On November 11, a topic titled “Those who spread rumors about IVE turn out to be HYBE fans” was published on the Korean forum Pann Nate, drawing attention.
According to this topic, it was revealed that 2 notorious accounts, which have been slamming and spreading malicious rumors about IVE’s Jang Wonyoung, are a BTS fan account with 1 million followers and another BTS fan account with over 300,000 followers on the SNS platform X. Meanwhile, a LE SSERAFIM fan base was exposed to make up rumors about another IVE member, Ahn Yujin.
Upon seeing this topic, many netizens were shocked with the fans’ “dirty tactic”, with some even suspecting that HYBE have paid fans to monitor and manipulate public opinion to counter competitors, or in this specific case, IVE.
At the same time, some defended HYBE, saying that the aforementioned accusations are not verified and that people have been accusing HYBE of all sorts of things nowadays.
Below are some comments from netizens:
- It’s true, most of the accounts that have been spreading talks about IVE growing less popular overseas are HYBE fans
- Everything seems to be HYBE’s fault nowadays… What dirty tactic has this company not resorted to?
- But is this confirmed? Is there evidence that it’s truly HYBE fans that did this?
- I suspect that these fan accounts are given orders to spread the rumors…. I’ve heard that some fans are hired as part-time workers to monitor or manipulate public opinion.
- At this point, HYBE seems to be a victim with all the senseless accusations being directed at it LOL