Context: J is a 21 year old Filipino American college student who grew up in California, who has been a long time K-pop follower and fan of numerous groups, some favorites including Loona and Twice. This piece was collected during a discord audio call.

Intv: “Is there any folklore related to any of the K-pop groups you follow? Or is there Hololive lore?”

J: “Oh! There’s the Loona Curse!”

Intv: “What’s the Loona Curse? I’ve not heard of it.”

J: “Okay so basically it’s like if you speak bad about Loona your group disbands. Specifically if you’re like “loona is going to disband before [group] because y’all are flops.” 

Intv: “And wait, this has happened before?”

J: “Oh yeah, it’s happened like three times now. With Pristin (sorry Kim), x1, and gfriend.” 

Intv: “So was this like something that happened on Twitter?” 

J: “Yeah, but not by Loona specifically, but their fans definitely defended Loona on Twitter and the tweets eventually blew up but it never directly affected the groups involved, until they disbanded. Even then it was never direct but it was a huge coincidence that it happened.”

Intv: “Oh so it was a community based twitter event not involving the group members specifically?” 

J: “Yeah exactly! Oh! It also happened to IZ*ONE, they were huge in Korea and Japan.” 

Analysis: I find the sense of community created across cyberspace with random internet people to be completely beautiful. Even in an instance where, unfortunately, beloved musical groups are disbanded, in J’s retelling of the story I got such a sense of pride as a loona fan. I was even linked to a tweet that has thousands of retweets and likes about this phenomenon. https://twitter.com/yvesfan420/status/1518673182869180416?s=21&t=AZ7-coVbYpwZd2vhRlyiZw

Throughout the comments are fans of Loona, Pristin, x1, and so many other k-pop groups who have all been made away of, The Loona Curse.