I won’t lie, I’m writing this post quickly on the train more as a shower thought than a real, deep analysis. But that’s an observation I made so I’m sharing it here.
For some context, a (non-Kpop) band I love just released a third single before the release of their new album later this week. I listened to the song, enjoyed it (even if it’s not the best of the three), and proceeded to check Reddit to read about people’s thoughts, on the band’s subreddit.
Comments were mostly talking about how they felt about the song, what they liked and didn’t (since the song features another artist, who doesn’t seem to blend well with the band at first sight); and other thoughts, like, how the intro felt like a Bond song.
Now, if most comments were mature and discussed the actual music, which can be rare in K-pop spaces let’s be honest, some comments still caught my attention. It was basically four types of people:
The ones complaining the sound had changed, that they didn’t see themselves anymore in the music and wanted the band to go back to their old sound, that the lyrics were bland and a downgrade to their usual poetry.
The ones arguing that the featuring was only to enter American mainstream pop music (the band is not pop at all, nor American), that they were trying to cater to the American masses and market, to the point of matching the release of that particular song with the Grammys schedule.
The ones criticising the fans, saying that most of the fandom wouldn’t accept to call a song bad, that the “Loyalists” were too parasocial to form an original thought about the band and their new music.
And the ones going full insulting and trying to put down the singer and the band (for whatever reason), as well as the featuring artist, saying she ruined the song and that the band shouldn’t have ever collaborated with her.
Having identified these four groups of people, with fair comments and feelings for some, I realised I wasn’t completely foreign to these kind of reactions. Now, this is not comparable to what we can see with K-pop spaces. These comments were maybe 10-15% (I’m actually bad at maths lol) of the overall post, whereas K-pop subreddits go way higher. But then, the band’s subreddit isn’t a big one either, with “only” around 45k people.
I want, at this point of the post, to make it clear that I am not familiar that much with K-pop (having only experienced a few subs here in the past two months), nor am I with fandoms in general, as I don’t really enjoy fiddling with them.
But trying to keep an objective perspective, I started thinking that, what people reproach to K-pop fans can actually be observed in other fan spaces online. There are, in reality, no big difference apart from the massiveness of the community, and also maybe the relationship between the artist and the audience (even if I was a bit amused to see people call out parasocialism). At the end of the day, I think it is mostly online debate and social media discourse, and that people who don’t pay attention and only focus on the music are just fine.
Anyway, that was my observations and train thought as someone who only dips a toe into all of this for fun. I’ll be glad to read your thoughts, whether you’re a “full” K-pop fan, or if you listen to/are part of non-Kpop (and non-pop) fandoms.
Cheers!✌🏻
submitted by /u/JustOtterlyConfused
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