ARMY: my experience stanning BTS on Twitter

WARNING: This post contains screenshots and talk about doxxing, harrassment and death threats targeted to other fans for largely racial purposes. If this in any way makes you feel uncomfortable, please do not read!

This piece is STRICTLY about ARMYs, BTS’s fandom. Yes, I know NOT ALL ARMYs are dirt bags who dox black women and have superiority complexes and hate other people who don’t stan BTS. But I am choosing to focus on those that do, the ones I have seen on Twitter, and the silent majority that passively allow it, in the name of “protecting BTS”.

This piece has to be the most extensive, exhausting, (fun!), and riskiest piece I’ve ever written, because Twitter has a way of bringing out the worst of all types of people. While being smack dab in the middle of many controversial discourses between, often times, black k-pop stans and non-black k-pop stans in the months of May and September, I was faced with a dilemma. I had been deactivating and reactivating, trying to escape what had been displayed on my screen.

The definition of the word fandom is:

“the state or condition of being a fan of someone or something, as in “my 17 years of sports fandom”. The fans of a particular person, team, fictional series, etc. regarded collectively as a community or subculture.”the Breaking Bad fandom”” (taken from Oxford languages.)

The definition of fandom, for me, during the years of 2010, meant togetherness, sameness, and warmth. But then again, in 2010, I was 14 years old, and created a Twitter account just so I could ask the daughter of a celebrity (I will not name who it was out of embarrassment) to follow me, so I could feel some validation about myself. (To 14 year old me: it wasn’t worth it.) Fast forward more than 9 years, and the definition of fandom has drenched itself of humbleness, fun, humor and self-dignity and has been replaced with the all-too-familiar slogan: “My fave accomplished all of his goals in life and is living the dream–what have you done with your life?”

The assumed pride and braggadocios behavior alarmed me the deeper I stayed on Twitter, and still does.

Don’t get me wrong. I have definitely gotten into Twitter brawls with Directioners and Beliebers back in the days when I was young and stupid. But the older and more dissociated from fandom/stan culture I became, the more I recognize how kooky and obsessive my behavior was. The problem right now is, there are young people the same age I was who are, unbeknownst to them, ruining their lives for, specifically for the sake of this post, Korean adult men who will never look them in the eyes, kiss them, marry them, or meet them.

Here are some things I’ve observed in this fandom alone all over seven men.

observation #1: black women getting doxxed and HARASSED because they have different opinions

Doxxing, physical threats, harassment, bullying, hacking and spam reporting to get certain accounts suspended. This has become the norm of cult-like stans who disapprove of anything said about their fave. The words “loyal” and “real fan” have taken a downward spiraling turn. I have a friend in real life who was hacked because of her being vocal about the Black Lives Matter movement recently, and I have many moots who have been put on doxxing lists and had their personal information exposed all because of their refusal to support BTS and other k-pop groups in colorist or racist shenanigans they have done. I spoke to one moot, named Nicole, who was harassed heavily during May because she expressed disgust at BTS’s SUGA sampling Jim Jones in his highly anticipated mix-tape, D-2. I sent her a list of questions, and she thoroughly sent back answers. (Thank you Nicole!)

“I started to be targeted and harassed when I became more vocal of my opinions with certain groups but also when my followers and engagement went up. That eventually lead to me getting a lot of racist comments and death threats.” Not only was she getting racist comments and death threats, but also had ARMYs riding the train in her mentions who I am pretty sure didn’t even look through her account properly for ten seconds before pressing that “tweet” button.

In early May, when all this when down, decided to follow her to see if she was really an “anti” like she was being described by so many in the fandom, and what do you bet—she was nothing CLOSE to that. She shared opinions and thoughts that were not in favor of Bangtan Sonyeondan, and she was met with words like this:

I felt genuinely worried for Nicole since, I still do. I kept tabs on her because I had a feeling her mentions and DMs were hot fire for a long time. Luckily, she has not been doxxed and is doing good; I still see her posting, and she says the comments don’t really bother her much. When I asked her about why she thinks she is targeted by ARMY so consistently, she commented:

“I think the reason why that particular fandom is so focused on sending me hate and being in my mentions because the things that were the biggest stories such as the Jim Jones situation were all proven to be true. I think they don’t like that I’ve never received any real repercussions for the post I make they feel undermine BTS. There’s report accounts and group chats that love to rile fans up over a nonexistent problem and they come with all the hate.”

“NOT MY SKIN COLOR NOT MY PROBLEM”: friend and foe 1

Around August and September of this year, after the whole Afiq situation, I witnessed a surplus of black K-pop stans being doxxed, threatened to be doxxed, and had their full information shared on Twitter by an ARMY, friendandfoe1. I remember reading that the account was ran by two non-Americans who, in their own words, said they were doxxing troublemakers in the ARMY fandom in the name of BTS. “ It is interesting how I have been blocked by several of the accounts that have caused the most trouble for ARMY. They know exactly what they are doing without me saying a word,” they shared on their anonymous, mysterious account. Now honey, I don’t know how many times they’ve sat, analyzed and discussed The Purge movie to come up with some dramatic hot takes like that, but the thing I am most concerned with is the fact that there was almost no sense of urgency coming from the ARMY fandom to get the word out that black women, and fellow K-pop fans in general, were being targeted and harassed in such an animalistic way. (Since the account has now been deleted, I have the archive you can look at here to read their statements for yourself.)

“A doxxing spree organized out of pure vindictiveness by an anonymous account should understandably provoke strong reactions,” another one of my favorite moots, Christel shared with me. “But, Black stans’ concerns over safety are met with indifference by the majority. It is our problem alone to deal with. The support of a handful of ‘‘allies’’ pales in comparison to the loud silence of many.” And this is true, because from the looks of what I saw, black K-pop stans were practically begging for some form of accountability from “big accounts” who have expressed adequate interest in BTS to be considered “stans”—needless to say their efforts didn’t go too far.

During the Black Lives Matter protests, fans posted messages on Weverse, another popular social media app that lots of idols—including BTS like to frequent. This resulted in many messages being blocked and deleted before they could see them, responded to insensitively, or just ignored.

“Every time I log in I am reminded that safe spaces do not exist for black people,” another favorite moot of mine, G, said about the doxxing sprees that have been happening. “We cannot oscillate between the virtual and the material, because our experiences in both realms are racialized. It is a never ending nightmare.”

NEGATIVE PARASOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS

Here is the definition of “para-social relationships”:

“Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships, where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other’s existence. Parasocial relationships are most common with celebrities, organizations (such as sports teams) or television stars.” – (taken from findapsychologist.org)

Parasocial relationships, in themselves, are not negative. Children experience this with dolls and toys, and adults and children alike experience this with celebrities or people at school they may crush on but are too afraid to talk to, work with or just see at the grocery store. It’s a part of being social beings; we must interact socially, and we are addicted to the feelings of being wanted and belonging. However, it becomes dangerous when this is all we have as social interaction, and we have drawn close and deep emotional attachments to people who claim they know we exist and love us, without this being true.

Twitter user thai_dollarsign wrote an amazing article on idol worship (and added a religious outtake on it which I am thoroughly impressed with) and para-social relationships, and since she gave me permission (eee!) to include her work in this piece, I want to quote something she said that stuck with me, as she spoke specifically about idol worship:

“When you “worship” a band or an idol singer, you’re basically giving a lot mentally and emotionally to said band or person. Like I said before, regardless of religion, you lose part of yourself trying to ‘protect’ these groups of guys and or gals from “harm.”” I’ve seen—and done—my share of going to war over people who don’t even know me and won’t even like me if they did. I’ve seen ARMYs tweet positively about Jim Jones being in the mixtape and clearing the searches. Why would they clear the searches if there was nothing to be worried about? I was blocked by a big account after expressing my disapproval of Yoongi’s weird feature…and about 600+ other ARMYs who added me to block lists.

I’m not complaining; I actually find it rather funny. But what concerns me is the quickness of conformity that exists in this huge fandom—there seems to be no room for any other think except “All seven men are God’s gift to the world, are not racist or prejudice in any way, and absolutely worship and can’t live without ARMY.” Anyone who finds evidence contrary to these claims are seen as “antis” and are even on free ground to be turned over to the racial harassment and doxxing dogs.

observation #3: the spotify cares situation

I made a podcast episode about this whole situation a while ago with another moot, Kenny, but honey, I don’t mind writing about it.

When @SpotifyCares, a Twitter account dedicated to helping Spotify users with problems on the Spotify platform, replied to a user who complained about there being a song in a Jonghyun memorial playlist that wasn’t appropriate, Spotify then replied to the user saying “Stay Gold”! and liked BTS’s new single at the time. Now, I don’t know if this was on purpose or not, but it was heavily uncalled for. But what was even more uncalled for, was when a big account made the situation into PR for Bangtan and tweeted screenshots of Spotify’s careless mistake, or whatever it was, and started kekeing it up with the other sevens.

This situation made me a bit surprised, because it seemed to contradict the fandom’s sweardom of being anti-bullies and against suicide, since I am very sure they knew who Jonghyun was. I guess when the Wings/Love Yourself era ended, most of their masks fell off too.

reflection/final thoughts

Listen. I have been there.

I didn’t have parents to look up to to talk to about things I enjoyed, because hey we’re met with silence (my father) md belittling comments and insults (my mother, like she didn’t sneak out of the house to go to a Prince concert when she was a teen but—that’s neither here nor there.) I didn’t have friends growing up, because my social skills are underdeveloped, I was and am not a people person, and getting on my phone and laptop and zoning away on Twitter/social media/writing is a lot easier than talking to a person about real things, like my feelings or my weaknesses. But, as an adult, I now see that Twitter, stanning my faves, and living vicariously through them will not make me enjoy my own life and give me the satisfaction I need of a fun and well-lived life. If stanning your faves isn’t used in a healthy way and you’re becoming too consumed with it, to the point you’re even thinking about typing out any of these things to someone on the internet, who is a real person, then I think it’s time to reevaluate some things. Being so consumed into BTS will ever reap you the harvest you’re looking for; especially if you’re doing it this way. You’ll only end up a brat, lonely, and a winner in your own head.

I once read a tweet that was wisdom in less than 240 characters: it went somewhere along the lines of “your friends are more admirable than those people you want to be like”. And they were right, because the world is so much more bigger than BTS. I think the world has looked up to celebrities a bit too long; we’ve given complete strangers control over our time, money and greatest treasures, and it’s time we take it back. After all, their business thrives on our loneliness and need for relationship.

If you’re interested in reading/ listening more from black K-pop fans on this subject, I suggest you check out these:

All of stitch’s work! – she writes about fandom racism and ugh she’s just doing the Lord’s work!

Tiwa’s website – (so pretty and such goals)

Kenny and her podcast – she has touched on subjects like this

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.