I can make a long list of motherfckers who deserve to be ripped in pieces limb by limb... unfortunately there's way more awful "main leads" than there is good ones. But the reaction to characters like Soobin makes you realize people ARE in fact capable of telling right from wrong, they just pick and choose when to speak against it depending on how they feel about the character
It depends on the audience and which audience reaches the story first. If the ML was a red flag from the beginning, most people who see it and continue it will likely already be into red flags MLs. So there won’t be much hate. They have a tolerance for it. Stories like painter of the night, codename Anastasia, etc. Those readers are already used to it, so more bad behavior from the ML isn’t surprising.
On the other hand, if the ML doesn’t scream obvious red flag from the very beginning, people who only like green flags would end up following the story. Then get mad later on once the green flag does something wrong. Take Roses and champagne. Everyone LOVED the ML there and assumed he would be a green flag (even though dude is a gangster) just cause he hadn’t done anything to the mc yet. As soon as he did something wrong, the hate was huge. This wouldn’t be the case had it been a different audience and it was obvious from the start.
it's very interesting to me how much consistent hate Soobin is getting for what he did (justifiably so), but other motherfckers be doing way worse shit and I don't see this same energy just because they're the "main lead" and "hot" or whatever... Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Soobin by any means, and I could care less who mc ends up with because the story overall is very lackluster to me, but I feel like there's a double standard and ppl pick and choose when to hate a character, even if the actions/crimes are the same! ┑( ̄Д  ̄)┍