[Oniontaker] Regarding: “Sooyoung Is RUDE”

Enough people have been asking for my take on this for me to warrant writing about it.

Man… where to begin with this story?
Well I could start off with my mantra:

Know when to trust, not who to trust: everybody lies, given the circumstances

So consider when this happened: ELF and SONE are in uproar about whether Leeteuk was rude or not (and the counterclaim of whether Taeyeon was rude or not) at the Google concert. Suddenly, out of the blue, this story gets posted with a precursor of:

I met leeteuk from super junior!!! He is so damn handsome I had a conversation with him I was soooooo nervous I couldn’t stop giggling and shaking. My heart felt like it was about to burst out (: I am proud to be working at my job I love him so much. - first post

But honestly, anyone who thinks that an ELF, or more specifically a Leeteuk fan, cannot be trusted solely because they like them is stupid. The most that fact could do is form part of a motive, perhaps to form a smokescreen or a big enough diversion to distract attention away from Leeteuk, if one takes the timing into account.

We cannot, however, do this; this identification by itself is no proof at all. We cannot assume that she is simply an antifan from this alone. That would be dangerous and silly, acting on speculation based on something that shouldn’t be regarded as evidence in the first place. However, it does provide us with a backdrop, a setting in which we can place this supposed incident.

We read on in her first tale:

I also met shinee and SNSD(sooyoung) but they were rude and stuck ups I just wanted a nice conversation and they ignored me, […]
[emphasis added by editor] - first post

Alarm bells ring here. They have just stepped off a long-haul flight across the biggest ocean on the planet on the back of an enormous schedule (whether it be in the public eye or in music recording/choreo rehearsals in lieu of a comeback) and this Michell expects to have a conversation with them. Yes, they’re human too and they’re blooming exhausted because unlike you, they don’t get 6-8 hours of sleep a day.

Immediately, she uses emotive ways of describing the situation and presenting it in a way to get symapthy for herself from the reader: “rude and stuck ups” who denied something “nice” from happening. That shows she was emotionally affected and so expecting a recitation as accurate and as unbiased as a police report might be expecting a little too much.

my heart broke for SNSD(sooyoung) I thought they she had more manners…
- first post

This sentence begins with what appears to be genuine intentions. If you look closely, however, you notice that she says “I thought they she had more manners” and before that she talks about SNSD, not Sooyoung in particular, who is the only person she says she interacted directly with. They. SNSD. not exclusively She. Sooyoung.

Or maybe let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she meant “they” as in Sooyoung and SHINee, even though she did explicitly write SNSD, the group.

Here’s where the story goes a little inconsistent.

I tried to help her in the inspection area because she was having a hard time with an officer. I even lied for her when she was cussing under her breath in Korean, obviously the officer didn’t understand Korean and asked me. I lied by saying she said “sorry for the yelling (rudeness)” - first post

So Sooyoung had problems communicating with the FIS officer? Someone trained in dealing with international arrivals day-in day-out would know how to communicate slowly and clearly with people who have difficulty with English. You add the fact that Sooyoung speaks near-fluent English… and you have a problem.

You see, most SONE knew that Sooyoung’s English was very good. Even before I posted about how her English (apart from her accent) was near-flawless, people were talking about her linguistic abilities. It was full-blown knowledge by the time of the Google concert when she not only spoke with native grammar in English (more calmly and clearly than California-born Jessica, I might add) at the press conference but she also even corrected the translator.

So hours afterwards when people were pointing this out, Michell is addressing comments on her story and adds these:

soo young speak english and understad it, its not broken english it was pretty good. just with a little accent
- Answer to Anonymous

“I Have Told This Girl To Shut Off Her Phone, TWICE, and She Ignored me TWICE!” but in reply Sooyoung yelled, “But I was just using my phone! I don’t understand why! I didn’t know!” so in my position I have to protect my customer’s defense.
- second post

In fiction, we call this retconning. Alteration of a pre-established fact for it to be consistent with what is conveniently the truth at the present time.

Oh and I’m sorry, but I had to laugh at this:

in my position I have to protect my customer’s defense.

Because honestly, Michell, correct me if this is some novel policy Korean Airlines implemented in their training… but I didn’t know committing libel and defamation against a customer was defending them lol.

Speaking of training, were you just witness to an immigrations officer who refusing the right to an airport-approved interpreter to a foreign passenger with English as a second language? Listen, I’m friends with people who work in airports in Incheon and Heathrow, and I don’t know how things go down in LA but here in Britain, we tend to be a bit more civilised. Unless that didn’t happen at all and this is all part of a poorly-conceived story?

Let’s not doubt it. Let’s just assume everything happened exactly like Michell described. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt here.

after the immigration was done she ran to her manager crying. […] later The manager came to me apologizing about how she was rude to me and the officer. the Manager, Her Self, came to me apologizing about how she cursed about me. [..] jessica and Sunny was there with her. comforting her when I walked by they would glare at me. I mean I helped Sooyoung and yet I was getting cursed at.
- second post

So if things went exactly as described:

1. Sooyoung ran off to the manager to say what happened
2. The manager and Sooyoung come to apologise to her and the officer, showing that they had been at fault.
3. Yet Jessica and Sunny are glaring at her, despite Sooyoung apologising, and admission of guilt and it being her fault?

Do you see in that one section of the story, there is self-contradiction? A self-contradiction that the writer does not point out… in her head, it all flows nicely together but when you take it out into the open, you see that in this section, 1 and 1 do not make 2.

As for her being a Korean Airlines employee, maybe she really is and I have no reason to doubt her except this: Korean Airlines upholds a standard beyond most developed countries to an extreme extent. (I’m talking about strict entrance examinations, physical examinations and whatnot… physical not just being fitness but really trivial things like physical and facial appearance). There have been numerous cases of serious disciplinary action being taken against employees who share sensitive or personal information that could compromise customer relations on Social Networking Sites.

Michell, despite her shaky writing style, is no idiot. Any employee would know that making allegations without evidence (only her word, since she has never stated there were any other employees but herself and the officer at the scene so her colleagues don’t “know”, they were informed by Michell in her own words) against a high-profile figure would get her dragged into a disciplinary hearing.

So we have evidence (important to say that this is not “proof”) to suggest fabrication or at the very least, embellishment of the truth. So what of the motive?

• We already saw that the timing of the post was curious: right in the middle of a fanwar between the two fandoms of the idols mentioned in her first post. But that’s not enough: belonging to one fandom doesn’t make someone an anti of some other individual.
• We were informed by Michell herself that she was hurt by the fact that some idols didn’t speak to her like she wanted to, after getting off a long flight. She was upset at the idols, and singled out Sooyoung before beginning her story.
• She used inflammatory tags and ones designed to get maximum attention:
  
  
  at the time of writing, all of her tags for #sooyoung #soo young #snsd #girls generation tags are all empty except for what she has posted just now in criticism, meaning that neither were for easy cataloguing purposes. The fact that she uses both shows she was casting the net as wide as possible in an attempt to get as much attention to herself as possible.
• She didn’t let the “truth” sit and prove itself, she reblogged herself (without adding any additional comments) almost two days after she originally posted it. Why?
  For what reason? So that more people who missed it the first time round could see?
  What does that achieve? More attention? Only Michell knows the real answer.

She has called her critics childish but attention-seeking itself is a rather puerile pursuit in itself.

So we have holes in her story, where she contradicts herself despite taking the time to write it all down in defence (without being under duress). Why might that happen?

“Memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality; […] and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.”
- Salman Rushdie

The mere fact that she is the subject of this story destroys objectivity of the account, sure, but what can we do but rely on eye-witness accounts? We cross-examine the evidence and find holes and inconsistencies, to see if those holes and inconsistencies are significant enough to outweigh the validity of her statements.

I’ve spent enough time on this. It’s not even digging into the things she has said in response to all the other askers or doing any kind of character analysis on the basis of those posts but this should be a nice starting point for anyone wanting to think a little bit deeper into the incident.

And as usual, I’m more than happy to answer questions.

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