#108: Help help, I deeply love & respect all the BTS boys

Well hey hi hello smoke show-ers!

It! is! tiiiime! for my “holy shit I love BTS so much I want to still somehow two years into this whole thing still connect every conversation back to them but for whatever reason have decided to contain myself to just one essay per year” annual BTS essay!

I do want to get into the big ‘ol unfiltered rant of why I love this band and what got me into it and what I get out of being so openly into something, but first I want to talk about this comment left on NPR’s Instagram post talking about the BTS Anniversary Event, Festa, that was recently thrown in Seoul and attended by over 400,000 people.

“Wait until they hear the Beatles - they will drop this crap in a hot minute.”

My first instinct is to rant about the fact that like I literally love both of those bands?? Like Sargeant Pepper’s vinyl sits right next to the Love Yourself: Her record on my shelf, because they’re both in the boyband section. I watched the George Harrison documentary on HBO and then went directly to Disney+ to watch Suga’s right after. This isn’t an either/or situation, the line between The Beatles and BTS is drawn with a King Size Sharpie, chisel-tip fully flat for extra boldness. (And I would wager that they are both the blueprint builders of their era in terms of expanding how fans can interact with their music and the band.) (There is actually 0 difference between being a Paul Girl and having a Jimin Bias!)

(For the record mine are George/Suga.)

But also is this dude a Beatles stan who thinks that every person alive hasn’t listened to them because if they had they wouldn’t like any other band ever??

Like is every other band just a holding place in his mind until The Day someone discovers The Beatles?

But now that I’ve indulged in ranting about how this comment doesn’t even apply to me and every single comment ever anywhere on the internet should be 100% relatable to my experience all the time, I want to instead pivot to talking about how I’m no longer defending my interest in anything. Ever!

I don’t think women should anymore.

In general.

I’m just kind of tired of it.

It really hit me when I was watching the Bama Rush documentary that all of those girls felt like they had to defend the fact that they wanted to be in a sorority via talking about networking and philanthropy, and I was really struck by the fact that I’ve never seen an 18-year-old boy asked why he wants to be in a frat. And we, as a society, know what “being in a frat” is known to represent re: Rape Culture, so if that doesn’t raise any eyebrows, why are we so fucking judgmental of the girls who, at worst, want to “buy friends”?

Spoiler alert: it’s because we hate women.

There’s never any question of why Bruce Springsteen has high interest for his tour, or if McJagger should retire. But Madonna? Touring still? Who does she think she is?

Taylor Swift has an entire through line in her documentary about what it means to Age As A Popstar and the pressure she feels to reinvent herself over and over again. She was 30? When she filmed it??

I very much appreciate that both The Beatles were and BTS are markedly defensive of their fans. They even offer the same comparison to reporters asking about why the girls scream when they perform—it’s the same as a stadium of lads cheering when someone gets a goal.

And sure, that’s an apt metaphor. But it’s incomplete. Because we never fucking question why grown men lose their minds when other grown men throw and/or kick balls around. It’s just accepted.

Most “criticism” of “women’s interests” is just misogyny!

Which is why I’m done. I’m over feeling like I have to defend or explain myself.

I like [it], and I don’t really give a shit what other people’s judgments are for my tastes and interests because I know I’m not harming anyone and the rest is just sexist noise and I’m just so done.

Kotaku put out an article recently titled: Data Shows Most Switch Owners Are Women, Gamers React Poorly.

So, they identified that the majority of Nintendo Switch consoles are owned by women in the first half of the headline, and then used the seemingly non-gendered word “gamers” to describe the men who were… threatened by the fact that women enjoy games? Why would “Gamers” react poorly, hmmmm?

I’m just so tired! Were like six years post-Gamergate and this is where we’re at? It’s 2023 how do I keep having to explain that the majority of gamers have ALWAYS been women because of how many moms in the 90s started playing bejeweled and got addicted? My sister used to set a four hour timer when she played The Sims in 2001 on her iBook because she was never aware of how much time had passed while playing that game.

“That’s not a real game, it doesn’t have violence." Like, do people hear themselves?? I feel so sad that they’ve trapped themselves inside this very stupid and narrow definition of what qualifies “as a game” when it’s one of the most expansive storytelling mediums humans have ever had access to but like, I’m not interested in having this conversation anymore and I need everyone to get on board! It’s fine and it’s stupid this is a bunch of the most poorly composed Stawmans I’ve ever seen and I’m no longer going to pretend like this isn’t ridiculous!

If Funko Pops are perfectly acceptable collector’s items, so are K-Pop photo cards. It’s really that simple.

Everyone’s got their shit.

“Let people like things” is one of the most eye-rolly platitudes because of the situations it’s so often weaponized in but like, it really is endlessly possible to come up with apt comparisons of hobbies and who we “allow” to like things uncritically. Because it’s just misogyny on display to criticize the things that society has deemed “girlie” & I actually think we’re in the era of Girliepops Taking Their Power Back.

We are the granddaughters of the witches you allowed to open bank accounts babeeeeyyyy!!! We make our own money now and we have jobs and we seem to be managing it all just fine and I am no longer dating out of fear of being alone uh oh gotta bring something to the table other than passive male attention/validation because I actually don’t need those things or part of a paycheck!!

(Sure men literally invented scheduled breaks and stopped allowing fun at the office when women joined the workforce—because they would rather make everyone miserable than allow women to enjoy things—but women can’t be stopped and we just kept climbing that ladder and now we’re fighting a new battle of realizing that actually maybe the institutions are bad regardless of who’s in charge but hey at least studies are rollin’ on out showing how much happier single Mom’s are post-divorce!!)

I’m just done with thinking of myself or my interests as inferior because it just keeps being revealed to me over and over again that it’s another form and system of control. I think about how much time I would have on my hands if 45% of my brain energy wasn’t spent overcoming patriarchal standards that I was trained to reinforce on myself.

It’s exhausting and I’m done. I’m done! I’m done.

I love myself too much to do it anymore. I will not put myself on trial or entertain “debates” about the ways I spend the most precious & unrenewable resource: time.

If someone doesn’t think that I am aware of the criticisms around the things I love/engage with then they clearly don’t know me and why would I entertain their baseless opinion??

I love myself, I love my life, and I’m so fucking grateful that’s true because it wasn’t until like two years ago, so I’m just not willing to accept criticism of it or myself anymore!

Coincidentally, learning to like myself coincides with my discovery of this group of musicians in Korea who were really charming and wonderful and their unabashed enthusiasm and joy and hope helped me understand myself and my pain and my ability to overcome whatever challenges I was facing and the anniversary essay starts NOW!

I got into BTS two years ago during their Butter era. I watched the music video and then randomly caught the beginning of the podcast Bye Pumkin where the host talked about her interest in k-pop and the “stages” and how she liked Jimin’s hair in the video—and I had really liked Jimin’s hair in the video, so I kept listening, and I thought her observations were really funny and charming and it made me want to learn their names so I could match the story to the person.

And I gotta say, once I learned the names? It was so over.

A friend had tried to get me into them months before—but the cosmic timing just hadn’t been quite right.

There’s this truly lovely sentiment in the fandom that you “find BTS when you most need them” and I would just like to add my name to the running list of people that’s true for.

I don’t think I was consciously aware of just how quickly my life was falling apart at that time (all would become clear like three/four months later in the wake of my breakup) but having something that occupied such a wild percentage of my waking thoughts was the best escape I could have asked for.

As stated in my first ever “idk what this is but I think I’m really into it” essay about them, I am a greedy little fucker when it comes to pop culture.

And BTS provides.

(One thing, right up top because it’s a common misconception that I want to clarify: BTS are not teenagers. The youngest is 25 and the oldest is 30. They aren’t sold as “family-friendly”, and they’re often drinking/drunk on their shows with no qualms which always surprises people when I mention it? Suga literally has an interview show where the guests bring alcohol to drink throughout. Korea’s drinking culture is up there in terms of consumption per capita! Anyway, I know I’m going to probably call them “the boys” at some point but they are very much grown men and not teenagers. Though Jungkook was in middle school when they debuted and if I start getting into the ethics of debuting minors in K-Pop we will literally be here all day! They’ve been a band for 10 years now, and, like all of us, are affected by time passing and getting older!)

The music is great & varied! The music videos are high-budget! There are dance-focused choreography videos and fan cams and experts weighing in on different members’ abilities and history of the band and the entire structure of K-Pop (once you start learning the production company names and “The Big Three” lore it’s like several separate rabbit holes that just have so much corporate intrigue and commodification of artists all wrapped up in possible government negligence it’s bonkers!) and the members are really funny and talented, and their public personas are all pretty introspective and kind, so it felt like I was watching and listening to something I had never seen before.

The members aren’t in competition with each other, because I think they’re all extremely self-aware of what they bring to the table. Also, I don’t know that any of them see being The Most Famous as the goal anymore? Like, there are quantifiable sales numbers of merch with all of their faces, I’m sure they are more aware than any artist in history of just how much “appeal” in terms of marketability they possess. But what’s very fun about the fact that there are seven of them is that every single fan can/does latch on to different members at different times.

Officially in K-Pop terms, your favorite member of a band is your “bias”. It’s the ~correct way to say “favorite”, and I appreciate the specificity of language that it truly is a non-tangible unfounded bias. And then there are “Bias Wreckers” who pop up and surprise you with how much you like them, and when you collect enough biases you can create a fun “bias line” and “lines” are just a way of subgrouping the members so like in BTS there are three members with the family name Kim so there’s a “Kim Line” and the “‘95 Line” made up of the two members born in 1995. Age is really hardline in Korean culture because of the use of honorifics so there’s also a ton I’ve learned about the formal elements of hierarchy and that’s what makes it so interesting that RM isn’t the oldest member but is the official Leader of the group and the way that Jin & Suga navigated that being the case—even though both fully admit to never wanting that role because of the stress!

Though actually, Korea’s current (terrible) president is getting rid of their age system! Literally just happened on Wednesday—one of the many random political things I now know about South Korea because oooh BTS is a very Korean band who often reference their own culture and I am me so I love political/historical context for things so now I know (too much) about the school system/calendar, the Seoul ferry disaster that led to the ousting of the president who was technically caught/ousted due to accepting bribes from the Samsung family, the general structure of culture re: upward mobility, the ongoing resistance to women’s rights & feminism leading down the “Hell Joseon/Hell Korea” information spiral.

Like RM got backlash for becoming…less misogynistic. One of the band’s earliest “scandals” was the lyrics for their song War Of Hormone (and, tbh, I think it’s a bit overblown how scandalous the lyrics actually are) so RM took it upon himself to learn about feminist theory and then he started submitting his lyrics to feminist scholars.

(But Korea is an increasingly misogynistic place. To the point that one of the K-Pop Idols, Irene from Red Velvet, told fans at a meet & greet in 2018 that the last book she had read was a famous book about feminism and fans got so upset that they burned her pictures. RM read the same book in 2017 and was praised for it btw. He’s even quoted in the forward of the English translation that came out in 2020. Ah! Double standards! But also the clear benefit of having a majority of your fans be women/girls instead of dudes and I’m so sorry to Irene that she went through that, the shit women in k-pop go through is immensely upsetting and honestly not talked about enough!)

But I do think that was a major turning point for the band was their readiness to actually learn and grow. As their fanbase has become global, they’ve had to adjust their behaviors. For the better! There’s a lot to criticize about the racism/colorism/fatphobia/compulsive cosmetic surgery parts of Korean culture, but it’s not like the band is responsible for the fact that (most) of those issues were created or exacerbated by the Korean War. A war I know so much more about now and a few weeks ago RM was named the Public Relations ambassador for the Ministry of Defense’s Remains Investigation Team, a group dedicated to identifying the remains of Korean soldiers and reuniting them with their families for proper burial.

Like I am very much against elective cosmetic surgery so finding out that 1/3 people in Korea undergo double-eyelid surgery was wild. But more wild was finding out that the surgery was invented by an American doctor who was using Korean women as test subjects to develop the technique because he wanted them to be “more appealing” to the American GI’s. Like, excuse me while I go throw up! What!!!

People in the West just don't get it. Korea is a country that has been invaded, devastated, torn in two. Just seventy years ago there was nothing. We were getting help from the IMF and the UN. But now, the whole world is looking at Korea. How is that possible, how did that happen? Because people are working fucking hard to improve themselves. You are in France or the UK, countries that have been colonizing others for centuries, and you come to me with ‘oh God, you put so much pressure on yourselves, life in Korea is so stressful!’. Well, yes. That's how you get things done. And it's part of what makes K-pop so appealing. Although of course there are shadows, everything that happens too fast and too intensely has side effects.

RM in El País

K-Pop has been somewhat conspiratorially floated as Korea’s attempt at using “soft power” for ongoing cultural significance and relevance. And while part of me thinks that’s kind of bullshit, the other part of me is very aware that my most-ordered restaurant on Seamless is Bulap Grill which has really good wings/bulgogi/japchae. And it’s not like I hadn’t enjoyed Korean BBQ before, but my cravings for it certainly skyrocketed whenever I watched Run BTS episodes. Idk I think if this was some Mass Conspiracy, they would have granted the boys deferment from their military conscription (just like they do with olympians) and kept that gravy train rolling at the highest speeds.

About two days after I published last years diatribe, the band dropped their annual Festa Dinner video and revealed they were going on hiatus. There was major fallout in the media and stock market (because they affect the literal GDP of Korea which is still hilarious!) because of breathless reporting that they were disbanding. When, in reality, Jin was at the end of his extension on compulsive military service and there were official solo endeavors that the others wanted to embark on for a little while.

(It has since been revealed that they were all going to go to the military at the same time after their tour in 2020 but with Covid happening and their English single Dynamite being a massive hit they hard pivoted. Which like—pure fan speculation incoming—I’ll be honest I don’t think they were huge fans of their English songs era, they’ve been pretty openly eye-rolly about the whole thing, but hey, it’s when I found them so who am I to scoff at this plan that clearly made them so much fucking money and got a bunch of Grammy noms? It is notable that they were the first k-pop band to really “breakthrough” in the west and it’s interesting how they got there mostly via fan support because it further drives that bond.)

So now the band is doing solo endeavors and 2/7 are currently serving in the military, but they also just dropped a new song to commemorate their anniversary. A song that is written in mostly seventh chords and is impossible to sing alone due to the constant overlapping harmonies because they’re just as sentimental about Being Seven as ARMY is about holding all seven of them in their hearts collectively. It’s like yeah the fandom gets real cheesy sometimes, but hey, so do the members.

There are many things that I’ve really come to cement my understanding in via BTS. Like the fact that first impressions really can be changed, you as a person can radically grow in short periods of time, great art isn’t always rewarded or recognized in the moment but it’s always worth making, and group dynamics have to be attended to like a little garden.

The change of perspective that they went through around the bands “image” and like who they tried to make Jimin into during debut with his 6-pack and emphasis on maintaining like a “manly” attitude and it’s like, Jimin?? Jimin was the choice? Talk about a miscast! And he’s spoken about it whenever they have to watch old videos of themselves because it was such a departure from his actual self, but also he was 18 when they debuted and was trying really hard to make it work because he only got 6 months of training compared to the rest of the band having years. And having to find yourself amid celebrity and company projections and cultural expectations must have been really hard but he seems to have reached a place of comfort now and ugh I have to stop talking about Jimin’s past because it does actually make me want to cryyyy he’s really been Through It and emerged soft and caring and sweet still and just like, please go watch him do modern dance because he’s very good at it and he’s one of my favorite dancers to watch. Like Crazy is a great club song and I really like the choreo and it’s bonkers that he got #1 on Billboard Hot 100 so they immediately changed the criteria the following week! (They literally just changed the rules about digital singles on company platforms this morning June 30th once again—seemingly in response to Jungkook’s single announcement and subsequent sell-out of CDs on Weverse. Like, ARMY works hard but [Billboard] works harder!)

(It’s truly absurd to witness because it sounds conspiratorial on the fandom’s behalf but it really is just Billboard allowing this vendetta they have against the band to make the charts look stupid and like, I hate to say it, rigged. It’s been happening for a while, but things really ramped up after Billboard put out special edition 8 different covers of BTS magazines two years ago, only to be wildly insulting and racist in the article, leading to mass-cancellation of pre-orders by fans. Like Billboard got stuck with an unfathomable amount of magazines after that and I imagine it’s remained a sore spot! But also the arbitrary rule changes just demonstrate that the industry is resistant to anything actually driven by the fans!! You’d think they’d be thrilled but whoops! It’s all corrupt!)

And there are also so many new albums from the members individually, more appearances on TV, Yoongi’s out here doing an entire tour by himself and by a miracle of miracles I was able to get a ticket to the concert in New York two days before the show.

It was incredible, it was the best energy I’ve ever been surrounded by at a show (once we got into the venue because I have to say that the line was not a super fun experience mostly due to the lack of information given by the staff but also because the girls behind me wouldn’t quit loudly jonesing for a hot chocolate and was getting deeply annoying about people “cutting” in front of a line that ultimately led to nowhere because the venue was doing a piss poor job safety/line management wise so I’m honestly just glad that nothing happened and everyone was polite for the most part. Yes, I did spend 10 minutes writing my review when the arena asked for it in a survey because I am extremely deft at providing customer service feedback without demonizing the workers and instead pointing out the major flaws in the system set forth by management!) and he was such an incredible performer and I was in the third balcony but there were no bad seats in that house and I had a great time!

Due to line issues I never made it to the merch tent and the girl who sat next to me profusely apologized for not having a spare ARMY bomb to gift me, which was one of the sweetest interactions I’ve ever had. She had flown in by herself from Texas and kept referring to Yoongi as her boyfriend. The girl on my other side had taken a bus down from New Hampshire and stayed remarkably quiet until the music started, at which point we all collectively lost our fucking minds because we were the first night of the tour and no one had any idea what to expect.

But it was great, the setlist was excellent, the stage design was remarkable—it was split into factions, and as the show went on parts of the stage lifted to reveal minisets beneath the stage. A table and chair with whiskey already perched on it (they were giving out Hennessey at the shows for free) so he could come down and play an acoustic version of one of my absolute favorite songs on a guitar signed by all the members, a piano for his rendition of Life Goes On.

As the stage melted away, he came closer to the fans, but ultimately the stage became a single island.

He was also carried on by dancers and power-walked off when finished, which based on what he’s said about feeling at peace and how this album and these songs helped him feel like he was finally ready to move on from the things that had weighed on him for years, it made me crrryyyy.

The most potent experience was when he had the audience chant along between songs to part of Cypher 4’s lyrics and idk being in a room full of women screaming at the top of their lungs

I love, I love, I love myself.

I know, I know, I know myself.

will remain a very treasured experience for me!

(Honestly all of them make me feel weepy if I get into it for too long but Suga and Jimin make my heart squeeeeze when they talk about what they’ve gone through and how it’s affected them. Yoongi in particular speaks about recovery from depression and letting go of the past and what it feels like to round the sharp edges in ways that have helped me frame and understand my own recovery these past few years.)

It was an extremely high-energy show but also felt jarringly personal. There was an overwhelming sense that everyone “got it” in that room. We didn’t need to explain ourselves or our feelings. He knew we knew every word of every song, and I think the enduring nature of the ~connection~ that is mostly parasocial is the very serious acknowledgment by the members of how appreciative they are of the fans commitment. There’s a sincerity to the relationship that I feel parasocial cheapens in some way—I don’t think I’m their friend, I know I’m a fan. But I think the members and the content they provide shows that they deep respect for that fact and want to cultivate a fan-artist relationship.

And I think BTS find ARMY funny in a way that I think is lovely and charming.

This Suga | Agust D tour (his real name is Yoongi, his stage name in BTS is Suga, and his solo project’s were released under Agust D) tour has been absolutely proof-positive of that.

He realized that the fans were making compilations of his after-concert pictures and started doing the same faces in each, his band made Yoongi Marry Me jokes, he extended the intro to his solo version of the BTS song Life Goes On when fans started doing the full fan-chant during the intro.

Every night he came down to select fans’ phones to record himself while performing, leading to him loudly proclaiming “No iPhones, this is Galaxy.” because he’s a Samsung brand ambassador through and through babbeeey.

Did some people go out and get Samsung’s for the express reason of hoping to be selected? Yes, yes they did. (The BTS bump is real. Jin became a Ramen ambassador for the aptly named Jin Ramen and within one quarter they reached their highest profits ever and became a Trillion Won Company.)

Ultimately, this led to a fan bringing a 90s Samsung flip phone because she just wanted to make him laugh. And it did! He got a good ha, and it was all really lovely and wonderful because the fans really do have a lot of respect but also love and there’s something fun about the playfulness that can occur within that space.

@ishamarianoWHO GAVE YOONGI A SAMSUNG FLIP PHONE HAHAHJSKSKS #agustd #suga #samsung

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Also, in Japan, they’re famously strict about recording any video during a concert which led to a fan making a “No iPhone, no Samsung, ONLY EYEBALLS” sign which has made me laugh and laugh. I don’t know I think it’s very fun to have inside jokes across multiple countries, continents, and languages. I think that’s incredible. I think what it demonstrates about the connective power of art is so lovely I don’t really have words for it.

I was about to say it’s rare for me to have such a long-running love affair with just one band, but it’s more than that—nothing has ever grabbed my attention (or gotten so much of my money) for such an unbroken period like this before.

Avoiding parasocial relationships is somewhat of a specialty of mine. So often when it comes to media, my favorite position is up in the bird’s nest surveying the interactions of art and commerce and means of consumption. I’m not nearly as interested in what people consume more than I am how they consume it.

(Not in a show me your setup bro type of way but in a are you going online and piecing together timelines so you can figure out what Radar Online article the Beverly Hills housewives are fighting about this season and also reading theories from other fans on what really happened to Lucy Lucy Apple Juicy kind of way. I love pieced-together timelines presented on google slides! I love reading other people’s theories about who leaked what and if a scene was reshot. Did you know that one time The Bachelor subreddit figured out where the final proposal location was because of a flower they spotted in the corner of the frame? My favorite kind of investigatory work I love when people use their niche skills for mundane tasks!!)

With BTS, my how varied because I couldn’t do two things at once. If I was watching a YouTube video, it had my full attention, because I had to read the subtitles. And they were kind of pioneers in how they used social media to communicate and grow their fanbase. Sure, part of it was certainly modeled on Beiber’s use of Twitter, but their expansion into becoming YouTube vloggers offered insights into the industry and more importantly, their personalities.

They used their own music as background, but they also used to capture casual moments and sing-a-longs by the boys which further cemented the “they really love music” angle that was heavily pushed in the early days. And the thing is, I believe them! I think it’s very funny that Yoongi was basically tricked into becoming an idol because he thought he was signing up for a rap group and then overtime it kept morphing and then they moved a 13-year-old into the dorm and reconstructed the entire basis of the band around that kid’s voice and forced the other boys to basically become his caretakers and now he’s the ultimate irritating-but-loveable-unstoppable-talent that can only come from intense bonding during formative years.

Look I’m so sorry but the contrast between Jungkook Entering High School vs Jungkook Graduating is some of my favorite shit!!! Look at how much the band grew in terms of popularity, look at how their relationships have/haven’t changed in that time, look at all of their emotional intelligence on display and rites of passage being allowed I just !!!!

I honestly don’t think they would have put half the shit out there that they did if they had any inclination of just how big the band would be. The level of scrutiny that would occur for every single frame they offered.

But that’s kind of the magic—they had no idea. There was no way to know. No one had ever done what they did before on a global scale like this before!

Probably the most uhhh controversial part of BTS is ARMY.

One of my first summations of how ARMY behaves remains steadfast. The general consensus of the fandom tends to be: don’t you dare embarrass us in front of the boys.

The list of rules this generates feels tremendous in some ways, but ultimately boils down to a mass attempt to keep a clear fan/artist boundary.

Don’t show up where the fans aren’t wanted. Stick to “official schedules” and don’t look up the leaked private schedules posted by sasaengs. Definitely don’t go to the airport ever, but also don’t pay for photos of them, shame the idea of going (and point out that those who go clearly don’t value BTS’s safety, privacy, or requests). Don’t engage with fan sites, don’t buy knock-off merch, and don’t get baited into supporting YouTubers who are using the fandom for Adsense dollars but mock the band/fandom on their discords.

Like it feels like A Bit Much at times but it’s really driven this idea that the Right Way to be a fan is to be respectful of their humanity. And I really don’t find much fault in that!

Most of it I think is generally good and healthy because there are always going to be people who go but the majority of the fandom being very fucking serious about not showing up at Jin’s military enlistment was the reason that there were only like 3 fans there and the media was shocked that the majority had honored Jin’s request to stay home.

Sometimes I think the fandom can get a little fun-suckery because everyone’s pretending to be cool and I’m really trying to rid myself of that metric, so seeing it pop up re: policing people showing up to the Suga | Agust D tour wearing veils because “Yoongi marry me” is a fandom joke that people are tired of (only for his guitarist to make that exact joke to Yoongi’s leg kicking delight)! Like it’s fine to think it’s overdone or whatever but the lengthy essays about how it might make a 30-year-old “uncomfortable to be sexualized” makes me roll my eyes alarmingly hard. Marriage proposals aren’t even “sexualizing” like we need to learn what words are again, I think! At worst, it’s a joke that’s no longer funny. Jokes get run into the ground quick in fandom, just like everywhere else!

I think the internationalism of their popularity is fascinating because it means that translators play an extremely important role.

It wasn’t common for bands to have to hire translators for their YouTube videos, and for years all of the vlogs (called Bangtan Bombs) were fan-captioned. And the captions were actually often better than the “official” ones by the company because those girls wanted to make sure you understood the dad joke that Jin just told lest you not understand why everyone thinks he’s so funny. So there would be the translation and the bottom and then cultural context at the top and that’s my kind of nerd shit PLEASE tell me all about how the word “cow” is pronounced similar to “Seoul” in Korean and that’s why the cow-scholar-moving-to-Seoul joke makes sense!!

And translators are a big backbone because they live-tweet translations during members’ live streams. It’s bonkers to watch them work. And recently, a bunch of them made very sweet simple already-translated chat comments because there were mass fandom complaints about the uptick in people commenting “speak English”.

(Honestly a great example of fandom coppery happened recently in response to a comment RM made during a live where the comment section was filled with spam and requests for him to speak English or to talk about other members and he simply said, “Wow, you guys changed.” and it has caused ummmm fallout in the fandom because people who were here longer are blaming the shift on the newbies and not having the fandom contained to one platform (Twitter) that the band actually was responsive on has made enforcing fandom norms tough! The politique is one of the biggest draws I don’t think humans so often nakedly display this level of behavior or explanations behind setting norms!)

“Believe BTS” is a big refrain because there are so many voices in the online fandom sphere (each its own faction with its own rules and norms) and ultimately the fandom has decided to believe and trust that the members have told us what we need to know, and everything else is speculation.

Because the factions of people who are fans of just one member (referred to as Solo’s) and the people who are just there because they think two of the members are dating (Shippers) and people who just straight up dedicate their online lives to talking shit about them (Mantis) are wild! Like I can’t even get into how much collective time is being spent spreading the nastiest rumors I’ve ever seen in my life over things like Spotify accolades. And they engage with some of the most batshit behaviors I’ve ever seen on the internet! They bait each other, they wish sexual assault on members of the band, they make compilations of the members “hating” their favorite and framing playful disagreements as full-out dramatic bullying episodes but they want their fave to just break free of this band and I just have to wonder how they wrap their heads around that when literally all BTS talks about his how much they love and respect each other. They all got matching tattoos last year! It just seems miserable.

And I want to be dismissive of it, but I think there’s real harm being done. Not to the members who will literally never see the vile shit being written, but to the people who have their adrenaline PUMPING through their veins as they get angry or frustrated or incensed by what they’re reading. They’re actually upset and they're having physiological responses. Say whatever you want about the things they’re getting upset about, it doesn’t change the impact of the reaction.

The band turned ten this year.

I was not around for the beginning, or for the boom. I’m a pretty late addition. But I am a little too hardcore about learning everything there is to know about the things I’m into (sidenote: cannot believe that Lance Armstrong and Orcas are both in the news cycle right now are we finally ready to talk about the overall influence of the doping scandal//the slow shutdown of Seaworld since Blackfish?? Everyone who wants to know more about Orcas should read this book btw!) so I do feel like I watched the band grow via the content, which I did go back through in basically chronological order like a little culture gremlin while also searching up things that were happening online because some of the most thorough Timeline Maps I’ve ever seen have been made by ARMY.

Like a girl made an entire documentary series about their history and including cut bits and bonus content it takes like two full weeks to watch.

Wild. Wild!

But there’s something there with the band that’s driving it, and it’s also at the heart of every “Who is the next BTS?” question that gets asked.

There is no next BTS because the conditions they came up in won’t really happen again. The way that they’ve changed the landscape in K-Pop can’t be undone.

There was no The Beatles 2.0, but there is a lineage they directly inspired. I think the influence of both bands in their respective mediums runs incredibly parallel.

And the sound, btw, from the beginning, was good. Beyond solid. The rap line is so incredibly talented and that has remained true throughout. Some of my all-time favorite songs are from their first two albums!

Because Suga and RM were very much into performing before getting into the band, they pushed for the other members to be involved in the creative process. Not even in an “every artist should write their own music or it’s invalid” way but in a “caring about the art and process of making music makes you a better artist overall” way.

Suga pushed for live shows, and Jin recently talked about how he was also the one who demanded all the members sing live. And with the level of choreography they were doing, it still blows my mind that it is at all physically possible. And the live shows were great because they learned how to fill the stage, and there’s seven of them doing really cool intense choreo the whole time, and they joke around with each other and the audience and they naturally evolved into extremely charismatic performers who toured the world for like years straight.

The fandom grew pretty naturally alongside them, because beyond all the extra “content” the music is good. Every song isn’t everyone’s favorite, but it has not been hard to get people to like them—especially if they don’t know who they’re listening to.

That’s what the answer is to all of the breathless questions about why this band, why now, why all over the world?

The sincerity! It’s the sincerity.

So, thank you BTS for being uhhh a light in the dark at times! Have I linked far too many conversations back to the band in the last two years of my life? Yes, yeah, mmhmm, and I honestly don’t really see that fully stopping anytime soon so thanks to everyone bearing with!

The intersection of my analysis brain mixed with actually Being A Fan of something this hard has been brutal—in a positive way. There’s just so much there there. I feel like I barely scratched the surface but I do have to put an arbitrary end to this because apparently saving it all up for one post is not a great idea I’ve got a lot more to say about the Machine of K-Pop and the appeal and the erosion of boundaries and like I didn’t even get into how Jungkook is so good at parasocial interaction via lives. He’s just actually very casual about “wanting to hang out with ARMY” because he misses us? Okay!?! Yesterday his first solo single got announced and his response was to get on live and…work out in his home. Also, he has the most 25-year-old home I’ve ever seen, Millionaires—they’re just like us!

Okay, if you made it this far um, thank you!! If you want to get into them and don’t know where to start, let me know. If you’re into them and want to chat about them, truly always happy to! The entire ethos of the fandom is reverse gatekeeping, it’s one of my favorite things about it tbh!

Anyway!

Peace, love, and apobangpo!

From the BTS-specific vault:

Two Years Ago - #8 - Help help, I learned the names of the BTS boys

Two Years Ago - #11 - Corporate Collaborations are Peak Capitalism

Last Year - #47 - My Year With BTS

Last Year - #67 - Separating the Artist from their Fandom