS performing in Saudi Arabia. Why do they want me to? I don’t cover politics. I’m not an investigative journalist. I’m not even a K-Pop columnist. I write more about Korean Dramas than Korean music acts.
But let’s ask the real question: Why is it so important to them that I make any kind of comment? She says in her podcast that she had blocked me and finds me “morally bankrupt.” So why would she want the opinion of such a person … unless you wanted to use them (“Look, a Korean woman agrees with me about this so you can all shut up!”)? More likely, she wanted me to disagree with her so she had ammunition to drag me with impunity. (“Look, this Korean woman is a shill for the Korean government and BTS and doesn’t care about anything else!”
Just like everyone else, she doesn’t enjoy being screamed at. I was heartened to read that she asked for empathy from her followers and asked them to please be kind to her:
But her empathy doesn’t extend to others. Why would anyone get this upset over a stranger not doing their bidding?
AustralianSana was livid that I responded to her friend’s ageist, sexist and profanity-filled tweets with a snarky one. She never mentioned in her podcast that he has a history of misogyny, racism and sexism. She didn’t mention that he has been kicked off Twitter at least once previously. It wasn’t just because. His account was suspended because he allegedly harassed women online in France. One woman provided these screenshots. There were dozens of other French women (and a few men) who shared their experiences of his behavior. He appears to get off stirring up shit and then insisting that he’s the victim.
He’s not the only problem, though. There were too many girls and women who believed him when he said he was receiving death threats. If true, those people obviously were wrong to threaten anyone (especially over something this stupid). Do I believe anyone sent him those? No. Why? Because he would’ve shared them to prove his point. His supporters are the same type of girls/women who cackled with glee when another female journalist was begging them to stop sending her death threats. When she shared screenshots of the threats, they called her a drama queen and said she made it all up. Why? Because they didn’t like her.
He and his cronies fired off emails and tweets to the publications I write for, demanding that I be fired. Good luck to them, because if there’s anyone who’s already witnessed the vitriol that these K-Pop stans can unleash, it’s an editor. But if there is a plot twist and they are successful in getting me fired, then it makes my life choices much easier. For almost all of my adult life, I have worked full-time at a publication and freelanced well into the night so that I could save money for the future.
The future is now and I’m here for it.
My fantasy is to retire and then name all the names.
— Jae-Ha Kim 김재하 (@GoAwayWithJae) October 17, 2019
NOTE: Bits and pieces of this post were added as things occurred. This post isn’t a rebuttal, so much as it is a time capsule of things at this time. Cheers!
Twitter photo source: Hollywood Reporter
© 2019 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved
The antis pointed out that Billboard did a article about how their chart isn’t rigged and how Superm legitimately earned the #1 spot. Ok, let’s say that’s true. lol That article came out on Oct. 18. Your tweet was on Oct. 16. They’re yelling at you for saying you liked an article when their “receipt” didn’t come out until two days later? lmao
THIS! That AustralianSana (Hollee) is bad news. She is saying that you knew about the Billboard article and their clarification and you went out of your way to smear SuperM because you made a comment like days before that article came out. Where is the logic in that? Why does she think Billboard is being transparent but the Korea Herald isn’t? Isn’t Billboard more likely to cover up if they did cheat because it’s their charts. The Korea Herald has nothing to lose by printing the facts. Billboard does.
Hollee and Enzo are both trouble. I thought they were the same person and am not convinced they aren’t. It’s never a good look for a couple of white koreaboos to have a go at a Korean woman who is touting HER culture and the music HER family loves. She has a young child who loves BTS and she has talked often about how it is so wonderful that he can grow up with Korean pop culture role models that she never had growing up in diaspora. I am literally disgusted by the continual attacks of these two ugly on the inside people who are grown-ass adults themselves but expect Jae to remain quiet because she is older than they are. Are only 12 year olds allowed to have opinions in their pea brains?
You did nothing wrong. Enzo is just mad because he doesn’t want people knowing that he created another account because he knows he is violating Twitter rules by creating new accounts after his previous suspensions. His face isn’t a seret. He has posted photos on all of his Twitter accounts and he has photos on his Instagram accounts. They are all public and viewable to the public. Hoenstly both of them are troublemakers pretending to be all woke. If you don’t want people to make fun of your looks, don’t post a photo on your public timeline for all to see and then cry outrage when people make fun of you. And don’t attack a woman’s looks and then cry when she points out you’re not exactly a beauty queen yourself. Enzo called you a hag. You said you’d rather be a hag than be him. That’s the “outrageous” comment that him and his “woke” friend are upset about.
That is ridiculous! I suppose AS may not have known about his previous past but the way she was on Twitter I doubt that. She seems to be an enabler.
1. He’s literally neither of those and speaks Korean fluently while working here
2. He didn’t know what connotations hag had bc English isn’t his native language and he apologized
3. Exposing his face like that even tho you have thousands more followers than him: mature my ass
1. A foreigner being fluent in Korean and working in Korea (as teacher of English I’ll bet lmao) doesn’t mean you’re not a Koreaboo
2. 😒 Yah no. He had no idea that referring to a lady as an old hag had a negative connotation. It was a compliment then?
3. Where was there any talk about maturity? When people like you get called out, this is the first thing you bleat out. You’re not being professional, that’s so immature. This is social media, not a lecture hall. You want to be treated with maturity and with respect, show some respect.
I know he was rude but he’s a gay man living in Korea.
Milo Yiannopoulos is also gay. Should we excuse him because of his sexuality? Stacey Dash is a woc. Should we excuse her because she’s black? There are some minorities who are just horrible people. deleteitugly (also goes by seoultbh) is one of them.
THIS!
That dirtyseoul girl is disrespectful to older people all the time. She’s shoving her nasty feet in her father’s face. I thought only white people did that but here’s this grown ass Korean woman acting like a toddler and bothering her father: https://twitter.com/dirtyseoul/status/1187756640734306305
by your logic people with less followers can do and say whatever they want and people with more followers can’t respond because they have more followers. girl what? how about not poking the bear with an stick if you don’t want to get smacked back?
I came to say that same thing! Very few troll accounts have a large number of followers. That gives trolls liberty to say whatever they want about anyone and they can cry bully! How is that rational?
It looks like he’s doing some modeling or hospitality work in South Korea and doesn’t want people realizing that the decent man he presents himself to be is the same man who goes apeshit on Twitter and treats women like dirt. Sorry but he doesn’t get special treatment.
Here’s the link to the Korea Herald article. Some people may want to read the facts that SperM stans are complaining about.
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20191016000902
These stans found a week old response that she made, bombarded her with hate tweets for an article that wasn’t even hers 😒 and then cried ‘bully’ when she clapped back at them. They always do this. Maybe you shouldn’t tag a reporter if you don’t want the attention.
Western Koreaboos are the worst. The privilege they have in Korea is astounding.
The privilege they have everywhere is astounding.
Your responses were gold and they deserved what they got. These immature people go after anyone who disagrees with them. The best part is they didn’t want expect you to respond and were stunned when you did. lmao it was gold!
They seem to want to forget that they came at you. If they didn’t want you to reply, they should’ve stayed out of your mentions really. Is that too difficult a concept? Most of the people you replied to are known trolls that come after anyone who is a BTS fan.
Australian Sana and her friends have been problematic for a long time. They talk about maturity but lack it. Someone called her a hag and when it was directed at her, she didn’t like it very much and got the person suspended from Twitter.
Her name is Hollee. I won’t reveal her full name but she was on a program you can see here. She was very mild and almost passive on the show but is always just yelling in podcasts. She thinks she’s smarter than she is and seems to make things up a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_dHjCExb44
That AS person is daft. If sources can’t trust reporters to keep things confidential, no one will come forward when it could harm their lives. She is advocating for outing someone speaking off the record for fear of losing their job. Her suggestion to blur out the email address and name is stupid. SM will look at the email writing style and any other characteristics and find the person and punish them not just by firing them but using their money to sue them for defamation. Korean laws are crazy where it’s legal to sue someone for saying the truth. Draconian.
I think she was trying to trick her followers into thinking she was Chinese. When you go on one of her Insta accounts, the name shows up as Hollee Gee.
lmao She talks about Jae pretending to like BTS for clout but this white woman appears on a tv show pretending to be some kind of Kpop expert clutching a BTS-inspired toy and she’s not a clout seeker use BTS for fame?
There was a lot of sexism, racism, and ageism involved in the replies I saw. You did nothing wrong. Maybe these trolls will think twice before going for another woman of color.
🤦🏼♀️ This white girl from Oz named herself after Twice? Cringe.
I saw this all in real time on the bird app. Too many people throw shit at Asians becuase they think we’ll just take it silently. Just because these white people are loud doesn’t mean they’re saying anything relevant. Thank you Ms. Kim for not letting them bully you!
A lot of people don’t like you simply because you like BTS and they do no research into what you write about or even tweet about. They latch onto one thing you say about BTS and scream OMIGOD SHE’S BEING PAID TO WRITE ABOUT BTS. You probably tweet more about Kdramas and Korean issues more than anything else but these antis stay pressed.
I blocked that ASSana on Twitter a while ago because she was so full of herself. All this is because she’s jealous and angry that you didn’t ask “How High?” when she told you to jump. White women ordering around a poc. Smh
Basically that whole podcast was Hollee saying, “Look at me!” Sad.
I listen to these podcasts and they’re not always this dumb, but her answer to the question about BTS’s Hollywood Reporter cover was awful. It was like bad fan fiction with her giving all these excuses for why the writer was such a twat to them.
Typical white woman colonizer. Her friend used to be deleteitugly before French Twitter got him kicked off for being an asshole.
Thanks for sharing this, Jae. I started to listen to the podcast but couldn’t. Her voice is like nails on a chalkboad and that kpopalypse dude is a mumbler. Had no idea what he was saying. But I thought it was astounding for a couple of white people to sit there preaching about what people don’t know about what’s going on in South Korea.
Girl, this AS bitch ain’t worth your time. I had to block her a while ago because she was just too much. Didn’t want to see her anywhere neat me.
I can tell you like BTS. So do I. I can also say that the majority of your tweets aren’t about Kpop or even music. They’re about racism and sexism and Korean culture and languages and equality and fun stories about your family and Korean-Dramas. But these complainers don’t see that. All they see is you made a sentence comment to a colleague and it wasn’t raving about Super-M. You’ve tweeted about them sympathetically saying how their talent shouldn’t be overshadowed by this business scandal. That’s the hill they chose to die on. I know all fandoms have these ugly people but SM stans are the worst. I’m sorry that you have to deal with these brainless zombies.
The Australian and Frenchie can go to hell. We love the Korean though!
It’s absolutely utter bullshit to say vile things to you and then claim to be a victim when you reply. You have a public account and a big following. They know this and get a thrill from this.
Let me get this straight. These two clowns do a podcast, call you out by name, give their listeners and readers your Twitter handle, post screenshots of your tweets. And that’s not them telling their followers to harass you? And they do all this anonymously so that there’s no personal repercussion to them? Wow. And they’re too chicken shit to stand behind their own words with their own names. Are they in the witness protection plan or something? 🤔
AustralianSana wanted revenge because Jae didn’t answer her tweet. Talk about childish and vindictive. She reminds me of Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction”: “I’m not going to be ignored!”
Essentially they’re saying that you can’t defend yourself from anyone who has a smaller following than you, which is just about everybody. Makes absolutely no sense. If your so starved for attention that you go after a journalist with a following, don’t be surprised when you get people talking back. The nerve of these people!
Women get the worst of it on the internet all the time. First why were they yapping away at you instead of the Korea Herald reporter? Because even the other girls attacking have internalized their hatred of other females and want the approval of problematic men like that @seoultbh. The main issue is that no one on the internet wants to read. These children are the first ones to say “DO YOUR RESEARCH” but can’t be bothered to read the article to find out what it says.
Australian Sana never addressed Enzo’s campaign to get you fired. That’s not bullying because it’s against you I suppose. She is a hypocrite who has used ARMYS for years and created a fake account on BTS. Only after people people called her out then she made an excuse about why she kept it a secret and then made up some bs about how being yelled at is triggering for her. FOR HER. Not for anyone else apparently.
Why does she care so much whether you like BTS for real or whether you’re faking it for clout? What does it matter to her? Why does she find it so difficult to accept that a Korean woman likes the most famous Korean band in the world, just like millions of other people worldwide? I get the feeling she was trash talking their Saudi Arabia concert to earn “street cred.” She is an embarrassing KPop stan who has an Instagram account dedicated to a BTS plushie and if that’s not immature as fuck I don’t know what is.
You don’t get to attack a woman on Twitter and then cry “bully” when she responds to you, Enzo. Pathetic.
WOW! Makes no sense. They are crazy. They created all this drama because you wouldn’t answer them about something that’s none of your business. But then when you DID respond after people made nasty personal attacks on you, then they mad?
As the mother of a child who has autism, I would like to tell Australian Sana to shove it. How dare she bully people online consistently and constantly and then use her own diagnosis to ask people to treat her better than she treats them. It’s excuses like hers that make it difficult for people with autism and on the spectrum.
I just read this, Mrs. Kim, and wanted to thank you for being an amazing role model for journalists and minorities. Australian Sana is a known troublemaker and cloutseeker, so it’s rich she’s making all these accusations. Thank you for standing up for Koreans and Asians and minorities! Fighting Mrs Kim!!!!! Happy New Year!
Hollee Gavin who goes by AustralianSana and has more fake accounts on Twitter and social media is a racist white entitled Koreaboo who is a first rate idiot. You have 40,000 followers on Twitter. BTS has 24,000,000 followers. If as she says all you want is BTS clout, you’re not doing enough pandering to us. As old as she is she should know better and she prob does but is doing all this for clout. It’s just shits and giggles to people like her.
I came to your website to read about your Squid Game content and have been here for over an hour reading some of your other work. This post is older but I am amazed that people are really sticking up for a man who is gay and Arab who is sexist and racist. Gay people can be bad. Arab men can be bad too. Why does him being those two things give him the right to spew his hatred towards you? The girls who stood up for him are sadly lacking and just as bad as him. Thank you for all the work that you do. Your voice is much needed especially for us Asian women. Thank you!