How intimidating does this gif look to you? Can you believe there are 101 girls singing and dancing on the same stage?

This scene is the first of many following iconic moments by the most popular Korean survival show “Produce 101” by Mnet. Handing the fans the power to decide the fate of 101 trainees, calling the viewers as “national producers”, the show succeeds in creating many of the top-selling artists’ group in this newer generation of Kpop.

The concept of the shows relies heavily on voting. With different requirements for each round, trainees must show improvement or appeal to the public audience to earn votes. The gif shown above is the special stage after their first evaluation for the theme song of the season. The first evaluation will be ranked by grades: A, B, C, D and F from the auditions of all trainees participating. After they receive the first rank, everyone will be given the theme song and 2 days to practice singing the song and dancing the choreography for a re-evaluation. Based on the stability and how well each trainee deliver the track, the trainee will be re-assigned with a new class. Trainees of class A will get a chance to audition for the “center” spot of the song.

Now, let me explain to all the non-fan of the shows how important this position is. “Center” is a term mostly used in the K-Pop industry to describe a member of the group that best fit with the concept of the group and/or the member that perfectly deliver the essence of the song. In “Produce 101”, being the “center” for any performances means that you earn more screentime on the show, which increases the chance of fans voting for you. Especially, the “center” for the theme song will always be the first one that netizens will lay their eyes on. Take Choi Yoojung (최유정), Lee Daehwi (이대휘) and Miyawaki Sakura (宮脇 咲良) as prime examples.

Being the “center’ for the promotion song of the season gives them a heads-up in the long run. They will be one of the first few faces netizens remember and talk about. So far, the “centers” for the Pick Me song have always made it into the final line-up.

Over the course of the show, the trainee are divided into different group for different types of evaluation:

– Group evaluation (two groups will cover the same song and the winner team gets 1000 votes benefit)

– Position evaluation (trainee will choose either a vocal, rap or dance song to rearrange/ write their own lyrics/ put out a dance routine for the song they choose;the trainee who holds the number 1 spot for each position during the live vote gets a 100000 vote benefit),

– Concept evaluation (5-6 brand new tracks exclusively made for the show, netizens will vote for the song that they think it’s the trainee’s strong suit to perform; winning group will earn 20000 votes for each member, the number 1 trainee gets an additional benefit of 100000 votes)

– Debut song evaluation ((the trainees are divided into 2 teams to perform, top 11 (season 1, 2) or top 12 (Produce 48) will debut in a temporary group))

Evaluation comes with eliminations. The trainee who got 1st place in the ranking always get a benefit in the next round (usually the person to choose a song first). That means that lower-ranked trainees will stuck with songs that they don’t like or are out of their comfort zone. This is a vicious circle where the top trainees will always get to do something they like, while the low-rank trainees struggle to perform it, During practice it’s when the “evil editing” walks in. As I have mentioned, the “center” position for each pefrormance is extremely important to all the trainees. It’s no surprise when many start fighting for that position. To make the show more dramatic, the creators of the show managed to cut the scenes, add all sorts of BGM or effect, sometimes even put a conversation from a different scene to another,… just to make someone or the whole team looks greedy or ignorant. Viewers fell for the trap, whole-heartedly believe in what they saw and bash those trainees without considering the situation.

In the latest season, during the concept evaluation, team “I AM” received backlash from netizens for “kicking out” their leader at the time, Lee Chaeyeon. The netizens thought that the girls were fake crying when Chaeyeon had to leave while from the mentors’ comment, she lacks something in her singing. The only reason why Chaeyeon was out is because the maximum numbers for each team is 5. The votings were done separately, so none of them could gather up and tell each other to go against Chaeyeon. Plus, the editing seemed to drop out all the scenes where the others might have comforted the girl, they made it look like she was the only one speaking after knowing the results. She ended up in the “1000%” team. For the rest of the “I AM” team, their ranks went down drastically after the incident and some of the members still receive hate comments until now.

This is just one of the many “evil editing” that they’ve done to make the trainees looks less than themselves. What is shown on air are just a tiny cut from days and months of filming, you can not judge someone’s personality through a lense of a reality show. Before spreading the hate, one should have common sense to oversee the whole situation. Old fans of the show are familiar with this and have been able to debunk few of the rumors in the past.

It’s clear to see that Mnet has control over how the audience see each trainee. The whole system of the show suggests that it’s the fans that decide who earn that debut slot. But in reality, how much control do we actually have when watching the episodes? There are trainees that barely got any screentime while working just as hard. Do we ever get to see all of them equally? The answer is no. The crew usually see potentials in different trainees and once they found the right person to raise the ratings of the show, they carry on with that through the whole series. The probability is that the creators might have set out most of the line-up from the beginning, then help them appeal more through their visuals, their sense of humor or their hard work. Pretends that the fan vote solely matters, while actually they have manipulated us into thinking that we have that power over the group. As for me, my 1-pick never got into the line-up despite being unbelievably popular. A speculation that many have put out is that some companies willingly take their trainees out of the top to continue with their current activities. Some might even argue that during the last live voting in the final episode, the show messed up the votes so that the trainees they favor more got in. Nevertheless, the three groups that came out of the show: IOI, Wanna One and newly debut IZ*ONE have broken quite many records and have shown their significant influence on the K-Pop scene.

Maybe, after all, the netizens don’t have that much power over the show, but they definitely have the producer’s vision for superstars.