129 A Strange Breakout

All entertainers, idols included, rise through a seventy-thirty split: seventy percent luck and thirty percent skill.

Probably everyone in the entertainment industry would agree with that.

No matter how good someone is live or how talented they are, it is virtually impossible to make it without luck unless they are under a major entertainment company.

Female idols could at least occasionally be pulled up from the depths through short-form virality, but male idols had no such option.

All they could do was stack up songs, gather a loyal fandom, and wait for their time.

For male idols in the 2020s, who had thrown public appeal to the dogs from the outset, gaining mainstream popularity was practically an illusion.

They simply managed their rabid fangirls at home and abroad, sold albums, and made a profit by charging 300,000 won per concert ticket.

That was why male idols made so much money.

Even when agencies jacked up prices to insane levels and ripped people off, lunatics would still buy the products, even going into revolving credit debt to do so.

If you became mutuals with a young woman on Twitter who was into idol fangirling and watched her, you might even witness her ruin her life buying male-idol albums on revolving credit...