Bullying Other Artists Online Needs To Stop

     Depending on who you talk to, BTS ARMY is either a toxic fandom and one of the worst in Kpop or one of the best, most organized and dedicated, loving fandoms. I have seen a lot since I became ARMY and I believe the latter. ARMY is an amazing fandom that I am proud to be a part of. I am even happier being ARMY knowing the community that we have started on Threads that is focusing on being more positive and having hard conversations but keeping them civil. That’s why this topic of cyber bullying other artists needs to be addressed as well. I know the majority of this won’t apply to the real ARMYs reading this but the solutions will so bear with me for a moment. 

     On July 26, 2024, Fred Jewelry announced that they had signed Chinese actress and singer, Guan Xiaotong as their second jewelry global ambassador. The 26 year old Xiaotong is very popular and is considered the Nation’s Daughter in China. She comes from a family of actors, has been in a ton of films, and has won several awards. Fred Jewelry made an announcement on their official website but I found out via their Instagram feed. Of course many ARMYs like myself followed Fred Jewelry's Instagram because of Kim Seokjin’s becoming their first global ambassador ever. My first thought seeing Guan Xiaotong was, “wow she’s gorgeous.” Then I went to the comments and that quickly changed to “damn it here we go again!”

       I was annoyed at the comments complaining that people wanted to see Jin and asking where he was. There were comments saying that Fred weren’t using Jin enough despite him having dropped a full campaign with W Korea a week prior and that whole series being all over YouTube and social media. He also has a page on the Fred site where you can shop the exact looks if you are financially equipped to do so (and assuming they are in stock with BTS being the “sold out kings” that they are). If they wanted to see Jin as an ambassador for Fred there was plenty of newly released content for them to watch. The problem was they decided to go on this woman’s announcement post and be rude which is unacceptable behavior.

     The accounts I noticed doing this didn’t seem to be ARMY. They seemed to be Jin solos. Going through screen names and profiles told me as much.  I went to Threads and asked for ARMY to go to the post and leave positive comments to drown out the bad negative ones. Leaving fresh positive comments and liking the other positive comments makes the negative comments get pushed to the bottom as least popular. ARMY went and left positive comments and now you have to scroll to get to the bad ones. Some of the solo accounts called out the other ones that were being rude and told them that they were potentially damaging Jin’s image by being disrespectful to Guan Xiaotong. It makes perfect sense that a jewelry company would have both male and female spokespersons because they sell jewelry for men and women. Even if it is mostly unisex, buyers want to see what it looks like styled on both men and women. A larger ring on a man may look too gaudy on a woman whose hand might be smaller and likewise a smaller ring may not be as noticeable on an man who may have a larger hand. You get the picture. 

     This was a milder version of something that happens way too often. Last July when Han So Hee starred in the video for “Seven” with Jungkook, her comment section on Instagram was bombarded with negative comments. Besides strings of vomiting emojis, people were commenting accusing her of dating Jungkook (not that it was any of their business anyway even if that was true), openly admitting their jealousy (which in my opinion is not a compliment and makes the commenter look bad), and accusing her fans of shipping her with Jungkook which they argued that they disapprove of (as if they have a choice in the matter). There are over 168 thousand comments on her post for “Seven” and luckily the good comments did a great job of drowning out the bad ones. If you scroll far enough you will still see a few. The ones that mean well in trying to reprimand the negative commenters are still there and are annoying as well because of the ones where ARMY is specifically mentioned and called toxic. Yes some of the comments were ARMY however there were solos and shippers (whom ARMY doesn’t claim) and a few people from other fandoms who want to make ARMY look bad. The post she made the same day about something else also has negative comments on it as well as comments intending to do damage control but still seeming to make the situation worse by calling out “toxic ARMY.”

A small portion of the comment section of Han SoHee's Instagram on a post from the set of the "Seven" video where she starred as Jungkook's love interest.

     Another such incident that was uncalled for was one involving pre-MHJ drama NewJeans. There apparently was a record for streaming that they had broken that was previously held by BTS or a member of BTS individually. When some ARMYs found out about it they took to the official Instagram account for NewJeans and left comments attacking them. Of course as usual there were solos and other fandoms involved--some other fandoms not even bothering to change their screen names or fully change their bio details as they cosplayed as ARMY.  This was as bad as the hate that was thrown at Han So Hee only this was directed at teenagers. They are literally children who did nothing wrong. Streaming is on the fans to take care of and if they out streamed ARMY then that’s on ARMY to take responsibility for. Either congratulate them or say nothing at all. I don’t care whether you like them or not. There are other Kpop groups (and non K-Pop artists for that matter) that I don’t like that place higher or break records that BTS holds or beat us on the charts here and there. I keep my mouth shut and stream. I would never leave hate comments on another artist’s page. Records are made to be broken and another one will eventually replace that one. We need to learn when to hold nasty comments and channel those into positive things like streaming and voting and otherwise supporting the guys.

      Leaving nasty comments makes us look bad as a fandom, even if we aren’t the ones doing it. People with BTS member names as their display name, a little 7 in the display name, or a photo of BTS members as their main photo end up representing ARMY. People don’t always stop to go through an account to determine if the person seems to be ARMY or a solo. I usually do if I have time but that’s just me.

When there’s a slow news day in the tabloid world where K-Pop is concerned, these tabloid “journalists” will pull comments and posts and everyone speaking in a capacity that seems like ARMY to them is ARMY. They write their articles/blog posts and they won’t differentiate between solo or anti or ARMY if they see a picture of BTS on a profile or the name of a BTS member being used in a screen name. They will take any posts that seem relevant to whatever story they are running and use them and because the posts are public on a social media platform (posts or comments) they can be used without permission. So say a random tabloid did a story on the cyber bullying of NewJeans by ARMY they would use that as their title to get attention and they will pull these comments and assume everyone making them is ARMY. They may not even pay attention to all of the ones telling people to stop being rude. Even those sometimes look bad once the bad ones get scrubbed from the account (deleted in large numbers by admins) because they tend to not go back and clear the ones admonishing those making negative comments. If you didn't know there were negative comments there, the comments scolding others for making them let you know there were negative comments left before they were removed.

     As ARMY we represent BTS when we are on the internet. It is up to us to control what our image is as much as we can. We can’t really do a whole lot about haters except block, report, ignore and not engage with them or their content. We can control what we choose to post and decide that rudeness and bullying is not acceptable. Reporting and blocking when we see it in these circumstances on other artists' posts is the best way to handle it. These comments would be reported to the platform and not to BigHit legal because they only handle legal issues for BigHit artists. The platforms may not do anything but it’s a good idea to report anyway. Call on other ARMYs to drown out the negative comments with positive ones and to like other positive ones. Liking and replying positively to other positive comments pushes them to the top and pushes negative ones to the bottom so you have to scroll to get to them. You don’t have to like all other artists, I mean I certainly don’t but being respectful is free. As JHope says in “Equals Sign,” “it costs you nothing to be kind.”