Threads Is Not Twitter, Let's Keep It That Way

 TW: talking about things that have happened on Twitter so I feel like I may need a TW for self-harm, suicide, cyberbullying

 This week’s post is somewhat of an extension of last week’s post in that I want to discuss my thoughts on Twitter and Threads. They are two different apps and I feel like the influx of new users (and some older ones) on Threads don’t get that. I made a post on September 2nd in the morning reflecting my thoughts because I scrolled and saw three posts nearly in a row that would never have been there on ARMY Threads six months ago. Two were fan war starters and I was like, “nope, I'm definitely saying something,” so I did. The first comments were in agreement then came the noobs (new ARMY accounts that haven't been on the app longer than six months). Some of them seem to be the ones causing drama or excusing the drama. I was told I should go try Blue Sky if I wanted a “clean” app. I don't expect any social media to be “clean” whatever that means. I do expect ARMY to do better though, and if you call yourself ARMY you should want to do better. We don't do fan wars. Certainly not ones we start by saying “I hate (insert fandoms)” and proceed to post screenshots of hate tweets from X/Twitter or “proof” the fandom is trash based on one person acting maliciously. We keep it in the group chats and not out in the open instigating arguments. 

     Threads came to be a year ago in July 2023 in response to Twitter being taken over by Elon Musk who ran the platform downhill fast. The shit show that Twitter became under Musk is all his doing. I was on the app and I followed people who worked for Twitter/X that lost their jobs. They explained that things were going to get a lot worse before they ever got better. I watched as security that handled protecting people from abuse became pretty much non-existent. Then there were the glitches or so called glitches where users couldn’t post or could only like a set number of posts per day or over a 24 to 48 hour period and were restricted from then on. Rumor was that if you paid/subscribed to Twitter Blue (I think that was the name of it) then you could like more posts and comment more without restriction. So Musk decided to start trying to push users into payment plans/subscription tiers in order to have a better user experience on the app. I wasn’t paying for that. Not when an app that I used to enjoy decided that “free speech” (read: hate speech) was allowed unless it was directed towards Musk or anyone he defends.  So for a while I bounced back and forth between Twitter (which also went through a name change to X but no one calls it that) and Threads. 

     I learned the best things from Twitter ARMY and I also have seen the worst bullying that I have ever seen in my life happen on Twitter. The thing is all the crap is not worth wading through to get to the good part for me. I will never forget how kpoppies all came together in a mostly fake show of solidarity the day Moonbin passed away. I stayed out of the conversations surrounding mental health because to be honest, they were largely performative and it made me sick to my stomach to see some of these fandoms pretend to give a shit when they put people in the hospital or grave by bullying. Suddenly fandoms who photoshopped BTS members with self-harm marks, celebrated the death of cancer victims who were family members of ARMY or artists who worked with BTS, and mass shooting victims who were ARMY or friends of BTS, and doxxed others to put their info on porn sites gave a shit about mental health? Yeah spare me the fakeness. I would find out just how fake the "mental health matters" posts were less than 24 hours later.

     Another vile part of Twitter is all the solos, antis, shippers and all manner of weirdos who can’t bother to be normal fans of all the members of BTS. Solos are antis who hate all members except the one or two they stan. They are akgaes. They leave traps sometimes in order to start fights or they will go fishing for like minded solos to join their side of fandom, the dark pathetic side. Nothing wrong with having a bias because that’s not the same thing. You can be OT7 and have a bias like I do or just not have a bias at all. Solos openly express hate for all other members except their favorite. They stan the one member and not the group and will go as far as to exclude other members from their streaming and consuming of content.

     That being said, the day after Moonbin passed, I was on Twitter and some J-Hope anti made a post excluding J-Hope. I didn’t realize it was an anti account and don’t remember who they were a solo of. I didn’t realize it was a set up post either. It was set up to bait people like me who are OT7 into arguments. The screen name suggested they were a BTS fan because they used a member’s name and something else -maybe they had a little seven in the name too (a lot of us do including some fake ARMY). Seeing this post, I quote tweeted them and said something harmless like “Don’t forget Hobi.” Apparently that triggered an alarm for them to bring out the psycho bitches and out they came. I was getting comments like, “Go die,” “kill yourself.” and I was called stupid when I responded trying to figure out what all of this was about and I spelled a word wrong. I was so done with these losers. All this vitriol because they were downplaying a member of the group I thought we both were stans of. I realized after looking through their account that I had been played by antis. I took the bait and they came to chew me up and spit me out. I blocked the ones commenting but reported them first (of course nothing happened to their accounts because it’s Twitter, they don’t protect you from bullies anymore). Then, I ran a nuke block on everyone engaging with that post (nuke block was a site where you put in the URL of the tweet or link to it and it blocked everyone who liked it). I was so upset I took 48 hours or so off of Twitter. I logged out and stayed off. So much for everyone coming together the day before to advocate for mental health awareness and being kind to one another. Such bullshit. 

     I did some research when I got back online and the person running that account turned out to be a guy from India posing as a girl who pretends to like BTS. He has multiple accounts for rival fandoms who are always in ARMY business bullying ARMY. Makes sense. His IG account gave him away. I blocked him on all of my IG accounts and from that point further, I engaged less and less with anyone’s Twitter accounts. Not that I got that much engagement there anyway. It says something when you comment on a post or make a post and you get the notification that someone responded and you cringe a little because you automatically anticipate that it's some troll or some anti coming to your comments to be a jerk. You kind of develop a bit of anxiety about commenting or getting comments back. I don't know if anyone else gets that but I had that when I was on Facebook and on Twitter. This incident made it worse. I don't get that anxious feeling about my notifications on Threads though. 

     I had been on the app (Twitter) for 6-8 years I think and my personal account just became my stan account when I decided to join ARMY online. At first it was fun but it quickly became clique-ish. I noticed big accounts all talked to each other and people who talked a lot about voting and streaming got a lot of crap from solos. Playlist accounts even got bullied for posting playlists. Why? Because they were OT7 and solos didn't like that they spread focused playlists that included all 7 members as well as the focused releases. Meanwhile these solos were spreading looped playlists that sabotaged the streams and caused plays to be stripped on Spotify resulting in sabotaging the member's numbers they were trying to boost. Brainless behavior on full display there. 

     Over a year into learning Korean self-study I could tell that some of the translators were playing with words for engagement. I never said anything but waited till one got called out for lying. When I knew she lied about what was said I blocked her and others backing her up. A mistake is one thing but a full on mistranslation that a beginner/intermediate speaker picked up on–yeah get out of here with that. 

     As Musk’s antics got worse and worse, stupid things continued to happen to push my buttons and push me right out of that dumpster fire app. I got suspended for 24 hours for saying I hoped a guy’s Tesla would catch fire. There was a video going around of a guy chasing other cars on the road, cutting them off, and blocking them so they couldn’t go anywhere, and bashing their windows out. I wished for the downfall of a car and got suspended but people wishing death on others daily got no punishment. I started getting offensive ads that pushed fascist ideology (I’m in the US) and pushing Christian Nationalism. I tried to block ads which I could do, at first, and then I kept getting pop ups saying this was no longer allowed and I needed to subscribe to get rid of ads. Nope! Not paying to keep from seeing things that shouldn’t be there. So I deleted my account this past spring and never looked back.

     Let me reiterate that, I never looked back. I wish I had saved my bookmarks with receipts and links to some info but other than that I don’t miss the ever burning dumpster fire. At first I thought I would miss out on information about BTS, but I realize the best information will come from the official Big Hit Instagram and Weverse accounts. Yes the guys are still on Twitter and the account still posts but anything there will eventually be on their Instagram or Weverse. Even if it isn't, I have accounts I follow like @/dalbitbangtan and @/samaya_bangtan_girl on Threads who keep me updated on official news from BTS_TWT the official Twitter for the members. For me it wasn’t worth going through the hellscape to get information. I’d rather be a little later getting info than getting it ASAP and risking seeing something upsetting or being bullied on the way to getting info. Some people pop back and forth and that’s fine for them but it’s not going to work for me so I only have Threads and IG and I’m fine with only those as my socials. 

     Having Threads and having it be new at the time, I sought out other ARMYs and we came to the collective conclusion that we have a unique opportunity on Threads to redo what went wrong and continues to go wrong on Twitter. We want to create a space where ARMY of all walks of life feel safe and able to be themselves. No bullying and no spreading Twitter drama and fan wars in our spaces. No clout chasing with gossip from tabloids or unauthorized photos (real or faked with AI), no spreading rumors, and no age shaming. ARMY like BTS is also LGBTQIA+ inclusive so there’s obviously no discrimination allowed nor ableism. I also don’t believe in being a larger account than someone else and not responding to people. That’s so middle school. I experienced that a lot on Twitter where larger accounts wouldn’t even acknowledge that you said happy birthday to them with a like or comment back. You could ask a genuine question and no one would answer you. Sometimes other small accounts would answer, hours or days later. I try to help everyone and engage with everyone who engages kindly with me regardless of how many followers we have. 

     There are a lot of ARMY just coming over to Threads and we welcome you. Those that are relatively new may not be following anyone who was there when we first decided to make Threads an ARMY safe space and may not know but I’m saying it and have been saying it. We need to get it together because there are people trying every single day to tear ARMY apart and not to get into that, but we need to decide how we plan to move forward as a fandom. Some things need to be put aside and others just need to be handled better.

     One thing I really want to address here is anger and spreading hate and negativity that comes from Twitter. I left Twitter because of all of the hate being spread by antis. Why are there people bringing it from Twitter over to Threads? I don’t need to see screenshots of what some anti account says about BTS while I am scrolling Threads. There is no point in posting a Twitter screenshot and clapping back at the hater in the post on Threads. They can’t see it unless they are on Threads and in that case you should find them and tag them because we do not care. Anyone that wants to see that kind of rubbish can go to Twitter to see it. Why not clap back to them right under their post on Twitter? Oh because you don’t want drama? Well don’t bring it onto Threads because we don’t want it either. Don’t start fan wars on Threads because we don’t do that there. You aren’t adding anything valuable to the community by sharing drama. I am blocking the accounts that do this because I left Twitter for a reason. I’m not trying to see people make Threads into Twitter 2.0. We can choose the kind of content we want to see and participate in and boost that. 

     So if you see anything on Twitter and it upsets you because haters are in ARMY’s business, instead of spreading that, you can send it to the Big Hit legal team (via their website ) and block and report the account/post. You don’t need to run to Threads with it. You could leave something positive on either or both platforms to combat the negative. If you need to talk about it keep it to your DMs or group chats because sharing it spreads it. You are spreading negativity. Haters will always hate and there really is nothing we can do about it but try to get as many of them sued as possible. When it hits them where it hurts they will probably tone it down but sharing it and complaining won’t do anything but upset people who didn't know before you brought it to their timeline now more people are upset and ranting. 

     I don’t say any of this to try to be bossy or control what people post because ultimately they are going to be posting whatever they want to their pages but in case people wonder why they get less engagement or aren’t getting more followers I will be blocking negative posts from Twitter that aim to start drama rather than to inform. I hope other ARMYs will do the same. I know there are some that like gossip and rumors and even some that like fan wars. I don’t and I don’t want to see it. The difference in energy on the timeline when it's release day or during a release week vs when a bunch of drama is being spread and everyone is chiming in their opinion on something some loser on Twitter said about the guys is so different. Basically if it isn't an update from the official Big Hit Twitter or the guys Twitter, a fact checked update from a chart account about a milestone, something fact checked from a fan base that's not a stalker post or something otherwise informative that's not shade throwing or negative then keep it on Twitter and not on Threads. 

      Leaving Threads for another platform isn’t it for me right now. Eventually all of the trouble makers will make additional accounts on the other apps too and none of them will be any better than the others. At this point all we can do is acknowledge the spread of negativity and misinformation and try to do better at keeping it out of our spaces.

Update: 12.10.24 I joined Bluesky but I also keep Threads. What led to me joining Bluesky was the influx of negative accounts joining Threads and Meta/Threads lack of moderation to protect people from bullying and misinformation. The downfall of Twitter and mass exodus to Bluesky has led to many good informative ARMY accounts going to Bluesky and I found accounts I used to follow there that aren't on Threads. Bluesky does have better moderation in the form of filters and blocklists. Staying on both apps for now.