The Forbes Troll Is At It Again

      Haters come from everywhere and it's sad and very telling when haters or antis are grown (or supposedly grown) adults in "professional" positions. You would think they would know better and have better things to do, but since the internet has monetized everything and some people are ruled by money and attention, we deal with them. One of these trolls is none other than Hugh McIntyre of Forbes Magazine. He has a nasty history of writing about BTS both as a group and individually and his articles on their individual projects often read like a solo or anti (well solos are antis) wrote them. ARMY has him on a block list of journalists (and I use that term loosely where he is concerned) to avoid. He is the only one I definitely remembered from Twitter ARMY advising to avoid. I lost my bookmarks when I deleted my Twitter account but he was always a giant red flag.

     When the Yoongi scooter situation was going on, K-media took the direct route to negativity and became an absolute shits how on a daily basis. Western media started to follow K-media's lead and defame Yoongi at the same time. Hugh saw this and decided to go the opposite direction and write a bunch of positive articles about Yoongi. Well, my mama ain't raise no fools as we say. I saw through his plan as did other ARMY who ignored his articles and advised the rest of ARMY not to share his articles on Yoongi and not to get caught up in the fact that he was suddenly writing positive articles. He needed clicks and figured he would write the opposite of what the majority of the media was putting out at the time. He played with ARMY by figuring he would leverage ARMY attention by pulling the attention his way while we boycotted K-media, Western tabloids, and Billboard as well. I pulled past titles of his and posted screenshots of where he tried to come for Jimin for falling off the charts and articles where he tries to pit the guys against each other and highlight one's achievements over the other and say that this or that member is surpassing his brothers. Yeah, ARMY doesn't play that. It's OT7 or nothing. Still I saw moots share his articles and pump him up. If you want to do your research, Google or search using Firefox "Forbes Hugh McIntyre BTS" and go through his titles. You don't even need to read the articles to see what a hater he is and why we shouldn't be promoting anything he writes.  

     So this past Friday 10/11/24 at 12:29pm Eastern Time, Mr. McIntyre decided to write a ridiculous article and actually go to print with it when it should have stayed in his drafts. The title is "BTS Jin Blocked From Hitting #1 By Another South Korean Solo Superstar." Really? Because first of all how do you go to print with an article about charts halfway through release day? The day's not over yet and what charts is he talking about specifically because Billboard charts come out on Tuesdays. He's talking about Apple's iTunes charts and he's flat out wrong and wrote this for attention from both ARMY (rage bait) and to lick boots with the other fandom (which I am not mentioning because no free promo). 

   Let's break apart why this article is nothing but tabloid fodder because you can write an article and state facts and if those facts happen to go against BTS then so be it. Facts are facts BUT, the thing is, his aren't. People don't fact check anymore and unfortunately unprofessional members of the media know they can get over on people by saying something untrue and they can get away with it because all they want are the clicks. With the decline of print media, this is sadly where we are with digital media. I read the article so you don't have to.

     In the first paragraph he says that "Super Tuna" is not new. This version is new. It has a new verse as an extended version and even new instruments. By McIntyre's logic remixes don't count as new songs. A certain Western artist who re-released her full catalog pretty much wouldn't have any new songs either by his logic. None of the re-releases would count for sales because they were previously released despite potentially new elements to the songs.  He says fans purchased the song for the "second time." Still not differentiating the extended version of Super Tuna from the original which has been removed and replaced with the extended version. He doesn't seem to have done any research on the song before writing. This confirms for me that he doesn't listen to the music before he writes about it either.

     "Super Tuna settles at #2 on the iTunes chart...in the US as of Friday morning" he says. It's very unprofessional of him to even go to print at lunchtime (on the East Coast of the US) with this. It was just after 9:30 am on the West Coast, LA, NV and some people were just waking up. As a stan, I know we wait up till midnight for new music drops but not everyone does that. The iTunes chart flip flops all day long. By calling it like 12:30 pm is some end time or something is like calling a football game at halftime as soon as your team scores a touchdown and is ahead. If sports writers did this they would be fired. Could you imagine a sports writer calling a football game and running to print with B team beat A team only to have A demolish them later in the second half that the writer didn't bother to wait for. It's reminding me of when the media printed that those girls won an MTV award and they hadn't even announced the category yet. Everyone piggy backed off of one false article and ran to the internet with their articles and social media posts and looked like idiots when the winner was announced and it was BTS and not them. Totally unprofessional.

     As I am writing this, "Super Tuna" has been on the top of the charts on iTunes for 3 consecutive days now. Blocked where? It's sold over 100,000 copies in the US alone. "Super Tuna" dominated iTunes charts all weekend long. It has been #1 on Worldwide iTunes and European iTunes for days now. Keep in mind this is just a fun song Jin did for ARMY. 

    Hugh goes on to say, "The BTS member has been fairly quiet for some time." Jin just got out of an 18 month enlistment in the military. He has been out since mid-June. It is October. Where has Hugh been? Under a rock? Since his military discharge, Jin has been a very busy man and even that sounds like an understatement. Jin has been busy working on his new album that is due to be released by the end of the year, he carried the torch at the summer Olympics in Paris this past summer, he is global ambassador for Gucci, Laneige (where he is the first male beauty ambassador), and Fred Jewelry (where he is their first ambassador), and he has done several variety shows including his own called Run Jin which is on every Tuesday. He has been going seemingly non-stop since he was discharged from the military. He celebrated the 11th anniversary of BTS's debut by performing for ARMY and hugging 1000 lucky ARMY the day after he was discharged and has been producing content ever since. Quiet where? 

   After neglecting to mention this, Hugh tries to turn it around at the end of the article by briefly mentioning Jin's military service but it reads as to little to late and seems like an afterthought just added as filler to end the article. What he writes about the other artist is mediocre fluff and obviously placed as bait. This actually does her a disservice. All that hype in the title and barely 3 sentences and he doesn't discuss her achievements or give her comeback any real attention. Not a fan but as someone who's not a fan and sees this clearly, if I was a fan of hers I would be annoyed too. He could have gotten 2 really good articles out of this by just writing the facts about 2 different artists who had comebacks on the same day without trying to pit fandoms against each other and ultimately making himself look like an idiot with a half-ass article he rushed to get published. 

     His writing is nothing more than glorified tabloid journalism. He chooses to use clickbait and write like a BTS anti to get clicks and ARMY needs to stop giving him the time of day. Most of us have and when more knowledgeable ARMY ask that you stop spreading articles from certain journalists we hope you others will listen. He's a "pick me"as someone said the other day. He licks the boots of whomever he thinks he can get attention from and that's disgusting to me. If you are going to write and want me to take you seriously as a journalist you should write facts. Whether I like the groups or not facts are facts. He dragged Jimin in a comparison once with a boy group when he should have just written an article praising the boy group for their achievements and keeping Jimin out of it. Once again, not a fan of that group but reporting numbers as they are and facts is better than using BTS and ARMY in a title to be a jerk and then trash them in the process of promoting another group. Just promote the other group. You can do that without putting our guys out there as bait. But the reason he does it is because he knows ARMY will somewhat be right there to give him clicks either good or bad. So he praises Yoongi when it is convenient then tries to tear down Jin after he already came for Jimin. Block him on all platforms and stop giving him attention. He's not worth it. I don't care if he writes positive articles once in a blue moon or not. He's trying to get paid and he has no morals when it comes to how that happens. We don't need the media fanning the flames of fan wars.