Humour columnist S M Ong: Monsta X fans v monster troll

So you thought calling a museum exhibition Syonan Gallery was controversial.

Xiaxue: "Hold my beer."

Just over a week ago, the Internet enfant terrible likened K-pop boy band Monsta X to "a group of trannies" on Twitter.

Since then, she has been accused of hate speech and told to commit suicide and, even worse, called a "tranny" herself.

In other words, just another Friday night for the woman also known as Wendy Cheng.

And then someone tweeted her: "I dare you to come for BTS or EXO."

(For you non-K-pop fans who can't tell Super Bang from Big Junior, BTS and EXO are two other K-pop boy bands.)

Not one to back down or pass up an opportunity to troll, Xiaxue accepted the dare and replied: "OK. BTS sucks and EXO sucks worse."

And she thus incited two more K-pop fandoms to urge her to kill herself.

After all, she has been an online provocateur since 2003, sometimes not even on purpose. What’s another death threat?

This led to a particularly disturbing image sent to Xiaxue of a tombstone with a picture of her and her young son, Dashiel.

Inscribed on the tombstone was: "Xiaxue and her family. Cause of death: Made fun of BTS and EXO."

And you thought wild chickens were a public health risk. Who knew that mocking K-pop idols could be fatal? We may have been culling the wrong thing.

The sender of the image also tweeted: "I'll make sure to kill you, your baby and ur womb."

The "kill ur womb" part seems rather redundant, since after you kill someone, the womb is pretty much rendered inoperative. Perhaps it's for emphasis.

Despite the criminal intimidation, Xiaxue hasn't said anything about making a police report and seems more amused by the awkwardly Photoshopped threat on her life and family.

After all, she has been an online provocateur since 2003, sometimes not even on purpose. What's another death threat?

On Friday, she uploaded a YouTube video titled "Xiaxue Vs Rabid Kpop Fans!! Trolling is fun" to explain what happened.

She says she was on the same flight as Monsta X and "nobody actually gave two hoots about them".

So on arrival at the airport, "everyone at the luggage carousel was actually puzzled because there were screaming teenage girls beyond the gates".

Xiaxue says in the video: "I got home, and I received a tweet from a disgusted Monsta X fan that says I don't deserve to be on the same flight as them."

GOOGLE SEARCH

This prompted the host of YouTube series Xiaxue's Guide To Life to Google search "Monsta X", which resulted in the tweet: "I didn't know who Monsta X is but when I Google-imaged them, I genuinely thought they were a group of trannies."

She says she woke up the next day to learn that "hell has descended on me", and she had become a "transphobe" and "homophobe" overnight, referring to the somewhat negative response to her tweet.

In the video, she addresses the issue of whether "tranny" is a slur and, after citing US drag star RuPaul ("I love the word 'tranny'"), concludes that "the trans community are still debating it till today".

This is despite the Inter-University LGBT Network of Singapore releasing a statement in the wake of Xiaxue's Monsta X tweet that the term "is usually understood by many transgender people as a dehumanising slur" and should be avoided.

But according to Xiaxue, banning offensive words just makes the problem worse. She says: "The solution is to make those words meaningless by refusing to take offence."

Yah, you anti-Syonan Gallery people. You should have just refused to be offended by the name.

Xiaxue then goes on to gloat in the video about the numerous ways she trolled K-pop fans (and Yahoo News) and delineated how, by supporting their idols, the fans are actually "propping up torture" in the K-pop industrial complex.

It's exhausting.

If you're a neutral bystander who is not a fan of either Xiaxue or K-pop, whose side would you take?

What a Monsta-rous choice.

It's like Alien versus Predator. Whoever wins, we lose.