This J-Pop Group Say They Were Doxxed. Did the Internet Go Too Far?

“1, 2, So sweet!” say the three girls dressed in green, pink, and red outfits, waving into the camera. “Hello, we are Sorb3t! We are an idol group based in California, and today we wanted to teach you our call and responses!”

The video, posted May 25, was most viewers’ first introduction to Sorb3t (pronounced sorbet), an indie idol group that styles themselves as J-Pop (Japanese pop) idols (entertainers or singers with stylized images). The three got together in January and have been documenting their journey on TikTok ever since, posting clips of viral dances, promoting their in-person performances, and encouraging people to help fund their first single and music video. 

According to the now-deleted video, the clip was meant to be an informative introduction ahead of their performance at a local cosplay convention, Anime Riverside. During the clip, all three members introduce their names, chosen emojis, and call and responses. Green member Alice, who is white, explains her call is “Lucky! Lucky! Alice!” Red member Ashe, who is Asian, details that hers incorporates several moves from the Chinese tile game Mahjong, and ends with the catchphrase “It’s my victory!”

The leader of the group, Berry, who is also white, steps up to the camera. “So I start off by saying, strawberry!” she says with a smile. “And then you repeat back, blueberry! And when I ask, who’s everybody’s sweet idol, you’re gonna say, Berry Chan!” When she says the words strawberry and blueberry, she pronounces them with a Japanese accent. 

@katszuzuxd

here is the og video since many wanted it #sorb3t #og #fyp♬ original sound – Katzuzu

While some initial comments simply called the group cringe, the next wave criticized Berry’s use of what they believed to be a forced attempt to sound Japanese. The group was accused by viewers of cultural appropriation and using Japanese pop stars’ aesthetics without appreciating the art form’s history. And it wasn’t just about Berry — Ashe said she had been inundated with questions about “what kind of Asian she was.”

By May 26, the video, which has now been deleted, had over 5.5 million views and thousands of comments on TikTok alone, which didn’t account for the thousands of additional comments on Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit. Twitch streamer Hasan Piker even featured an explainer during a recent stream. “Why is it that they had to be white?” he said, laughing at the call-and-response video. “I just genuinely don’t understand that.” After only five days, the group, which didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, put out a statement saying the backlash had caused them to be doxxed.

Everyone knows the internet moves fast. But as online discussions and videos escape their original contexts, backlash can mean more than just mocking — it can lead to legitimate and dangerous repercussions for people who might not deserve them. It begs the question, why are we treating cringe like a crime? 

There’s nothing new about American interest in J-pop groups. But, according to Stephanie Choi, a postdoctoral Associate at the Asia Research Institute at the State University of New York at Buffalo, there are major misunderstandings about the difference between K-pop and J-pop.

“J-pop has been popular in the U.S. as a youth subculture through American fantasization of Japan,” Choi says. “While K-pop became popular among Korean and Asian American communities first and eventually spread out as a mainstream genre in the U.S.”  So when videos, or in this case, Sorb3t as a group, are judged based on an understanding of K-pop, misunderstandings arise. While there aren’t many K-pop groups with American members,  Americans who participate in Japanese pop groups have their own name — kaigai, or overseas, idols — and have become much more widely accepted, even by Japanese audiences. 

In America, J-pop doesn’t just stand for a type of music but also represents a specific kind of white or Angelcized interest in Japanese pop culture. This can be as innocuous as a casual anime watcher or as dedicated as a person who genuinely goes all in on cultural appropriation. There’s even a derogatory term, weeb or weeaboo, for non-Japanese people so obsessed with the culture that they pretend to be Japanese, adopting bits of the language, accent, and caricature-like affectations of the culture, according to popular internet culture site KnowYourMeme.

This specific kind of cultural appropriation has gone mainstream several times, as evidenced by pop artist Gwen Stefani. During the singer’s debut in 2004, her album Love. Angel. Music. Baby., and its subsequent promotional materials, including music videos, tours, and merch, were criticized for their direct fetishization and appropriation of the Japanese Harajuku style — an accusation that continued in 2023 after Stefani claimed in an interview that her love of the culture made her Japanese. In a similar fashion, many of the original Sorb3t comments accused Berry of being a weeb and using J-pop as a cultural prop.

Following the backlash, Berry released an apology video, saying she had planned to release solo music “almost exclusively in Japanese” and pronounced the words as their katakana (the phonetic Japanese characters) would be read. “I genuinely and wholeheartedly apologize to every single person that I have upset or that I have offended with my call and response,” she said in a TikTok. “I truly did not have any ill intent, but I also understand that I have hurt a lot of people, and for that, I am sorry. Also, my boyfriend, who is Japanese, unintentionally came up with part of my call and response.” But adding that she had the best intentions, acknowledging her white privilege, and then immediately mentioning that she had a Japanese boyfriend didn’t cool the situation down any. 

On May 27, the girls announced they were doxxed. They told fans they would be taking a break from social media but hadn’t given up on their goal of performing as a group. “We are just three girls innocently chasing our dreams and did not want it to come to this,” Sorb3t said in a statement posted to their Instagram and TikTok accounts. “For our safety, we’ll need some time to heal, but we’ll see you again soon.”

The initial outrage over Sorb3t (and Berry’s acquired accent) stemmed from the accusation of cultural appropriation. But Choi, who has spent years studying pop idol and fandom culture in East Asia, adds that even with Sorb3t’s apology, understanding and identifying cultural appropriation requires much more nuance that people can grasp and give to such short videos. 

“Cultural appropriation is contextual and thus is very tricky to explain,” Choi says. “People often think that cultural appreciation is the antithesis of cultural appropriation, but in fact, they can occur simultaneously.”

Sorb3t unwittingly created the perfect storm: cringe content with a hint of cultural ickiness, which took them, the internet’s characters of the day, to a place that they said made their safety feel threatened. While each member of the group has said they are taking time off to recover from the intense public scrutiny, according to Sorb3t’s follow-up messages, the group has said they still plan to perform. And though the tide is turning, and their crowdfunding accounts are now inundated with donations and encouraging messages, their moment in the spotlight highlights just how rarely internet punishments fit the crime.

From Rolling Stone US.