Chapter 16.1
Viewers prefer someone who starts off a bit timid and struggles rather than a guy who’s skilled and overflowing with confidence. Koreans, after all, absolutely lose it over stories of growth, from rock bottom to late-blooming success.
But Pick Your Romeo has a large international audience. Even if I got criticized in Korea, my popularity abroad was quite decent. Overseas fans eat up the confident, top-skill types who dominate without needing a growth narrative. Sure, the more it works, the more hate comments pile up, saying I have no character.
Anyway, it was unexpected that Pick Your Romeo’s ‘average’ debut group size settled at nine members. Even R&M initially thought nine was too many and considered rigging the voting results.
If they weren’t afraid of the backlash upon getting caught, R&M would have happily rigged it. But just before Pick Your Romeo aired, there was a huge scandal involving voting manipulation.
A competing survival program named Boys Heaven got completely exposed by a whistleblower after the broadcasting company manipulated everything—from final members to group size. And this happened just eight months before Pick Your Romeo aired.
The group formed through Boys Heaven, ‘Heaven Souls,’ collapsed instantly. They were supposed to remain active for at least three years according to the show’s plan, but they imploded within less than a year.
Hwang Eui Jae was from that rigged idol-survival show, Boys Heaven. He debuted once already, finishing second, so at least outwardly he’s now on par with a visually SS-class idol like Myeong In Woo.
In my previous life, Hwang Eui Jae stayed with Ciel, becoming Daycrush’s last surviving member as a recycled rookie…but in this life, his future is uncertain. Him transferring to R&M was essentially a seismic shift.
Thanks to its manipulated narrative (shows manipulated by producers are usually pretty entertaining), Boys Heaven was wildly successful, and Heaven Souls quickly broke records from their debut. However, right after their first album, the manipulation scandal exploded, ending everything. Hwang Eui Jae must’ve felt awful.
What about the fans of Heaven Souls? Their fandom, ‘Soldiers,’ went absolutely crazy. They protested, demanding why their idols had to disband when it was the broadcasting station that rigged everything.
But despite their rage, Heaven Souls vanished just as quickly as they’d appeared, just like a comment. They debuted straight into first place, then disappearing after only a few months… It’s chilling, even if it’s another group’s story.
Boys Heaven aired before I even became a trainee, so even if R&M had sacrificed trainees there, I wouldn’t have participated. Still, avoiding broadcasting-station-run survival shows once didn’t guarantee escaping all survival shows in the future.
From my experience, unfortunately, survival programs would dominate the industry for at least another decade. They guarantee high ratings, even if constantly accused of rigging and malicious editing.
Fortunately, aside from their own company’s debut survival, R&M doesn’t usually send trainees or artists to programs that consume images badly. If they do, it’s limited to vocal showcases like ‘Masked Singing Idol.’
We rarely go to holiday specials like ‘Idol After School Sports,’ and appearing on group variety shows wasn’t mandatory until Neotube, Bogle, or TokTok became really active.
“What are you thinking so hard about?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, it was already weird that you suddenly wanted to go to Class B, and now you’re just sitting here in their training room doing nothing. It’s suspicious.”
“I’m not doing nothing. I’m currently harnessing cosmic energy from the universe to discern what’s right and wrong.”
“……”
“Don’t you find the number 9 ominous?”
“All of a sudden?”
“I find it extremely ominous. Seven feels better than nine, and five feels safer than seven.”
“Hyung, are you sick?”
“I’m just overly rational. It’s bothering me.”
I’m neither an R&M executive nor Reverb’s managing director, so why am I worrying about this?
Why? Well, obviously… If the group crashes, I might end up being stabbed by a sasaeng fan in the future as the tragic leader of Reverb.
In my previous life, the debut size vote ended at an average of 9.02 members. I’d expected a lower number since viewers would ruthlessly vote for four members—but nope. The backlash from Boys Heaven’s rigging created sympathetic public opinion toward male idols.
[Another survival show???]
[R&M is doing a debut survival. Voting for the number of debut members right now (link here)]
[What, you can vote for up to 10 members? Can 10 guys even fit on stage lol]
[But honestly, seeing trainees in survivals makes me feel bad now. R&M trainees must be pretty decent, let’s just vote high. Anyway, it’s an average—if we give them 10, they’re screwed anyway.]
[Yeah ㅋㅋ Even if I vote for 10 members, other stans will lose their minds and vote for 4 anyway, so just pick the max.]
[10 seems a bit much, so I voted for just…9?]
[There’s a trainee named M.I.W here who’s crazy handsome, right? I’ve got pics since he goes to school with my bias.]
When a tiger dies, it leaves behind its skin; when insanely handsome Myeong In Woo leaves, he leaves behind a generous debut-member voting result.
