Regarding Aespa's virtual avatars, a K-Pop idol trainer touched on its concept and the problems it can cause afterward.
Previously, during this year's World Cultural Industry Forum, SM Entertainment founder, Lee Soo Man, shared his vision for the company's future. There, he talked about 'SMCU' or SM Culture Universe and introduced the label's upcoming girl group called "Aespa."
The group's name is a combination of "æ," Avatar X Experience, and "aspect" to convey SM Entertainment's forthcoming two-edged experience.
In-Depth Talk About Aespa's Concept
With the revolutionary concept of Aespa, a trainer and YouTuber In Ji Woong recently took to his personal YouTube channel. They released a video that talks about the idea of Aespa. In his video, the trainer expressed that he thought that the group seems to have many problems. One issue he mentioned is combining the idol and the character.
The trainer explained that creating a character based on an idol member means that they are making use of a person for a character IP. One concern he found with this kind of set-up is that it cannot prevent the countless secondary creations from the idol characters.
Ji Woong used a virtual K-Pop girl group under Riot Games named K/DA as an example. He shared that if one will type the group's name on different sites, one will get more sexually explicit pictures than their original ones. He added, "When it comes to K-Pop idols, there haven't been any virtual idol characters, so the secondary content has just been fan fiction, etc. But creating characters established on idol members? This is just asking for it."
The YouTuber continued that regarding K/DA, no damage is being done to anyone through secondary content since the members' characters are not derived from real people. However, in Aespa's case, the characters are based on actual people who have thoughts and feelings. Do you think that aespa members, who have an average age of not even 20 years old, will be able to withstand this? Asked the trainer.
A thought to ponder
Later on, in the video released by Ji Woong, he asked if SM Entertainment thought about the secondary creation before launching the character IP business. The trainer claims that many are aware that a concept like that of Aespa's will be leading to numerous problems.
Ji Woong continued, with the label still pushed the project, only proves that SM is only after for the money and that they don't see their idols as people.
The personality concluded by saying his concern when the time comes that the Aespa members will be affected tremendously with their virtual characters multiplied, and it will be too late to act.