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[Featured] Debunking the Origin Myth of Megalia


There are contradicting explanations for the origin of the controversial online community Megalia. Real Koreans presented the official story from Megalia. Here, we deliver an alternative prologue.

Real Koreans wrote:
The collective movement began in June 2015, when women began to ‘mirror’ the misogynic comments made by male members on DCInside.com, a popular web forum. What was conceived as a minor page dedicated to sharing information on MERS-CoV, the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, turned to a battleground between the sexes. Male users began launching hate speech on two Korean women affected by MERS who, due to miscommunication, did not comply to the South Korean government’s call for quarantine. Women fought back, parroting back male users’ comments by simply replacing the words ‘women’ with ‘men’, a tactic they actively promote as ‘mirroring‘.
However, such claims do not go undisputed. All the "receipts" in Korean are given here.

[Naver Blog] There Is No Such Founding Myth for Megalia
Date: July 25, 2016

0. Feedback on a question [regarding a previous post]

[......]

Q: In modern Korean internet, do you think there are online communities where female netizens wouldn't feel uncomfortable? If so, please give me examples. If not, tell me why you think so.

A: Yes, there are so many. Women's Generation, Soul Dresser, Hwajangbal, Ssanghwacha-Cocoa, Jjukbang, The Qoo, Daepiso, DC Inside male celebrity gallery, foreign celebrity gallery, various drama galleries, etc etc. [Some of them require proof of being female for membership.] You can choose them to your taste. It is not convincing to claim that only Megalia and Womad can give comfort for female netizens.
[......]

1. How to view female-only/dominant online communities

To be honest, I have been lurking on those aforementioned female websites as well as Megalia/Womad to collect data. Many of the female dominant communities do make misandrist comments as they have been influenced by Megalia. Unlike Megalia/Womad specializing in misandrist posts, however, other female-dominant websites have many forums where users chat in ordinary language about everyday affairs. Therefore, it is hard to lump them with Megalia/Womad. By the same token, misogynist comments are posted every day on DC Inside baseball and stock galleries, which is a shared trait with Ilbe.

I think it is hard to generalize female-dominant communities just because some of them use words like "fucking Korean man bugs". Truthfully, there have been many comments going on about bean paste or kimchi girls. However, as I repeat, when it comes to Megalia/Womad, it is not a simple matter of generalizing and cursing Korean men. The problem is that they even express extreme hatred that calls for massacre and murder of Korean men and promote hate crimes against them.

Of course, I have observed a strong herd mentality in Women's Generation, which is worse than in other female websites. It is really revolting. Yet, exposing them is not my priority. They are a side show. The serious cancer is Megalia/Womad that infects normal people. Women's Generation users may be prone to confirmation bias. Megalia/Womad is beyond that level of an issue. They have no qualms about developing propaganda to spread hate.


[Megalia] It is not hard to plant misandry in female-dominant communities

If you bluntly act like some sort of an agitator, it backfires. I posted just one article per day from Megalian News on a small female community. Those articles were about extreme crimes of men against women such as murder after break-up, throwing acid, disposing a dead body in a manhole, etc. I didn't even write any comment. I simply uploaded articles with links, ke ke ke. Then the users were shocked and began talking among themselves. I didn't have to say a single word, ke ke ke. So nobody would argue and accuse me of trolling because I simply showed factual events, ke ke. It was up to them to have opinions. After I did this for one month, the girls began making misandrist comments. Although it is not so desirable to use the shock and fear brainwashing method, their responses were so fucking positive when I eventually made low-key Megalian-like comments after planting misandry steadily.

(347 up-votes / 1 down-vote)
As they have confessed, Megalians have used their "shock and fear brainwashing" method and it has been quite effective in female-dominant communities. We need to keep that in mind.

2. Why can female netizens not let go of Megalia?

Whether you are a feminist or a conservative patriot, you are well-aware that there is a bigger world than the social media as long as you are a sane person. Anybody can tell Ilbe, Megalia and Womad are insane groups. However, some social media and female community users are still trying to defend Megalia at all costs. I am not mad at them. I find them pitiful. The group they try to protect shows a weird superiority complex and even mocks the people who try to defend them on an anonymous forum.

I've come to realize that it is better to keep sharing facts with pro-Megalian netizens and female communities than to criticize them. There are plenty of cases where Megalians disparaged other female communities since when they made fun of DC Inside male celebrity gallery. Megalia/Womad users even call some other female netizens "honorary dicks" or "imitation dicks". This is clearly misogynist. Ueno Chizuko who said misogyny breeds contempt for women from men and self-hate from women in her book "I Hate Misogyny"  may be shocked to see this. Maybe she would think that the gravitation of misogyny is so strong that some women (Megalia/Womad) cannot escape from it.

I think some social media and female community users are still obsessed with defending Megalia partly because they believe Megalia began it all against misogyny towards the women traveling in Hong Kong during the MERS outbreak. Then, it is very much necessary to debunk the origin myth of Megalia and share the information.

3. There is no such founding myth for Megalia

The following summarizes the official origin myth presented by Megalia. Please correct me if I am wrong. It is part of a draft I am writing.

In the beginning, there was misogyny. Many women were suffering from it online and in real life. (As most legends are based on some truth, it is true. Anyway, the myth begins like this.)  There was a news report that two women who went on a trip to Hong Kong during the MERS outbreak in May 2015 refused to be quarantined by the authorities. Internet message boards were flooding with mean comments calling them Kimch girls. However, as soon as there was another news report that it was due to miscommunication, DC Inside female users who got tired of misogynist comments began fighting back. They posted misandrist comments mirroring misogynist comments in the MERS gallery. "If a man goes to an internet cafe, he is a bean paste man. Why waste money when he has a computer at home?" "Men should modestly keep their chastity for their future spouses like gentlemen." They parodied misogynist comments. As it was reported in the media and gained momentum, DC Inside's administrator Kim Yu-shik began deleting their comments using double standards. In response to this, female users created an independent website "Megalia" where they can keep their mirroring contents. The name originates from the fiction "Egalia's Daughters" where men and women's traditional gender roles are reversed. Thereafter, Megalia has settled as a group that resists moral double standards against women ("corset" in their terms) and criticizes misogynist comments.
Please understand that the origin myth above was heavily whitewashed. As with most origin myths, it contains many errors. First of all, DC Inside MERS gallery was created at 6 pm on May 29th in 2015 and there were no misogynist comments at first. Some comments were amusingly questioning why such a new gallery was necessary. Then, out of nowhere, the first gender-hate comment was posted. It was not misogynist but misandrist. This is claimed by Namu Wiki, which I don't find credible, so I looked for the proof by myself.



"Fucking kimchi man bastard should go die. Fucking kimchi man who brought the epidemic." This was the first gender-hate comment. Namu Wiki's explanation seems truthful. There followed other comments such as "Kimchi man AUT [intentional misspelling of "OUT"]" and "First male patient, fucking bastard". Who might have written such comments? I read the occupation of the MERS gallery was initiated by the male celebrity gallery users, so I looked it up. For real, the following comment was posted there just one minute before the comment in the MERS gallery. "Hey guys, let's go to MERS gallery and bash kimchi men". You can see the identical IP address of the poster.

The "68-year-old grandpa" is the man who returned from Qatar and was diagnosed with MERS for the first time in Korea. They claimed a middle-aged man ignored the quarantine request and went abroad and Kimchi men are rude and selfish. If you put the puzzles together, the story is like this. Usual misandrist users of the male celebrity gallery were itching for another playground. As soon as the MERS gallery was created, they devoured it.


When was the report about the two women who visited Hong Kong released, which was known to be the beginning of MERS-related misogyny? May 30th, as far as I know. On that date, you begin to see the posts bashing the women on Ilbe.


The Ilbe post that urges Ilbe users to take back the MERS gallery occupied by female users was posted in early June. It was too late by then. The MERS gallery was already occupied by female users from the male celebrity gallery and they were congratulating themselves.


The occupation of the MERS gallery and online misogyny caused by the women who visited Hong Kong were separate events. Of course, the reports critical of the women and angry netizen comments must have added fuel. However, the MERS gallery was already spammed with misandrist comments before that.

What you have to keep in mind is that "mirroring" was brought up as an aftermath attempt at justification for spamming of misandrist comments in the MERS gallery. Afterwards, various female users from the foreign celebrity gallery, Women's Generation, etc flocked to the MERS gallery. By early June, they began using mirroring as a pretext for their trolling. The Megalia group on Facebook intentionally concealed the true nature of the MERS gallery and put their own spin on their selected example posts. As some Progressive media outlets took their explanations at face value with no doubt, the MERS myth got solidified.

The MERS gallery and Megalia/Womad users use sentence endings such as "-no" and "-igiya". It began from the male celebrity gallery. As early as in 2014, the female users adopted Ilbe language and antics. Their daily activities involved spreading rumors about idols and trolling their fans.


So what do the male celebrity gallery users think about the claim that it all started out as "mirroring" in the MERS gallery? As they are the originators among female netizens, they are cynical about the mirroring excuse. They know better than anybody else that there was no such grand pretext for their trolling.



Women's Generation users were confused about the Ilbe language being used in the MERS gallery at first, but they eventually got used to it.


As you can see, Megalians tried to justify the pouring of misandry shown during the occupation of the MERS gallery by claiming it was "mirroring" in a retroactive manner. Because they acquired the official excuse of "mirroring" and "anti-misogyny", there was no social scrutiny on their hate speech. As they moved from the male celebrity gallery, MERS gallery, Megalia to Womad, they became more extreme. Now, their firepower is on par with old Ilbe that was not yet bombarded by the media.

4. Sunshine policy for hate-mongers.

By Sunshine policy here, I mean the media and public's interest. Ilbe's firepower was toned down after the media (current affairs show "I Want to Know It" on SBS in 2014) exposed them for being a bastion of political hate, defamation, regionalism and misogyny. It should be the same with Megalia/Womad. So far, the media and netizens had trouble seeing through their true nature because they officially sugarcoat themselves with the slogan of "hate against misogyny".

It is fortunate that recently, Megalia's true nature is being exposed. A great deal of their origin myth was also fabricated. I wanted to set it straight. If you find anything incorrect, please point it out.

Whether it is Ilbe, Megalia or Womad, we should not just brush them off as trash. Ilbe users eventually went out to streets and mocked the protesting Sewol victim families in the Gwanghwamun Square. People didn't take Megalia/Womad seriously, but they even caused a series of violent incidents at the Gangnam Station. Also, there have been male victims of outing and hidden cams by Megalians. It is not just a matter of verbal abuse. If you think it is only a matter of verbal violence, you cannot contain Ilbe, too.

Netizen Comments:

광야:
Good post. I wasn't aware of the true identity of Megalia... I completely agree that most female-dominant communities try to defend Megalia somehow.
g2m2000:
Finally, you revealed the truth. It took a while. At last, there are signs that Megalia is being distinguished from feminism. However, it worries me that no cyberspace in the world has won war against femi-nazis. Just because they use the banner of feminism, they get away scot-free unconditionally. That is the most concerning.
2K:
I don't think you understand what "kimch girl" means. I'm not sure how it was used before but currently, it has a different meaning. Bean paste girls and pussy-masters are all called kimchi girls now. The following women are called kimchi girls.

1. Women who only demand rights while turning a blind eye to responsibilities and duties.
2. Women who advocate gender equality only when it works in their favor.
3. Women who see men as their wallets.
4. Women who have double standards about men.
5. Women who only take advantage of men.

Currently, communities such as DC, Ilbe and SLR use the word kimchi girl but it doesn't include all Korean women. On the other hand, "fucking Korean man bug" refers to all Korean men. There is no trending word that mocks all Korean women today.
[If you are curious about the whole "kimchi girl/bitch" saga, there is a long-winded Ilbe post translated by koreaBANG.]

요오: [In response to 2K]
Even if kimchi girl does not refer to all Korean women currently, it inevitably looks like a misogynist word against domestic women when kimchi is some national symbol in Korea. Just like Megalia 4 doesn't look different from Megalia no matter what they claim, you cannot ignore the power of names.
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4 comments :

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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