[User Post]

In 2022, G-Dragon started liking fan posts on Instagram. After a long period of quiet inaction from the superstar, this was an exciting moment for fans. They celebrated when their posts received a like from their favourite artist and proudly displayed the interaction on their social media.

But soon, the likes became too numerous to keep track of. Some accounts showed dozens of their posts that had tagged G-Dragon either with his @ or a # being liked by his Instagram account, often within seconds, and sometimes too fast for a human to have looked at an image fully, let alone read the attached captions.

Some of these likes caused controversy as they were of shipping videos made with some or other starlet de jour with whom GD was being linked by rumours that month.

Others were more disturbing, like likes given to posts created by malicious people from rival fandoms who later edited the captions on liked posts to show G-Dragon in a bad light.

Most fans, however, recognized that GD had found this small way to make fans feel seen and interacted with. Perhaps he felt sorry for the fans who had been waiting for him for five years to be active again since his enlistment. These fans appreciated GD's effort and ignored the content of the posts he was liking... After all, most were of BIGBANG and himself, and why should Jiyong not like pictures of his own brilliant past?

However, a more sinister exploitation of GD's prolific likes began at this point. A small coterie of fans decided to paint his likes of pictures of BIGBANG as support for Seungri, the former member of BIGBANG who had left the group in disgrace in 2019. Seungri had been jailed for 18 months in 2021 for nine crimes, including sexual offenses like prostitution mediation and spreading obscene images of women without their consent.

Of course, most fans recognised that as there were few pictures of BIGBANG without the ex-member, GD liking images that included him was inevitable and, therefore, of no special consequence. After all, Jiyong had also liked pictures of BIGBANG without the ex-member, including some from which the ex-member had visibly been cut out.

Yet, fans of the ex-member now decided to go even further.

Much to the dismay of BIGBANG fans, Seungri’s fans decided to bait G-Dragon by posting numerous pictures of just SEUNGRI and him so that any like of such a picture could prove to others that Jiyong still supported Seungri.

For this, they even planned a mass posting of one image so that the chances of Jiyong liking the post would increase exponentially.

Naturally, this attempt has upset fans of BIGBANG and G-Dragon, who want fans of the recently released prisoner to #FreeGDragon.

What do you think of this manipulation of an idol’s likes? Is it an ethical/just thing to do? Should @ygent_official advise GD to stop using Instagram likes as a way to interact with fans so as to prevent any unfortunate misunderstanding in the future?