I think Taerae’s drop of popularity is a culmination of a few things: 1. A lot of his BP fans were casual (like what you said), 2. He has a very flamboyant personality and is SO obviously queer that there is no plausible deniability so that killed a lot of delusions that his fans had once more of his personality came out, and while he didn’t change since BP, back then he didn’t have as much screentime to showcase himself so voters probably didn’t know about him like that unless they watched the YouTube videos most people didn’t engage with 3. Half of the time they style him it’s the same old boring things or they style him like a kindergartner and that can be off putting to fans or not interesting to new fans so even tho all the styling for all the members is pretty crap he has it the worst (alongside Matthew’s constant shorts or jorts 🤨). And 4. He can be unlikable (let me speak my truth 🗣). I get it because honestly I act like him a lot but he’s very particular and does make comments centering himself in variety (if you genuinely observe when they do variety shows, most of his reactions are him saying “I wouldn’t do that” “I can see that” “that was for me” or give reactions that take away attention from the other members. I don’t think it’s malicious, just him being himself, but it can be taken wrongly as being attention seeking). If you just observe his mannerisms outside of when he’s dancing for fun you’ll see what I mean. Plus he’s not really promoted much on top of all these things so it somewhat makes sense he’s lost momentum.