Rabiya: “Walang artista-artista sa paghahanap”
Sparkle artist Rabiya Mateo dispelled the ongoing rumor that she and boyfriend Jeric Gonzales had asked for free entrance to South Korean star IU’s H.E.R.E.H. concert in Bulacan.
The K-Pop singer-actress brought her world tour to the Philippine Arena on June 1, 2024, which was attended by thousands of fans including celebrities.
Rabiya and Jeric were among the many local showbiz personalities present, but their concert experience was tainted by controversy after a fan account on Facebook hinted through a blind item that a beauty queen and her showbiz boyfriend were inside the venue without any ticket.
While the post did not mention names, it directly pointed to Jeric after the account uploaded a screenshot of Jeric’s Instagram story during the event. It comes with a caption, “Ang taray ng IG story ni Koya [teary-eyed emoji] nakaupo rin pala sila finally [laughing emoji].
With insinuations made against Rabiya and her boyfriend, the beauty queen was then prompted to release a statement over the issue on June 3, 2024.
Her post reads, “We wanna clarify that the rumors circulating are not true. We bought the tickets for 12,000PHP each. Just like the rest of them, we worked very hard to afford the tickets and never demanded for any VIP treatment. But we would like to commend the ushers for helping us find our seats.”
Rabiya’s post was attached to the fan account’s official statement of apology for Rabiya and Jeric, which was published at a time when the rumors got beyond control.
The statement reads, “To Ms Rabiya and Jeric, I want to sincerely thank you for clearing out your side on the incident during IU’s concert.
“I deeply apologize for all the damage this may have caused you. As per your clarifications, you personally bought the tickets and didn’t demand them for free. It also came to our knowledge that many other fans had the same experiences of having a duplicate ticket/seats.
“My mistake was posting it on this page without doing any FACT CHECK after hearing everything from the Usher/Staff. I acted on impulse and didn’t mean any harm to the said couple. I posted it as an awareness to my fellow kpop fans who fought hard and worked hard to buy the tickets.
“HMA is committed to making memes and edits for the kpop community. We will continue to improve our posts for our community.
“Again, we sincerely apologize for our mistake. We hope this will help clear out the names of the said couple. Also we want to ask the public for a favor to refrain from throwing hateful/negative comments at both Rabiya and Jeric.”
What happened to Rabiya Mateo and Jeric Gonzales at the concert?
Now that Rabiya and Jeric’s names were cleared from the tittle-tattle—with the admin of the page reaching out to the couple in private—the beauty queen has then finally elaborated what went down during IU’s concert.
According to Rabiya, celebrities are not spared from the daunting duty of finding tickets—more so, if one got scammed.
In the succeeding story, she writes, “We’ve been scammed the first time we tried to buy these tickets. Just like the rest of you, we had a hard time looking for available tickets. Contrary to what most of you think, walang artista-artista sa paghahanap.”
In the next post, Rabiya made a point to talk about the hasty assumptions that people tend to exercise without fact-checking.
She writes, “While others are so quick to have assumptions without getting their facts right shows how people believe what they see online. Not everything you read is true. Not everything you see is real. Not everything you hear should be posted online at the expense of other people.
“However, we have laws to protect the innocent and punish those who are guilty. P.S. People saw us pano kami luminya kay Lee Min Ho, Coldplay, at Ed Sheeran. Never kami nagpa-VIP2 sa mga concert.”
READ ALSO: Rabiya Mateo Wants To Open Her Own Funeral Parlor In The Future
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