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AESPA
AESPA, a South Korean female KPOP group, is a product that combines KPOP culture and the concept of the meta-universe. The whole group has its concepts and will regularly release short films closely related to the worldviews. Moreover, each member will have a virtual member formed by their data uploaded on social media, that is, their avatar on the network. All the stories of this group take place in an unordered, irregular, and infinite space called KWANGYA. Members in the film can enter KWANGYA to defeat the enemy by SYNK DIVE (consciousness synchronization) with avatar members.
The main villain in SMCU ep.2 is the black mamba formed by the hateful comments on the internet. In the film, the black mamba uses illusion attacks to fight against the four members of AESPA. Winter, a member of AESPA, fell into an illusion filled with people's comments and criticisms of her vocal ability; Ningning, a Chinese member, fell into the illusion of innumerable malicious emojis and nationality discrimination; Giselle fell into the illusion of satirizing her appearance; The last one is the leader, Karina, who falls into the illusion that people put heavy responsibilities and high standard on her as the leader. Finally, Karina took the lead in breaking the illusion attack and letting other group members escape from the illusions created by the black mamba.
The seemingly fictional short film are full of reference to reality. The scenes in these short films are designed based on the cyberbullying the members encountered in real life. In fact, there are many other KPOP stars' mental health are negatively impacted by vicious comments on the internet. Sulli is one of the most well-known stars with distressing life who died because of cyber violence. She had been subjected to comments on her appearance, lifestyle, and dress style. Finally, she chose to end her life in her twenties.
Beyond the discussion in the K-POP industry, the core issue, cyber-ethics and cyberbullying should also be considered. With the development of the meta-universe, the connection between people and the internet is deepened unprecedentedly. However, the improvement of network ethics issues and the discussion of building a healthy network environment seems to be unable to keep pace with the development of the internet itself. Around the globe, the vicious events caused by irrational comments on the internet attract only limited attention. When the concept of meta-universe becomes more perfected, will the issues of internet security and ethics be solved, or will it become a time bomb in the Cyber-world?
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As a K-pop fan, I know and see a lot of cyberbullying encountered by celebrities. AESPA, as far as I know, is the first group who visualizes those cyberbullying they encountered in reality and composes them into a short film.