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‘My Teenage Girl’: (G)I-DLE Soyeon goes viral for being stricter than ‘Mentor Lisa’

Soyeon calls out the audience for voting for the 'worst performance' she had ever seen on the K-pop survival show

Survival shows are an integral part of the K-pop industry as it is used to form successful groups or help underrated artists finally get the recognition they deserve. We have everyone finally appreciating South Korea’s dance industry due to the national platform given to eight all-female dance crews in ‘Street Woman Fighter’. On the other hand, there is already much talk about Kep1er even before their debut as viewers turned into fans of the girls while rooting for them on the survival show, ‘Girls Planet 999’. And now we have ‘My Teenage Girl’, but (G)I-DLE’s Soyeon is going viral for it.

With several channels producing K-pop survival shows, MBC is doing their best to make theirs stand out. We’ve had shows like ‘Extreme Debut: Wild Idol’ where the participants have to literally survive in the wild. And now, the channel has roped in some very strict mentors for ‘My Teenage Girl’ that do not appreciate rigged and mass voting and are calling it out. In the very first episode of the survival show, we had Soyeon, the leader of the popular fourth-gen girl group (G)I-DLE proving herself as a judge and mentor.

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Soyeon gets strict on ‘My Teenage Girl’

While it is not uncommon for K-pop idols to be scouted as mentors and judges of K-pop survival shows, with their little screentime and the shows mostly focusing on the participants, viewers do not pay attention to them. But we do have the occasional mentors who go viral for all kinds of reasons like ‘Mentor Lisa’. Last year, Blackpink’s Lisa went viral for her tough love on the Chinese survival show ‘Youth With You’. A trainee constantly kept a straight face while dancing to a cheerful song from which Lisa’s iconic meme, “I told you to smile, why don’t you smile,” was born.

But it seems that (G)I-DLE’s Soyeon was even stricter as on the very first evaluation round of hers, she was shockingly blunt. In ‘My Teenage Girl’s first round, contestants give a blind audition to the audience and if they pass, then only do the contestants make it into the actual show to be given missions and get evaluated by the mentors. But Soyeon called out the audience for voting for contestants who shouldn’t have made it. After Kim Ye-seo and Kang Seo-jin auditioned with Oh My Girl’s ‘Nonstop’ and passed the blind round, Soyeon was brutally honest.

She was sarcastic as she asked the audience if they were unable to hear the two girls hinting that they were not good. She then made herself even clearer as she said, “Of all the stages that I’ve watched today, it was the worst performance I saw. It was so bad, I didn’t even get mad.” She then addressed the audience and reprimanded them for being biased, “There were so many talented contestants that we were unable to meet...this is a place where we are...evaluating them on their abilities. I believe that the audience judging should have... that kind of responsibility.”

'Spitting facts'

Fans and non-fans were impressed as they made tweets like, “Soyeon as a mentor will make many stereotypes change and today in the first episode she showed it, Talent over visual... That is why today she was furious and decided to ask voters to vote responsibly and objectively.” They also were surprised she went viral, “Happy 1M views to this vid of soyeon spitting facts.” Another pointed out as to why she went viral, “JEON SOYEON VIRAL ! ON TIKTOK ! YOUTUBE ! NAVER TV ! TWITTER ! SHES GETTING MILLIONS OF VIEWS ! EVERYONE AGREES WITH HER CRITIQUES !” Fans also joked about her duality as after the show she sent loving messages to her fandom, “Soyeon with nevies vs soyeon with knetz mtg voters.” A multi fan commented, "Jeon soyeon omg i cant wait to see this side of her gives me mentor lisa vibes."