If you haven’t been following along with the mess regarding the Best New Artist Award between I.O.I and BLACKPINK at the 2016 Melon Music Awards, then I envy you and you’re doing the right thing by continuing to live your life. However, in this article I’m going to tell you that there is indeed quite a controversy after BLACKPINK prevailed over I.O.I.

It’s so real it’s likely you’ve seen fandom clusterfucks recently, where both sides are making spreadsheets and skewing the numbers one way or another to prove why their bias should’ve won.

This amount of effort into explaining an award win or loss would make sense only if you assume these things aren’t rigged from the start. They are, of course, so I don’t give a fuck about who “won” or “lost” these awards, proven by the fact I don’t even put in the effort to bait you all for clicks regarding the show/results (maybe I should). That said, what I do give a fuck about is Melon humiliating themselves while trying to justify their award results to fans/media.

Melon on 17th: 'The criteria for the rookie award is based on all songs released in 2016. 22th: 'The criteria is based on the debut song'. https://t.co/0lfy32YKLH — KAS (@kpopalbumsales) November 22, 2016

One answer came a day before the awards were set to be held, while one answer came after the massive amount of backlash. Huh, I wonder what could’ve prompted them to change their standards?

“A PR disaster for every moment … Melon.“