Looking for idiots? Racists? What about insensitive people? Twitter is a good place to start.
Last night, South Korean pop group Girls's Generation won YTMA Video of the Year for "I Got a Boy," beating the likes of Demi Lovato, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, One Direction, and Lady Gaga. That's some stiff competition, and Girls' Generation's win is a big deal.
The award was based on metrics such as views, likes, comments over the past year. Girls' Generation's winning video "I Got a Boy," and that video, which was uploaded last December, has over 74 million views, over 400,000 likes, and nearly a half a million comments.
Some people on Twitter were insensitive. Others were ignorant. Tumblr site Sanctuary and music blog PopDust have been collecting some of the worst from Twitter. Here's a sample:
The video's YouTube comments get pretty rough, too...
Most of the above tweets seem to be made by hardcore Western pop fans who tweet pretty much exclusively about their favorite idol. In short: These aren't your typical Twitter users. Case in point:
Um...
If you've been around Twitter in the past, such as during the 2012 U.S. vs. Japanese women's Olympic soccer match, you'll be familiar with just how awful Twitter can get.
Not all the comments were bad! Heck, many of them seemed really, really positive—and even more of them seemed that way after the Kpop fans began praising Girls' Generation in spades. Lots of Twitter users congratulated Girls' Generation for winning. Some hardcore Western music fans even said the group "won fair and square." Of course the group did.
One Twitter user who was called out for disparaging remarks spent the rest of the evening apologizing.
In neighboring Japan, it's no accident that Twitter is called "an idiot detector." It's a shame that people use it to shoot their mouths off, without taking into consideration the words that they are using or the meanings and the nuances they carry.
The mind-boggling thing continues to be that some individuals somehow continue to think that the English-speaking world is the world. As someone who works in English (hello!), but lives in a country in which another language is spoken, I'll be quick to point out that it isn't. There are wonderful songs, books, movies, and video games in a variety of languages, and they shouldn't be immediately written off by those who don't understand.
Congrats Girls' Generation on your win. It was well deserved. Shame about the morons.
Oh no, a Korean Girl Group That You've Never Heard of [Sanctuary]
Girls' Generation Wins Big At YouTube Music Awards, Racist Tweets From Losing Fandoms Follow [Pop Dust]
To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.
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