TXT fans apologize to GQ magazine for ‘disrespect’ and ‘racism’
The famous GQ magazine published an article on March 15th about the global K-pop group TXT.
Her fans, better known as MOA, were initially pleased with the article, but were soon disillusioned when they saw what was being said.
The interview and magazine author was extremely criticized by the band’s fans in several issues.
Although the article has now been edited, he used a racial slur to describe Huening Kai, misunderstood Taehyun’s words and called a “Chinese music video” his inspiration, compared the group to BTS, and wrote many more things that didn’t fit the fandom .
The tweet caption linked to the article was the first thing that caught the attention of social media users.
According to legend, HYBE created TXT to become “the next BTS”. Jimin and Jin once shared the idea for the next BTS and talked about how they wish their juniors would do better if they made their own way.
“Their label wants them to be the next BTS. They want to be their fans. But the five young TXT members are really looking forward to a cheeseburger.” is the headline of the GQ magazine.
Fans were particularly upset with the author’s description of each member – which was later changed. The author began the article with his impression of the members, writing:
“Personally, the boys at TXT are all handsome (yup) and shy like shy teenagers (a bit disarming), with pores so small it would take an electron microscope to find them. The group consists of Soobin (the tall, sexy one), Yeonjun (the other sexy one; also the best dancer among the boys), Taehyun (the enthusiast who dominates the group chat), Huening Kai (the multiracial one who makes everyone laugh the world) and Beomgyu (a benevolent angel from heaven). »
The author named Hueningkai a “the hapa that makes everyone laugh”. K-pop fans have pointed out that hapa is a shortened form of a pejorative phrase used to refer to mixed-race Hawaiians.
Fans who took screenshots of the first draft of the published article also pointed out that the magazine wasn’t thorough in its research.
This happened in particular when instead of writing on the “SHINee Music Video” As an inspiration for Taehyun, the article simply named him “this Chinese music video”.
In addition to the poor edits criticized by fans, they found that the article also misspelled Hueningkai’s name.
Additionally, the article described fans’ fandom activity as “dark art.”
MOA expressed its anger by calling the reference offensive for alluding to witchcraft and devil worship. They complain about the media’s negative stereotype of kpop fans, who are often portrayed as stupid worshipers or bigoted teenagers.
The author of the article went private on his Twitter and Instagram accounts, and the magazine has not yet issued a statement on this. The magazine has since edited the caption and replaced the pejorative term Hueningkai. Nevertheless, the fans demand an apology.
Because of all these things, fans are filling various social media platforms like Twitter with hashtags like #GQ_apologize_to_TXT and #GQ_RESPECT_TXT. They say that editing the article is not enough and they want a formal apology.
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