The LESSERAFIM Hate Train Could’ve Happened to Anyone

many fearnots have endlessly complained about the supposed hate train happening with lesserafim right now, and i’m not mad about it. what’s happening with lesserafim is… interesting to say the least. a lot of people are wondering why it is even occurring since lesserafim seemed to be the it group among fans not too long ago. but in my humble opinion, what’s happening with lesserafim right now isn’t anything special — i would even argue that it’s not specific to the group itself.

i genuinely believe that the people are tired of what we’re receiving from kpop today: repetitive visuals and concepts, no sonic individuality, a lack of the strong powerhouse vocalist we saw in previous generations, and my least favorite, two minute songs created for tiktok virality.

and unfortunately for lesserafim, i believe they just happened to be the right group at the right time to fit a good chunk of the description. but do not be mistaken, almost any fourth gen group applies to that description — the lesserafim girls just happened to be the ones to catch it.

with that in mind, i think when we talk about the current hate train, we have to realize that it started off as very valid criticism in the beginning. i was a izone stan during some of their run, and so i was familiar with sakura and chaewon — more specifically chaewons skills. my friend had always said that sakura lacked vocally but nothing ever sounded extremely bad to me. but with their debut in lesserafim, it’s odd to me that sakura didn’t receive backlash at this scale much sooner. despite the adoration i have for lesserafim, i was extremely disappointed to see sakuras lack of vocal growth. and it was even worse to see that a majority of the group were being whacked for the same thing. now in their defense, hybe has a horrible reputation of giving groups songs out of their range. nonetheless, i wasn’t very defensive of lesserafim when the criticism was rolling out because most of it seemed genuine.

but of course, like most things in kpop, the situation got diluted along the way and it turned from criticizing the group as a whole to hating on their existence (the body shaming comments towards yunjin and the xenophobia towards sakura + kazuha was crazy). do i think lesserafim could come out of this relatively unscathed despite the duration of this hate train? yes. but i fear we’ll only see a stop to the hate when we see the industry start to genuinely prioritize stronger vocalist, more cohesive and individualistic sounds, and specialized concepts. until then, this hate train might plague lesserafims reputation.