Help for k-pop websites who don’t know exactly what to write about Moonbin

Moonbin’s death is a big thing in the news right now. Tragic, right? Of course we’re all very upset about this horrible incident, me included. Having lost several friends and even a partner to suicide, the issue is quite close to my heart. However finding exactly the right thing to write about someone’s suicide on a k-pop website is hard. Kpopalypse is here to give website owners a hand so they can maximise their web traffic heartfelt and entirely appropriate feelings of mourning during this awful time.

Look at this picture of Moonbin. One image is worth a thousand clicks.

Firstly, here’s an example of how NOT to do it.

Here’s the header of an article on truthful k-pop news journalism site Asian Junkie. It’s quite respectful and straightforward, and very trufaxual – but it’s also rather plain and isn’t liable to generate the web traffic needed sense of sincere and sorrowful mourning required. Also, most importantly, there’s only just one of these articles on Asian Junkie, which isn’t enough really. If you want to show everyone just how much you care about clicks, you need to write several articles, in fact the more the better. More articles means that you care about traffic more.

Koreaboo a.k.a “The Buzzfeed Of K-pop” obviously care way more about feelings of generating clicks to line their pockets than Asian Junkie, he certainly could learn a lot from Koreaboo, and probably so could you. Let’s take a look at how Koreaboo has been maximising their opportunities for reflection like the reflections of shiny coins in a pile, or gold bullion, or the water in the ocean as it is being parted by their new yacht.

All images below link to the actual Koreaboo articles so please do your part by clicking and following the links to help Koreaboo’s writers achieve their all-important KPIs and gasp in horror as you ponder how shitty k-pop media has become.

 

So here’s our starting point, and that’s a good start. However there’s so much more we can write!

It’s definitely fine to write another article when Moonbin’s label actually confirms that Moonbin is dead. Good thing that his agency noticed and Koreaboo then wrote about this in a brand new article, or we could be left wondering.

Fans are naturally upset about Moonbin’s passing, and managed to put away their constant bickering and shading of each other for five seconds to send each other supportive messages. You’ve got to admit that’s pretty newsworthy, as it doesn’t happen very often. Certainly you could devote an article to it.

Oh by the way Moonbin is dead and Astro fans (AROHA) are upset. That’s important to reflect on, so why not do another article that recaps the whole situation and also reminds people about how upset the fans are. Just in case people thought the fans were happy about it or something.

K-pop girl group Billlie cancelled their schedules for this week. Moon Sua from Billlie is Moonbin’s sister and she’s probably a bit upset right now, so anyone who knew this could reasonably guess that that’s probably the reason for the cancellation, even though a reason isn’t specified in the agency’s statement. Koreaboo don’t mention the brother-sister relationship here (but do in later articles), they just included this at the bottom of the article instead:

Not sure what’s going on here, if this is just Koreaboo being a bit careless, or perhaps they were worried about people thinking they were making assumptions. Anyway, it’s an extra link, which means potentially more clicks!

This article contains the newsworthy revelation that just before Moonbin died, he was alive, and doing normal being-alive type things, like posting on social media.

The rest of Astro are pretty upset about this situation and are coming together to mourn. In this article it’s stated that Moonbin’s family want the funeral to be kept quiet and private, away from the media, probably so they don’t shamelessly milk the event for clickbait articles. That’s definitely news that’s worthy of an article!

You know how Koreaboo mentioned that Billlie cancelled their schedules and implied it was because of Moonbin? Well they’re mentioning it again here anyway, along with a few other people in k-pop who also cancelled their activities for unspecified reasons. Of course one place that isn’t cancelling their activities is Koreaboo, who are busier than ever!

In news that may shock and surprise many readers, Moonbin’s upcoming fan concert had to be cancelled. It turns out that not having Moonbin around any more makes it somewhat more difficult to hold a Moonbin concert. Just as well there’s an article to let us know this.

Did you know that some k-pop stars are upset about Moonbin’s passing? Well Koreaboo made a list of some of them that shows what they posted on social media about it. There’s never a bad time for a good list article.

Koreaboo found a few more people who were also sad about Moonbin, so they collected them too for another list article. You can’t have enough list articles.

Fansites for Moonbin were understandably very upset to learn that Moonbin was not alive anymore, and so they mourned the loss. We could have reasonably assumed this, but here’s an article anyway, just in case you needed this important information.

This article doesn’t seem on the surface like it would be about Moonbin, but there’s a brief mention in there about how there was a moment of silence on the show to mourn Astro’s Moonbin. This means that the ZB1 article will appear in searches for Moonbin and Astro. Given that it’s an announcement article about a big-deal new k-pop group, this is a clever way to cross-promote articles!

In fact quite a few Korean TV shows interrupted their programming for short statements or respectful silence for Moonbin. Here’s a list article which lists them all out. Please forgive Koreaboo if they don’t also join them in a brief hiatus, as this is a very busy time for web traffic, there’s articles to pump out. Maybe they’ll do a hiatus in a month or so once the searches have dried up.

Moon Sua from Billlie (Moonbin’s sister) started following the Astro members. I guess they were nice to her and held her hand and gave her a hug and stuff and told her she could drop around if she was feeling sad. That’s very nice of those Astro boys, I hope they take good care of her, we all need a support network during difficult times. Also it makes for a good article.

Not everyone gets a hiatus however, those Viviz girls who apparently were close friends of Moonbin need to keep pushing on and making that money. Staff at Koreaboo can relate, those list articles won’t write themselves.

Did someone say “list articles”? Here’s a list of all the different people who wore black at the airport recently to mourn Moonbin. To be clear, this is officially a ‘list’ article as it’s actually on the “lists” part of Koreaboo’s website. Look how nicely it fits in with all their other lists!

 

Those handsome barefaced k-pop boys, gosh. Anyway they have to keep making Astro and Moonbin articles while he’s still top of the list of trending topics, here’s the list of Koreaboo’s trending topics right now, in order:

But don’t worry folks, it’s responsible reporting! We know this because there’s this message on most of the articles:

No tips on what to do if you’re distressed by Koreaboo’s articles, however. Notice that Lifeline actually gives “best practices for professionals” too, so perhaps some of the Koreaboo staff could ring the number themselves and get some help with that. Or, they could even go to my Patreon where I’ve provided a full .pdf of the World Health Organisation’s publication “Preventing Suicide: A Resource For Media Professionals” at this link. Note the advice especially about avoiding “undue repetition” and “consideration should be given to the extent to which the original story should be repeated or updated”.

(Oh, and for those who may have noticed the similarity between this post here about Moonbin and this older one about Sulli, well that’s because since that article was written, clearly nothing has fucking changed. Stay safe and healthy, caonimas.)