Before I start, I’ve been a moa for 4.5 years and have kept up with every single comeback they’ve had since Freeze, so those are my credentials I guess.
It’s pretty clear in kpop fandom spaces that there’s a divide between boy group fans and girl group fans, and although I think this is partly to do with the fans themselves I also think boy groups and girl groups get marketed differently.
Boy group marketing, at least from what I’ve seen, focuses on making the idols seem more genuine so that fans can feel more parasocial with them and the fanbase will grow. You can see this when boy group members contribute to their own music, or at least have an image that represents them as the main creative direction behind their comebacks.
Conversely, girl group marketing is very general population focused – they do this with catchy music, multiple music shows to show off all their different styling options for the comeback, and concepts that are maybe easier to digest than boy groups.
So what does this have to do with TXT? I think when TXT debuted, since Bighit already had a boy group that was huge in boy group fandom spaces (BTS), they either deliberately or unknowingly changed tactics for TXT. They put a lot of effort into TXT’s visual aspects (concept photos etc) and their music is always well-produced in a way that could be appealing to the general public.
It seems kind of like a perfect idea – if you do what girl group fans want, but with a boy group, then surely your capacity for fandom size is doubled because you can attract both sides of the kpop fandom space.
But… that’s not really want ended up happening? At least, not exactly how I think they envisioned it? TXT attracted a lot of boy group fans, but not most of them – I guess boy group fans are used to groups that have a stronger rapline and with TXT having just one main rapper (and not a lot of raps in their songs) it could be off-putting.
TXT also attracted some girl group fans, but again not most of them – girl group fans will mostly want to be fans of girl groups lol it’s in the name.
So basically what happened is they kind of got half of each? Which is why I think we see TXT don’t really get spoken about much online by kpop fans outside of moas, neither boy group nor girl group fans have them on their radar very much and TXT kind of exist in this weird grey space between the two.
I think this has also lead to Bighit not being sure what to do with them, whether to lean into the girl group fan side and try and appeal to a general public (which worked pretty well with Temptation). Or go for more boy group fans and try to appeal to people who would like groups like BTS, Stray Kids, Ateez, etc. I think Freeze is a good example of this.
If you were to ask me, I’d basically say just give the actual TXT members more creative freedom over their music and their concepts and let them decide – it pains me how much their talents get underused by the company but that’s a different conversation.
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