Current Events I - Mindless Consumerism (Milk Scandal)

Source: https://chinamktginsights.com/idol-culture-starts-being-questioned-in-china-after-youth-with-you-milk-scandal/

A lot of issues that are being reported on the news surrounding music fan culture revolves around consumption trends, specifically the mindless consumption of products. This mindless consumption is thought to be partially the result of companies incentivising fans to purchase beyond their requirements anything from albums and merchandise to milk and NFT's. The idea is for fans to fuel the parasocial relationship with their object of admiration or obsession.

The example of milk purchasing by music fans happened in China, in May. An idol show, where the successful debut of an idol into a group relies heavily, if not mostly, on the viewers votes thought they created a creative way of additional voting. Viewers of the show could obtain extra chance to vote for their favourite contestants by buying a bottle of milk from the shows sponsor Zhen Guo Li (真果粒). The system of the show, "Youth With You" allowed fans a set 3 votes per day and unlimited additional votes generated from the sale of Mengniu dairy products. In the previous season of the show, fan clubs of the top 9 contestants spent $7.37 million (48 million yuan) on the dairy products.

As the previous year was successful, they did not fully think through the level of problems this could cause, as can be seen in the video below.

As shown in the video, the fans were pouring the drinks out, leading to food waste. In some cases, it was not even the fans themselves buying and disposing of the milk but scalpers, who after scanning the code were selling it to fans. After this took place the show was suspended as per the governments orders. The results of this were so severe due to the government having already introduced a new anti-food waste law.

Although this is not a current even technically, what happened as a result of this is. The Chinese government began to discuss and introduce regulations onto the music industry which heavily limited fan groups from spending large amounts of money to promote and support their idols.

Sources

Chinese Idol Show Shut Down Over Spilled Milk

Additional Source

China Targets Extreme Internet Fandoms in a New Crackdown