BTS and K-Pop fans strike a blow to support #BlackLivesMatter (R. O. Kwon, Vanity Fair, 6 June 2020, crossposted 7 June 2020; see also “Deconstructing K-pop fans“, Billboard, 16 March 2020; “Global production, circulation, and consumption of Gangnam Style“, IJOC, 2014)
I’m troubled, though, by some of the ways people seem to view activist K-pop fans—as an invading monolith, an alien body. “I’m a little saddened that we’re seen as an outside force in all of this when in reality we have been deeply involved since the beginning by sharing petition links, donating, and spreading useful information,” says @7soulsmap. “It’s less about K-pop and more about us already being a well-networked community on social media.” In addition, as is often pointed out, many K-pop fans are Black, and it’s simplistic—and racist—to imagine that the two groups are mutually exclusive.
The BTS Army and the transformative power of fandom as activism (Emma Madden, The Ringer, 11 June 2020, crossposted 12 June 2020)
Traditionally, the purpose of activism has been to challenge systemic hegemonies and corporate structures; from its beginnings, fan activism has functioned similarly—even if for nonpolitical ends. […] Then, when the internet arrived, “fans were early to embrace networked communication because they were in effect already a virtual community of people brought together around common interests without regard to geographic location,” writes Jenkins. […]
Buttressed by the advances of fandom within the past few decades—diversity, empowerment, cocreation, and participation—the BTS Army is made up of lawyers, scholars, academic tutors, graphic designers, authors, artists, marketing professionals, and very online teenagers, all of whom contribute to the overall organizational structure of the Army. As a result, they’re on equal footing with, or perhaps even surpass, BTS themselves, in terms of drawing light on charity causes […].
Surprised at seeing K-pop fans stand up for Black Lives Matter? You shouldn’t be. (Yim Hyun-su, The Washington Post, 12 June 2020)
So why did many of us not see this side of the K-pop fandom? For one, while the gamer and streamer communities have been taken a lot more seriously by the media, efforts to study the K-pop community have been scarce.
And as many female fans and beat reporters have pointed out, we must also address the elephant in the room — sexism. It’s what has demonized the word “fangirl” and other things women are passionate about, leading to bizarre stereotypes of who K-pop fans are.
TikTok teens and K-pop stans say they sank Trump rally (Taylor Lorenz, The New York Times, 21 June 2020)
RT @m_older Hi @nytimes, are you sure “prank” is the word you were looking for here? (21 June 2020)
RT @ngleicher 1/ There’s been an important debate today about an online campaign to inflate ticket sales at the Tulsa rally, and whether this constitutes deceptive behavior (cc
@persily @evelyndouek). Based on public reporting, this isn’t CIB as we define it. #thread (21 June 2020)
RT @aetherlev Okay I want to talk about the TikTok/K-pop stan let’s-troll-Trump operation and specifically about the data gathering aspect of it. (21 June 2020)
TikTokers are trying to troll the Trump campaign through its online store (Zachary Petrizzo, Daily Dot, 27 June 2020)
The civic hijinks of K-pop’s super fans (Crystal Abidin & Thomas Baudinette, Data & Society, 1 July 2020)
The mobilizing power of the BTS ARMY (Aditi Bhandari, Reuters, 14 July 2020)
Y for Yenndetta 