RIP Sulli

As most of you know, Sulli passed away earlier this week. When I first saw people tweeting about it, I had assumed people were trolling. Sulli had a lot of antis for the pettiest of reasons, so I had assumed a group of antis were fabricating an awful story just to get a rise out of people. However, I soon had learned that Sulli indeed was no longer in this world.

Sulli's suicide and Goo Hara's suicide attempt honestly piss me off. Not because these two wanted to end their lives, but because these attempts were due to the online world. People who constantly harassed Sulli and Hara over the smallest of things were a major role in why these two did what they did. When someone is in depression, that person needs people to reach out to them to help them. People behind their computer screens hiding behind the anonymity of online alias harassed these two day in and day out. The awful comments written by these people day in and day out gives a justification for someone with depression to end it. The negative thoughts are already dominating one's mind when one is in this state, and being blasted with hateful comment after hateful comment just fuels the negative energy storming inside of one's mind. 

This is not just a Korean pop issue nor a Korean societal issue. It is human issue that affects every one of us. In our generation, we are all connected to each other all the time due to the technology that we have. People have all different types of social media accounts and are sharing things all the time and interacting with others. While we wish it was a perfect world where everyone got along online, we all know that is not the case. People post things hoping to get a positive reaction. I am guilty of this, as is everyone else. I post things to Instagram and Facebook to share the vacations I go on, hoping to receive validation from people in hoping they like the posts and comment on it. I may leave a funny tweet on Twitter or a funny comment on Reddit hoping for people to find it funny. I may text a friend something hoping to elicit a certain response, or text the woman I am seeing anticipating her texting me back.

However, with wanting good reactions, you will have people shitting on you just to fucking do it. It may not happen as much on Facebook or Instagram where it's usually just people that you know in real life, but on place such as Twitter and Reddit where we can hide behind an online handle, it is easy to hurl insults at each other. On news articles, especially Korean news articles, it is easy to leave comments. While there are many positive comments, there are just as many negative comments as well. There are a whole bunch of scummy people, such as NetizenBuzz, who thrive off of using negative comments to continue the circlejerk of even more negative comments being made. People may temporarily stop leaving negative comments, but within days the people who enjoy making negative comments will come back full force as if nothing had ever happened.

Do I wish human society and its internet culture to change? Sure I do. That's why I had stopped writing in 2016. Many of the posts here were satirical and I thought the shit was funny. Then I had assumed it was obvious to spot the honest and serious posts where we were not fucking around. However, many people cannot accept that people have more than one side to them and took the satirical posts as actual truth. No, I did not really want to kill myself after listening to EXO's "Wolf". Many of the posts here were overreactions done in a way to amuse myself, and hopefully many of the longtime readers of AKF, in depicting how bad I thought the song was. I did not actually think that "Suzy is a fat whore" or any of the other memes that came about through the blog posts and comments section. It was just a place for us to have fun and actually make jokes like this because so many other sites were so restrictive on what you could post. However, as I was getting treatment for my own depression, I had realized I was using this site as a bad gateway to relieve any negative feelings I had. It's easy to make the kind of posts I used to when I was miserable and ignoring my problems. That's why a lot of my posts in the second half of 2016 became so tame because as I got healthier, I realized I had to be more positive in life. I couldn't be making satirical posts making fun of people anymore, because to someone who is depressed, whether something is satirical or not, a negative message is still a negative message.

The negative messages that everyone leaves may seem harmless to the person who made the comment. Some make the comments just to relieve stress and try to take celebrities down a peg just because some people think celebrities have it good in every facet of life. Some may do it just because they are trolling and think it's funny, but mean no actual harm. However, the majority of the negative comments come from true feelings that people have about a person. Cyber bullying among the youth is becoming more and more common, and I keep seeing stories every year where a fucking kid who hasn't even had the time to enjoy life commit suicide because of the immense cyber bullying he or she received from his or her classmates. Imagine being a celebrity where a good chunk of your image comes from public perception of you. Celebrities see thousands of comments on every Instagram post they make. While many are positive, there are a lot of negative ones as well. We as humans tend to remember the negative comments and feelings more than the positive, and they linger around a lot longer than the positive feelings we get. Imagine getting thousands of hate comments all the time over the stupidest of things, such as Sulli not wearing a bra. I'm not a woman so I don't know what it's like to wear a bra, but many women have told me they are uncomfortable. Guys, imagine if we were forced to wear jock straps every day. I remember having to wear one for sports and gym class a few times. It's super uncomfortable on the balls. That's what I imagine what wearing a bra is like, but women have to wear them all day (at least at work/school), every day. I totally understand why Sulli wouldn't want to wear a bra if it's uncomfortable. However, to incessantly shit on her all the fucking time over something so minor is going to eat her up. She had people shitting on her for other things as well, and all of them were just as minor as the bra "issue".

This is why I am so mad about Sulli's passing. It should have never come to this if people weren't such assholes online. It's the same situation with Hara. I'm not saying that people should bottle up any types of criticism and only say positive things to each other. Then we would all be living in a bubble where no one would be ready for the harsh realities of life. However, take a step back and look at a big picture of everything. If you have the time to go online just to shit on someone, what the fuck does that say about you? Shouldn't you be trying to do something fun and exciting with your life? Or maybe you just need a night to relax and rest. Go fucking watch some Kpop MVs or some shit, I don't care.

Everyone just needs to do their part in making the cyber world a less shitty place.