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

I’m a greedy little fucker when it comes to pop culture. Nothing gets me going quite like making a new discovery. It’s a thrill to deep-dive into fandom and learn a new secret language. I become an internet archeologist with real-time excavations done through Reddit and fan posts on Tumblr.

My girlfriend often tells me that the way I use a computer stresses her out. I always have a minimum of two windows open, one of them playing through YouTube videos while the other fills up with tab after tab of invariably useless information. But I didn’t become a walking encyclopedia by slacking, and I take my role as a purveyor of pop culture history quite seriously, thank you.

Which does nothing to help explain why I was initially resistant to get into the overwhelmingly popular worldwide phenomenon, k-pop band and cultural juggernaut: BTS.

It was always just a matter of time. I honestly have been kicking myself for not getting into them last summer when a possible obsession was practically handed to me on a plate. (The plate being texts of personally curated YouTube videos sent by the person whose pop-culture opinions I trust most in this world.) Seeing their dance practice videos should have absolutely worked on me. My biggest weakness is hard choreography executed flawlessly, and their dances contain some of the best and tightest formation changes I’ve ever seen. A thrill!

But it ended up starting exactly three weeks ago when I clicked on the Butter music video for the first time. The dancing in the elevator! The group scenes! Jimin’s pastel highlights! The outfits! I watched the behind-the-scenes for the music video and immediately wanted more, so I got straight into their past work. Oh, it turns out their discography is wildly varied? Oh, the rap line goes surprisingly hard? Oh, they write their own songs? Oh, oh, oh, you can track their evolution as artists and people over the course of a decade and witness them become best friends & brothers?

Fuck! Well, we’re in it now, aren’t we babes?

See it starts with learning one of their names. Then, suddenly, you know all of their names. Then you’re pausing dance practice videos and competing with your girlfriend over who can name them the fastest. (Then, a week later, you’re horrified you ever could have mixed up Jin and Jungkook even if they are both wearing bucket hats).

Then, what’s this? The variety show they’ve filmed for years? Hours upon hours of content when they play games, cook for each other, and get weirdly competitive? I’m sorry, you’re telling me there are travel specials? Yes, please, gimme gimme, I will absolutely be watching hours of compilations of which the only subject is them making fun of each other.

I knew things had escalated when I typed “Yoongi” into a search bar.

K-Pop is not a mysterious machine. The Idol System, for all its flaws, admits to exactly what it is. They don’t hide the intense pressure these trainees are under to make it to a group, let alone successfully debut. There are structures in place, lorded over by a few different production companies that invest millions into potential bands before the first song is even released. They recruit teenagers, put them up in dorms, and make them dance and sing for hours on end. There’s not a child labor law going unbroken it would seem, and yet, year after year, kids sign up to audition, hoping to be one of the lucky few selected.

Part of the charm of BTS is that they really were underdogs in the industry. Their production company, Big Hit, was in such dire financial straits during their trainee days that the seven of them lived in one bedroom and the company nearly folded. The same company recently debuted publicly on the market, each of the band members started with $10 million worth of stocks. As of the writing of this, that stock value has more than doubled in under a year.

Is it finally time for to talk financials?! I can’t really begin to describe the amount of money they bring in. Like, they currently contributes more to South Korea’s GDP than Korean Air. They’re responsible for 13% of overall tourism. The finale of their last world tour was a three-day concert series in Seoul. Over 157,000 people flew in for it, and the event brought in $862 million in revenue. In three days.

I have many many invasive questions to ask about how that type of money even gets handled. Where’s that money going—to whom, and who decides? Are the members paid for rehearsal times? Are they on salary for Run BTS? Do they have different percentages of the backend since some of them write and produce the majority of the songs on a given album? Who determines their budget for things like travel? (Because while they have upgraded to a private jet, their documentaries always show them in modest hotel rooms.) (It appears they rent out entire floors, which given their security detail, makes total sense.) How do you even begin to figure out budgets when it comes to their world tours? The firework budget must be astronomical!!

I’m always struck by just how many people are around them all the time. Are the members ever actually alone?  Based on how much footage has been put out, unlikely! We see them talk backstage, rehearse, eat, and do live streams. They’re on film all the time, and then, they react to those films for even more content. Because they understand what the people want to see!

Their engagement with their fandom is unparalleled. I really think we should be actively studying their fandom because we’re witnessing the development of a blueprint of what the future of fandom will become as we move beyond the initial stages of the globalization of pop culture. Their fans, (heretofore referred to by their given name, ARMY) are fucking wild. Something related to BTS trending worldwide on Twitter multiple times a day. They gained a lot of goodwill last summer after they used their collective organizing power to troll white nationalist hashtags and buy out Trump rallies to guarantee a majority of empty seats. They have also kept Butter on top of Billboards Hot 100 for the last four weeks via their sheer tenacity (and shared spreadsheets tracking the worldwide PayPal donations being used to mass purchase the song in America). They break YouTube & streaming records every single time these boys drop a new song or video. And guess what? At this point, all the records they break are the ones they previously set! The fandom just keeps growing because dumb dumbs like me finally get on board!

I would wager that between their music, game shows, and youtube clips they have created some of the most translated works of all time.

Plus, a new twist to their success is that they’re one of the first k-pop bands to seriously breakthrough in America. And wow does the Xenophobia really jump out anytime they’re interviewed here.

We also need to take a minute and talk about the marketing power they possess. Jungkook recently broke the internet by wearing short sleeves. I’m sorry, are we at the Moulin Rouge in 1890? He recently did a live broadcast that was watched, simultaneously, by 22 million people. (The power that has! The influence that has!) One time he accidentally sold out his favorite Kombucha—within a week of drinking it on camera, Kombucha sales had risen over 500%. The next time he went on v-live he was disappointed he couldn’t find his favorite flavor and gently scolded everyone for being “too fast”.

You could argue that this is just the newest form of Beatlemania, but I think it’s more than that. There’s something about these boys, and I really think a lot of their lasting popularity hinges on the vulnerability they have displayed over the years. This is a group of seemingly non-toxic men who are super talented and openly love and support each other. There’s nothing I love more than a good group dynamic, and they constantly push their brotherhood as the focus of their content. And why wouldn’t they! They’ve spent over a decade together and achieved a level of success that feels incomprehensible. Fame is one of the weirdest and most isolating experiences a person could possibly have—but they’re a group of seven going through it together. (Plus, they absolutely have deep trauma bonds from giving up their childhoods and sleeping in a mosquito-ridden room crammed full of bunk beds while the company they work for forcibly restricted their food intake.)

There’s just something so endearing about watching them sit on the ground together and react to their music videos. No budget or production value necessary, just them, bitingly teasing each other one minute before hyping the shit out of each other’s performances. Yes, they’ve been through a bunch of weirdly dark shit including death threats, breakdowns, and massive online hate campaigns, but you’d never know when you’re watching them bop around during a photoshoot.

It can’t be a fluke that so many people get sucked into this.

BTS has gotten so big that Kim Jung-Un has now spoken out against their influence in North Korea. Oh, that’s right, ARMY is literally the strongest army in the world. They have breached the DMZ.

We should be taking the power they hold seriously. We should be studying ARMY’s organizing efforts, because they might be the most effective grassroots campaigners in history. They raised over $1 million dollars in under 24 hours for Black Lives Matter last year in order to match the band’s donation. That’s shit political organizers dream of. How do seven boys inspire this much? Can it be explained or captured beyond the band itself? How and when can it fade? What will this level of organization morph, and what will be the thing that tops this fandom?

I have no answers!! So instead, I’ll leave you with the plea to, if nothing else, look up their airport fashion. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen menswear done so well. (Like, I didn’t even know Dior made men's saddlebags!)