#plus thats not even covering the second gen renaissance and also a bit of a first gen renaissance!

[sanstropfremir]

Honestly it is a much needed move for them. They should have done it a couple of years ago but whatever better late than never. Hopefully the fandom can finally stop being incredibly toxic. I'm just wondering what took the company so long to decide this? Or the boys??

yea i 1000% agree, the last two-three years at this point have been a slow cry for help. and i don't think it was a company decision, i think it was the members themselves. judging from the snippets of stuff that i've seen (i'm not watching the announcement video why would i do that to myself) but it sounds like they're all insanely burnt out and struggling with persona/professional identity crises. i suspect they likely were also not pleased about the constant english singles push to the western market. i think something probably finally reached a breaking point personally amongst all of them and they went to the company with some kind of negotiation. it's weird to think that we've become used to this cycle that boy groups have of career-service-return, but it really did feel like they've been around past their prime. tbh the system that's been in place for boy groups of solo projects/enlistment rotation has been proven to work at this point so i don't really understand why hybe didn't try to implement it. i mean i do, because they knew that they'd passed the point of no return and that solo projects would cause a ton of fandom infighting and some other reasons, but they fundamentally have an apparatus that could have taken the hit. if they had let the members put some serious groundwork into solo stuff in 2018-19 while the older members were getting ready to enlist and just done the standard rotation they could have prevented having to do a hiatus announcement in the first place and the declining professional health of everyone in one fell swoop. yea obviously boy group popularity declines as the years go on but the sheer size of the fandom imo kind of negates any real issues about it. the company should have just sucked it up and done the thing that worked but nooooooo they had to do it their own way because there was so much money coming in and "we're making different kpop"

#like exo is literally doing fine rn and theyve been in their enlistment era for like three years! #theyre still making sm money!! they're still extremely popular!! #plus all of got7 has successfully had solo careers AND done a group comeback after leaving their label so like. the evidence is all there #plus thats not even covering the second gen renaissance and also a bit of a first gen renaissance! #like rain and hyori have both had huge pickups in domestic popularity in the last year!! #there's literally so much evidence that they would have been fine lmao #text #answers #875 #tbh they could have even all enlisted at the same time and that would have been fine too #they could have 'set another record' or whatever and been the first group to enlist together but onf did it first #tbh the way this was handled makes me think that there's unlikely to be any music from them as a group for at least the next five years #and its basically a soft disbandment bc a formal announcement would be a pr DISASTER #idk im just speculating and i dont know the full story but this approach does not scream of future longevity planning imo