I was chilling at my desk working on some homework when a friend texted me that she was interested in K-pop but in a, quote, "very particular way." And I was very intrigued by what she meant. This ensued a pretty long conversation about the culture surrounding K-pop and K-pop fandom. She had said that K-pop stans were living in 2030. And I had to agree. I'm sure you had seen news reports of K-pop stans getting tickets to Trump's rally which made it empty, or filling racist hashtags with fancams (which are videos of a single member of a K-pop group performing). But these things are only a small fraction of how intense K-pop stans could be.
The whole culture surrounding K-pop really revolves around the passion that the fans have for their favorite groups and members of those groups (or soloists). K-pop is really built on the idea that idols are attainable to the average fan and they play on this fantasy. This is why idols are, sometimes, forbidden to date (which is a problem, yes but we're not here to discuss that) or why their ideal type is listed in bold on their Kprofile page. Because of this seemingly easy access we have to our favorite band members, it can lead to some passionate fandom.
Fansites were a prominent thing my friend talked about. For those who aren't familiar, fansites are fans who devote their entire being around their favorite idol or idols. They go around with a camera to every single show and every single event to take pictures of these idols. And you might be thinking about how they pay for it. Well, they sell a lot of merchandise and do events to make money to pay for the content they make. And fans go crazy for it because they give us content for everything. And yes, of course there's going to be stalker fans who take advantage of this, but most fansites are very respectful to their idols and some are even close with said idols. Jonghyun, member of Shinee, got fake tattoos of all his fansites' names. And fansites will do anything to get content. Like buying multiple concert tickets in case they get kicked out for bringing their cameras or taping camera equipment to their legs.
Fancams are another thing that seemed confusing when I joined the K-pop realm. A seemingly simple video of an idol dancing and singing seemed to hold a lot of power in the K-Pop realm. These videos are used to showcase an idols talent and by posting them everywhere people will hopefully pay attention to said idol and stan. I've actually gotten into a few groups by watching a member's fancam. But also by posting said video, it's also a way of showing who your bias is or your devotion you have to them.
There's also other things that K-pop stans do. Like buying ads for their favorite idols birthdays or holding events for said birthdays. There's also a lot of banding together that takes place. For instance, when Wonho left Monsta X, fans had trended a hashtag every day until he was announced to be cleared of all charges (that was about 100+ different hashtags). There's drama in a lot of fandoms but I've found that fans will band together in times of need for their idols (or when racists hashtags need to be cleared out by fancams).
This might all sound a little bit crazy and you might be thinking K-Pop stans are insane. But they're all passionate about the thing that was built upon the idea of fans being passionate. K-Pop is certainly a science and it would be nice to see if there will be any researched published in the future about the psychology behind all of this. K-Pop stans certainly have fandom down to a science. By devoting their lives to their favorite humans they're driving, dare I say, a revolution. They're reinventing fandom as we know it and it will be interesting to see how some of these things carry over to other fandoms in the future. Especially as K-pop fans move to other fandoms, will this culture slip to there too? Like I already see fancams slipping into other different fandoms. Will there be fansites for other musicians or prominent figures in the future? And how will these fans impact fandoms later on? It will certainly be interesting to see the cultural impact that K-Pop not only has on the music industry and the world but also how fandom could possibly evolve from this too.
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