Here is a paradox for you: a South Korean girl group, Le Sserafim, has been lauded by the UK music industry for its supposed ‘resilience’ in the face of online trolls. The word ‘troll’ itself is a symptom of our intellectual decay: we have downgraded critics of the public square to mythical creatures of the Nordic forests. But the real story is not the resilience of a K-pop act. It is the capitulation of the British cultural establishment to the tyranny of the market and the infantilisation of its audience.
Let us be clear. Le Sserafim is a product of a hyper-efficient entertainment machine: polished, choreographed, and as soulless as a Victorian factory floor. The ‘trolls’ they overcame are likely the usual digital rabble: bored adolescents and petty nationalists. To this, the UK music industry responds with solemnity, as if witnessing the endurance of a Spartan phalanx. This is the same industry that once produced the Sex Pistols and the Smiths. Now it genuflects before the resilience of a manufactured pop group.
But why? Because resilience has become the empty virtue of a decadent age. We no longer celebrate talent, originality, or danger. We celebrate survival. It is the lowest common denominator of praise: you endured discomfort, therefore you are worthy. This is the logic of the patient, not the artist. We have replaced the Romantic agony with the therapeutic ordeal. A K-pop group that overcomes online abuse is no more remarkable than a boxer who endures a punch. It is the bare minimum of existence.
Compare this to the Victorian era, where resilience was a byword for moral and physical fortitude in the face of genuine hardship: empire, poverty, and disease. Today, resilience is a hashtag, a PR strategy. The UK music industry’s praise for Le Sserafim is not a celebration of artistic triumph. It is a marketing move, a nod to the global K-pop machine that now dictates the terms of pop success. The British establishment, once a gatekeeper of taste, now licks the boots of a Korean entertainment conglomerate. It is a symbol of cultural surrender.
Some will accuse me of elitism, of sneering at a young girl’s achievement. But that is the trap: to criticise the product is to be branded a troll. Yet the true trolls are those who mistake endurance for excellence. Le Sserafim’s music is forgettable. Their dance routines are impressive but mechanical. Their resilience is a corporate asset. And the UK music industry’s applause is the sound of a civilization washing its hands of a critic’s duty.
We live in an age where the great critic is extinct, replaced by the influencer and the brand manager. To praise resilience is to avoid the hard work of judgment. It is the intellectual cowardice of our time. The Fall of Rome did not come from barbarians at the gate. It came from within, from a culture that lost its ability to discern between the wheat and the chaff. Le Sserafim’s ‘resilience’ is the chaff. And the UK music industry is mistaking it for bread.
