>>30685087>>30690234>>30685135Idol isn't LE BAD but westerners don't even know what Idol culture means.
The idea that Idols can't have relationships in their private time wasn't part of idol culture to begin with btw.
AKB48 popularized it and made it worse with cheap idols "you can meet" pandering to the most obsessed type of audience similar to 声豚.
It calmed down in recent years in Japan as one of the idols who got downgraded to HTK48 (because of a stalker who found out about her BF) got voted 3~4 times in a row as 1st (while 100k votes ahead of 2nd) of the huge yearly voting that takes place as a sign of support
https://aramajapan.com/news/sashihara-rino-wins-3rd-consecutive-sousenkyo-watanabe-mayu-to-graduate-and-more/76771/Idol culture isn't LE BAD at all, oversea just heavily misunderstand what it means. They don't understand the separation with the performer just because idol were bastardised for a short while and it made the news here.
