people who were hurt are justified. people who chose to leave are justified. but sending death threats, spreading rumors, or comparing mark to genuinely abusive public figures isn't accountability, it's cruelty.
at some point, it stops being about the confederate flag or the people it hurt and starts becoming an excuse to hate him. if you're weaponizing black people's pain just to fuel your hatred, you've completely missed the point.
i don't think mark is evil. i don't even think he's a bad person. i think he made an incredibly ignorant mistake that deserved to be taken seriously. but nobody deserves death threats or harassment. we're losing sight of what accountability is supposed to look like.
Before the first Pride march in 1994, our lesbian sisters were the first who dared to come out to the streets when the Lesbian Collective joined the International Women’s Day protest in 1992.
Today, they marched with a replica of the banner they carried 34 years ago.
How does a lonely penguin or rejected monkey break the internet, while a starving baby in Gaza barely gets noticed? No child deserves to starve or be killed.
I understand why some people are angry, why some can’t forgive him, and why they want to hold him accountable. Those feelings are entirely valid.
What I cannot understand is how this has been blown so far out of proportion. People are spreading misinformation and weaponizing unrelated incidents to portray him as someone he isn’t.
If you want to criticize what happened, focus on what actually happened.
Don’t use one mistake to erase a decade of his kindness, sincerity, and hard work.
And before judging someone’s entire character, ask yourself whether one mistake is really enough to define a person.
Why have we come to this point? A foreign embassy in Manila now tramples upon our sovereignty without the slightest hesitation.
When, in the entire history of our nation since we won our independence, has a foreign power so brazenly insulted our legislators, our government officials, and the Secretary of our Department of National Defense — and, worst of all, refused to recognize our rightful waters in the West Philippine Sea while spreading misinformation and fake news to undermine our rightful position on our own soil?
As Filipinos, we must never accept this, nor allow these Chinese nationals to grow accustomed to trampling upon our dignity as a people in our own country!
To do so would dishonor the memory of the Filipino heroes who laid down their lives so that we could be free.
this is bare minimum btw but it's kinda nice to know that there is now a korean agency that has the balls to address the issue. there's still a long way to go bc this statement is actually subpar, but good to know that they acknowledge their mistakes. all they need to do now is to continuously learn from this and educate themselves properly. it's common knowledge not use anything with a flag or symbol that you are not knowledgeable about as fashion or aesthetics.
I truly hope Mark speaks about this himself and offers a sincere apology, rather than relying on his company to do so. Ignorance isn't always an excuse—fashion is political. But, accountability and education are far more meaningful than hate.
I truly believe he'll be more educated after this. It's disappointing that they didn't look deeper into what it meant and only learned about it after fans reached out. I hope Mark and Upper Room Label take this as a lesson and become more mindful in the future.
thankful to upper room label, but especially thankful to the markfs who don’t stay quiet about such matters and encourage everyone to raise their voices too. i think it reflects a lot of us not just as fans but as people who want to trust in the values upper room present to us and make sure they’re sincerely sticking to them. it’s not hate- it’s action on something we care about and we want to believe the person and the label we follow care about them too as they claim. yeah, just thankful to those particular markfs :) feels good to get a response from the label themselves in less than a few hours when it could’ve taken much longer and much more half-hearted as what we’ve seen in this industry so far. no need for fighting or debate, just clear-cut and straight to the point, handled in less than a day. think we’re moving in a good direction 🩵
i don’t think anyone has a right to instruct people to delete an image which contains a symbol associated with racism, slavery & white supremacy. silencing that does more harm than good, and it takes the side of the oppressor and a history which should never be forgotten .
none of us know mark personally but i believe we all highly doubt he is in line with those views whatsoever and had no idea what it meant.
but as a celebrity, and like all other public figures, it should be addressed and accounted for. that’s your role when you have an audience/mass following - and it’s even more important in this case as it may be plausible a lot of his audience have no idea what it means too.