Pinnacle of “fake goods”: Setting up a Twitter account for a fake K-pop group but acting like a real idol to trick the online community

With a series of singers and groups possessing both appearance and quality expertise, K-pop has gained a great reputation among the international music community in recent years. This helps them attract many fans worldwide, not just limited to the Asian market. However, for this reason, many individuals have taken advantage of the heat of K-pop to profit for themselves.

Recently, a Twitter account called @ 6irly (stylized by girly) – supposedly a new K-pop group about to debut, has been exposed by netizens: In fact, there is no 6irly name on the Korean music map, all just fake plays to user interaction sentences. Within 2 days of creating an account, @ 6irly has quickly earned over 2000 followers. After being exposed, this account owner immediately deleted all posts on Twitter, but it was inevitable for the quick and quick eyes of the online community.

Users @ 95vore quickly exposed the screen of @ 6irly on Twitter.

The first person to discover this play was Sophi Barbarics, account holder @ 95vore. She said that @ 6irly first posted on Twitter on March 16 but under the name @ 6irlfriend. This helped them quickly attract attention to K-pop fans by “imitating” GFriend, a girl group that is extremely attractive to fans in Korea. Both names have relatively similar pronunciation – yeoja chingu. Out of curiosity and a bit of anger, many GFriend fans immediately commented on @ 6irly’s first tweet (now still called @ 6irlfriend), and naturally helped the fake ones get the Attention from the online community.

A long-time K-pop fan, Sophi said she was suspicious as soon as the name @ 6irlfriend / @ 6irly appeared on Twitter: “ I am always careful with groups that haven’t debuted yet and have been active on social networks. Association, because this is not the first time someone has set up a fake account for personal gain . ” Then one day, they changed their name to @ 6irly, announced the second member of the group and even wrote their profile on Kprofiles just like real professional idols.

Not stopping there, after learning more, Sophi discovered that this fake group is owned by a music company called JCM Entertaiment. However, the company stopped working online 4 years ago after their group, 4L, disbanded in 2016. In addition, Im Da-Eun member photo that @ 6irly confidently published actually Instagrammer again @ryun__aa. The performance of the fake is officially exposed.

@ 6irly made GFriend’s fans outraged when using the same name as their idol.

The member photo of @ 6irly is actually taken from the account of an anonymous Instagrammer in Korea.

Later, @ 6irly acknowledged their entire behavior and said they only wanted to promote a girl group “nugu” – a term referring to small, unknown Korean artists. Sophi said: “ Because they were exposed so early, maybe this is just a harmless troll only, and they are of no benefit other than fooling some gullible gullible people. However, if it lasts for about a week, 2 weeks or even longer, they absolutely can attract more than 10,000 followers and start to benefit themselves . ” A few hours after speaking up, the @ 6irly account was officially deleted.

However, the “aftershocks” that @ 6irly left still exist on many websites. Someone has created Twitter accounts for the virtual members of this group, set up a website to update their activities like a true artist. Kprofile or Kpopping sites have deleted the membership profile of @ 6irly, but when searching on Google, they still have results like this.

Many K-pop sites quickly went on 6irly’s member profiles, but they were immediately deleted.

As mentioned above, this is not the first time fake K-pop groups appear on social networks, especially Twitter, to fool fans. In 2016, a girl group called the Lion Girls of Hunus Entertainment suddenly caught attention on both Twitter and Instaram, and was even reported by Soompi. However, it quickly ended when Hunus Entertainment announced that they had nothing to do with the group.

Another noteworthy incident in April 2019 even had more difficult twists, showing the unpredictability of using social networks. The object this time is a group called Purplebeck, under the staff of Majesty Entertainment. The group’s Twitter account has very good interaction with fans, even following them enthusiastically. However, on July 11, a number of tweets suddenly exposed the identity of the group with evidence that their agency was not found, causing many fans to think that this was a trick. again.

However, shortly after, Majesty Entertainment corrected the incident, confirming that Purplebeck was the group they debuted in June. In addition, they also cited the company’s official website, which is full of information. System, and hope fans sympathize because the site is still under construction.

However, after such fake incidents, many K-pop fans are now extremely wary whenever a new group appears on social networks. Sophi shared the easiest signs is that there is no information of the company, using selfie photos of “artists” to promote instead of taking professional pictures or using Korean / English in the wrong way. Too much grammar.

According to the Insider