T-ara Back in the Fire

Just when you thought things could return to some semblance of normality for T-ara, shit finds a way to throw itself against a fan.

Remember when Kim Kwang Soo did his typical boasting about how T-ara turned down an allegedly lucrative alcohol CF deal in order to preserve their "wholesome image" with "cross-generational appeal?"

Yeah. That held up for all of 1 second before people called him out on his bullshit. Ability to even get alcohol CFs aside, no one really took him seriously at all. Netizens took it one step further by digging up some dirt to prove exactly what was on the tip of everyone's tongues.

"There's definitely at least 50% chance that this might not work exactly the way I planned it to."

Sharp-eyed or bitter or exceptionally cognizant (or a combination of all of the above) netizens quickly fired back with this particular advertisement for a pachinko machine in Japan.

Even Japanese corporations are 6-ara stans... ;A;
#imisshwayoung

As you may or may not know:

Pachinko (パチンコ^?) is a mechanical game originating in Japan and is used as both a form of recreational arcade game and much more frequently as a gambling device, filling a Japanese gambling niche comparable to that of the slot machine in Western gaming. A pachinko machine resembles a vertical pinball machine, but has no flippers and uses a large number of small balls. The player fires balls into the machine, which then cascade down through a dense forest of pins. If the balls go into certain locations, they may be captured and sequences of events may be triggered that result in more balls being released.^[1] The object of the game is to capture as many balls as possible. These balls can then be exchanged for prizes. 

Pachinko parlors are widespread in Japan, and they usually also feature a number of slot machines (called pachislo or pachislots); hence, these venues operate and look similar to casinos.

Directly gambling on pachinko is illegal in Japan. Balls won cannot be exchanged directly for money in the parlor. The balls are exchanged for tokens or prizes, which are then taken outside and exchanged for cash at a place nominally separate from the parlor. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]

Despite using Wikipedia as a citation (all of my academic integrity is screaming in protest, btw), the main gist of the passages I've selected hold true even under direct scrutiny. However, Queens all over are crying out that Pachinko isn't really that bad of a game at all, that it's just a fun game for funsies.

Why doesn't anyone look like they're enjoying themselves? It hardly looks like a casual
recreational activity to me.

I've taken the liberty of highlighting the main lines in the passage relevant to our discussion. Pachinko is very much a common form of gambling in Japan, and while yes, there are non-gambling forms of Pachinko, the association is still present and very strong. It's kind of like how people play Blackjack or Bingo for fun, but these games are more commonly associated with gambling.

There are also Queens out there saying that these machines are using T-ara's image illegally, like many shady businesses have been known to do. For one, the company behind these machines (Sanyo) happens to be a Fortune 500 company and a subsidiary of Panasonic. Not exactly a hole-in-the-wall bunch of nugus bootlegging random celeb images for their rinky dink shitmachines. If a company as major as them got caught by a bunch of netizen scrubs on the internet for illegally using high-profile celebrity profiles on their products, they'd be in deeper shit than Queens' ire.


And besides, there's an advertisement video to go along with this.

Seems legit to me.

If that's not enough for you, CCM's released an official statement saying

“While they did do the Pachinko advertisement, it is not for gambling. Well-known actors like Song Seung Hun and Bae Yong Joonhave done Pachinko ads, as well as KARA.“

Yep. Pretty conclusive to me.

But again, while they may not have directly advertised a sinful spending machine to promote the wonders of gambling, the association was enough for dem crazy netizens to jump on. Since the Hate-ara circlejerk is the new hip and happening thing to prove mental superiority, netizens spared no effort to gather more pitchforks. More mental acrobatics on their part, in my opinion. Personally, I don't give a shit about T-ara's "wholesome" or "hypocritical" image. You and I both know no one supports T-ara cause they set such a wonderful role model for the children.

Like most shit involving T-ara these days, people are just making a big fuss about nothing at all. Haters are just gonna grasp any opportunity to shit on T-ara, and diehard Queens are going to ignore obvious facts to defend their unnies/noonas. Nothing new here, folks.