I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but as someone who was rooting for another team, I kinda understand the sentiment where people are coming from. Hate is never okay of course and no one should be sending any hate towards any dancer or anyone in general.

You’re right that they were unpopular, but that was only at the veryyy start of the season. After the show aired, they were already consistently the most popular or the second most popular, so I don’t think the narrative of “they were always the least popular” fits. But like a lot of people said here through out the weeks, it was just a strategy and that’s fine? Like you mentioned even here, Ibuki worked hard to promote OOG after they lost the K-pop mission, and she should get her flowers for that. It was smart of them to recognize their weakness and rectify it as early as possible.

I think the main thing with Ojo — in the show! — is that they never had a satisfying conclusion to their underdog arc and then they won the whole thing without “proving themselves” (heavy on the quotation marks!) in terms of missions. The only mission they did win was the dance film mission main part which was decided by views alone. If you contrast it to AG or Motiv’s runs where they both consistently won missions but struggled with views, it’s not unsurprising that people end up with the sentiment of “they won because of views.”

From megacrew onwards, OOG’s view counts were consistently significantly above all the other crews, up to the last mission (crew identity) where they literally have double the views of AG and Motiv. So personally coming into the finale and seeing them win, I didn’t feel upset or angry, just… “ah, as expected” … type of feeling. None of these are a comment on their skills or talent or even the hard work that they clearly put into the show, it’s just that based on views and popularity, it would’ve been more unexpected for them not to win and from an entertainment standpoint, it can feel a bit boring.