BTS Members RM, V, Jungkook and Jimin Complete Military Service

      After a long wait, BTS's RM (Kim Namjoon), V (Kim Taehyung), Jimin (Park Jimin) and Jungkook (Jeon Jungkook) have completed their mandatory service in the South Korean military. Members Jin (Kim Seokjin) and J-Hope (Jung Hoeseok) have already served and were discharged June 12, 2024 and October 17, 2024 respectively. The final member to be discharged, Suga aka Agust D (Min Yoongi),  will be discharged on June 21. Suga has been enlisted the longest due to his social service assignment. 

     ARMY, BTS's strong loyal fan base waited patiently on the streets near the Hybe building to catch a glimpse of the guys as they arrived to the company on both days of discharge (RM and V on June 10 and Jungkook and Jimin on June 11). Many more fans tuned in online to watch the press conference from Chuncheon. Hybe and BigHit sent out a memo to the fan base via Weverse app and advised as they have in the past that fans are not to come to the sites where members are being discharged for security reasons and asked that fans stay away from the site and "convey warm regards and encouragement" in their hearts. ARMY did just that by gathering at Hybe, hosting online watch parties, gathering on social media and waiting for the return of 4 more of the 7 members total to return and waiting on Suga as well. 

     Though the final location where the members were meeting up to meet the press was not formally announced to fans, fake fans seeking internet clout including a Brazilian delegation led by a travel agent called Bom Dia Coreia on Instagram, showed up to the site at Chuncheon against Hybe's memo rules and squatted outside of the gates to live stream and stalk the members. They do this for internet attention to get likes and follows and get paid on their monetized accounts. They have since locked down their pages and gone private after being called out for such inappropriate behavior. The press fed their disrespectful actions and allowed them to stay. They returned the next day for Jungkook and Jimin's release and proceeded to scream disrespectfully while the members were conveying messages to the media and ARMY who were watching online. At one point during the broadcast you could see security getting visibly annoyed at the crowd who wasn't supposed to be there anyway. One particularly odd group showed up wearing all black both days as if they were attending a funeral. Sources say they are called anti-fans and the reason they attended in such dreary costumes is still unclear. 

     ARMY online flooded social media with love for all members on their release days and well wishes for the future. RM and V touched ARMY's hearts with their goofy antics. RM showed up playing his saxophone wearing sunglasses to complete the look from the Squirtle meme that went viral and left skipping holding onto V. V displayed his Tata mic innocent face while delivering his speech. Both went on a live stream later on separately to greet ARMY. RM spoke of his struggles and plans for the future and V vibed to some music in one of his trademark short streams that typically last less than 15 minutes.

     Jimin and Jungkook were discharged the day after RM and V as they had served together in the same unit. Both looked happy and healthy as they showed up to speak to the press at Chuncheon. Live streams of the moment were plagued with buffering and loud sasaengs screaming during the speech so ARMY had to rely on online ARMY translators later to convey the message from the two maknaes. Later on they did a joint live stream where they also ate and discussed future plans. Both seemed in good spirits and full of giggles in a room full of flowers and balloons celebrating their return.

     Next up ARMY eagerly awaits the return of Min Yoongi who will be discharged on June 21. Suga's discharge from military service will make BTS whole again as BTS is seven members and the second oldest member and one of the 3 rappers will be back. Suga has been gone the longest due to his assignment to social service in the military. He was assigned social service duty in order to protect his shoulder (which was injured years ago in a car accident) from further damage after having had surgery on it in 2020. Social service assignments last 21 months compared to other assignments that are usually 18 months. 

Casual ARMY vs Core ARMY controversy: Why it's not as serious as some are making it

      Disclaimer: Before I even get into this I'm going to say this is not just my opinion. This is how many other more seasoned/ experienced ARMY feel about voting and streaming. You don't have to agree. Do you and go be you but we're also going to do our thing and be us and you will eventually get over it if you don't like it. Don't come into my comments here or on Threads or any other social media overreacting or getting an attitude because I won't have it. You'll be blocked. This isn't meant to put anyone down or be "toxic" which is being overused now. It's just to clarify what was taken out of hand and twisted by some who don't get it. 

Edited: 11/23/24 Jimin won the daesang Visa Fan's Choice Award at the MAMA Awards which is fan voted and an award BTS has won as a group for the past several years in a row. His thank you letter to ARMY has been added at the end of this post.

     The other day on Threads an ARMY made a post about voting and streaming telling newer ARMY not to stress about it and that they don't have to worry about trying to keep up. I think her intentions initially were to get people to stop worrying about it so much. I don't typically see people stressing about either on my feed because we know it comes with the territory. Beginning intentions aside, she showed her true nature later when she snapped and posted this. 

    Now, no one cares how many concerts you attended or how many albums you have. That's not what makes you an ARMY. There are people who buy albums and get barricade at concerts and don't know a single lyric. I'm reminded of a Coldplayer post where a Coldplayer was at barricade next to a "fan" who didn't know the words to their songs that were 15 or 20 years old. The Coldplayer was just surprised this person had gotten great tickets but didn't know the songs when they were used to being in front with die-hard fans singing songs back to the band. Having merch and going to concerts just means you have money. Not even that really. You choose to spend what you do have on those things is how I'll put it, because what it really comes down to is priorities and opportunity. My priorities lie in making sure there's a roof over my head and my child is fed and clothed. If I have disposable income after that then fine. I'm not in a position where I can fly across the country to see concerts so I vote and stream to support all 7 and the group as a whole. That makes me ARMY.

     So this was probably in response to my comments on the post because I commented that there is nothing wrong with being a casual fan or casual ARMY. The terms casual ARMY and core ARMY were used in a recent Boracity Magazine YouTube video and I liked the way they explained it. 

     Let's back up a bit. This was all because there were people who responded to the Threads poster saying that they don't have time to stream, see streaming as "cheating the system" (I'm sorry what?!), and someone who said they don't participate in mob mentality type things and no one can make them do anything. No one is making them do anything! Core ARMY put out calls to vote and stream and that's what we've always done. We just had a comeback and we're still in tracking week 1 for that. Why would you make a post encouraging people not to stream or vote two days before a comeback and during end of the year voting season when daesangs and bonsangs are being awarded? 

     I explained my perspective which is similar to Boracity's that there are core ARMY who vote and stream and that's how BTS wins awards. Korean awards shows rely heavily on fan voting and if ARMY wants BTS to win we have to vote for them. When I was first ARMY I didn't know this and it's likely that others don't either. When we post calls to go vote a lot of times those posts are as much to remind each other to vote as they are to recruit new voters. If you don't vote keep scrolling. There's no need to comment or get defensive and angry about something that you've made clear does not concern you.

    There's nothing wrong with being a casual fan if you choose not to vote and stream or one or the other. The poster bragging about concerts... she streams. She puts out posts encouraging people to stream. She just doesn't vote. That's the funny thing. No one ever called her casual ARMY. I commented it in general in response to the rude comments throughout her Thread. She took casual ARMY as an insult. Being that she's gen X as am I, I assume she thinks casual ARMY means poser (fake fan posing as a real one for attention) and it does NOT. Casual ARMYs still contribute in the ways they choose to participate. Had she watched the Boracity video she would have understood that. 

Why We Stream

     The reason streaming is so important is because BTS does not get much airplay if any on US radio. I can only speak for the US because that's where I am but other International ARMY have also said BTS doesn't get much airplay on the radio where they live either.When I say airplay I'm not talking about satellite radio because that's a little different. I'm talking about terrestrial radio, AM and FM frequencies. There are a few messed up reasons for this but the main ones are payola and racism/xenophobia. Major labels pay radio stations to play their artists or make deals for artists to appear at events like I Heart Radio things if the stations play their artists. The same artists get played over and over in a rotation. That rotation is often set by the station and they don't try to deviate from that because they're being paid to stick to it. 

     In the US, Clear Channel, now I Heart Media, owns 860 or more radio stations. Clear Channel was a right-wing owned company. Clear Channel has been around since the 70's buying up stations and has faced financial hardship over the years because of it. They were bought out in 2008 and became I Heart Media in 2014. They are Republican based, headquarters is in TX, and they have censored and blacklisted artists before for speaking out against the Republican Party. I'm not going to go into detail here for the sake of space and time but The Chicks (formerly known as The Dixie Chicks) were blacklisted by Clear Channel when they spoke out against Republican President at the time George W. Bush. These same radio stations will play "Despacito" (the Justin Bieber version) but won't play BTS Korean songs and will barely play their English ones. If you know why you know why. 

    So ARMY streams. For those who don't know what streaming is--because these extreme reactions suggest that some people apparently don't--it is literally just listening to music. That's it! I stream everyday almost as soon as I wake up. I open Apple Music and I find a playlist or I put on an album and hit play. Do we have goals? Yes but that's just a guide so you know where we want to be collectively. I hope no one is looking at these streaming goals and thinking you need to hit those individually on your own. I mean I'm having trouble trying to figure out what the issue is and why people say things in my comment section like Texastish on Threads did this week regarding me writing this blog post, " You actually don't need to explain anything to anyone. People can be fans in the best way they are comfortable. You or nobody else has the right to try to dictate what makes someone "core ARMY." It's stuff like this that makes people view the fandom as toxic. You have time and energy to stream? Great! Not everyone does. It's fine." She went on and said a few more things I found ignorant because if she read for comprehension she would know that the first part of what she is saying is exactly what I am saying as well. ARMY how you ARMY but you don't need to bitch about not streaming. Sorry not sorry. She has time to do unboxing videos on her IG of the same name but not stream. Make it make sense. She also made comments intended to be digs at me about her having a career and not having time. Sweetheart we are all busy, time is what you make it. Streaming is literally putting on background music. You may need to eventually interact with your playlist but that's hitting pause or changing the playlist when it stops. It's not that hard. 

     One thousand five hundred streams is roughly the equivalent of one album sale. ARMY is known as monster streamers so this was an interesting stat for me knowing that BTS has numerous songs in the millions of streams. Streams are part of the criteria for winning Korean music shows which count towards end of the year awards as well. Streams take up some of the slack for us not having airplay needed to get onto Billboard charts too. So don't complain about not wanting to stream and then whine about the guys not making Billboard. You don't get to have it both ways. 

    Why We Vote

     Voting is to help BTS win awards. If you are the type of "ARMY" who says "BTS has enough awards" you're not ARMY to me. Not sorry. ARMY that knows the struggles BTS has been through in the past know that they deserve every single win, period. They give us their whole heart and blood, sweat, and tears, to make sure we are entertained and we love them for it. If you can be that casual about it then you're not one of us. Period. And about me not being able to say if you're ARMY or not, you can call yourself the Queen of England but that doesn't make it true.

     That being said, if you don't vote just because it isn't your thing then that's your business. You don't need to broadcast that on social media because you could be wrongly encouraging other newer ARMY not to vote. Maybe that's your plan anyway and in that case you have other issues.  If they want to vote then we can show them how. If you don't want to then you have the option of scrolling, muting, and blocking accounts that talk about voting and streaming and leaving the conversations up to those of us who want to do the work and those who want to learn how to do the work. Many times when we put out posts about voting it's to remind each other that voting has reset for the day because timeline differences can be tricky. Of course we put calls out for others to join in as well but if you don't want to, keeping quiet is free. Your opinion is not needed. 

     BTS has a long running legacy with the MAMA awards and I have linked this mini documentary done by the MAMA awards on their YouTube in comment sections only to be ignored. I will link all 3 parts in this post. Going back and watching early footage of them winning their first awards and reading about or watching videos about the hardships they went through with the company nearly going bankrupt, the bullying from antis (other groups and companies as well), the death threats they got when some were still minors (I mean death threats are horrible either way but they faced this as teenagers), and watching the clips of practices will let you know why we are so dedicated as core ARMY to helping them win whenever we can. I got more involved with voting as I saw how they were treated in the past and still are treated. Voting and trying to get them more and more wins is our love language with them. We can't go to concerts if they aren't touring. We still have 5 members enlisted till the end of June 2025 and it won't be till 2026 most likely that we get a concert so showing up and showing support in person is mostly out of the question. We don't all live in South Korea so when it comes to special stages international ARMY are left out of that. We show them that we are here through voting and winning awards for them. Given that most of these awards are fan voted we show up for them as a team and vote. 

     In conclusion, no one is saying at all that you aren't ARMY if you don't vote and stream. There are levels to this and I didn't come up with it. I'm just using terminology that was already there. Casual fans usually don't vote or stream. Are they still important? YES!  No one said you weren't, people assumed that. My issue lies with the people who are casual fans and will complain about the ones doing the work and act like we have all the time in the world to vote and stream while they have lives and can't. It's wrong first of all and just rude. Just saying you don't want to is sufficient. Better yet don't come into our comment sections complaining at all just keep scrolling. Better even just block me because you can't ever contribute to a conversation I'm having with anything I would want to hear. I'm here for BTS, to support BTS. I'm not here to amass a ton of followers and be popular so the ones trying to be snarky downers about the work we do as core ARMY can either join and help or shut up. 

 

Links

Streaming and voting info

MAMA mini doc on BTS's history with the MAMA awards

MAMA BTS Doc pt1

MAMA BTS Doc pt2

MAMA BTS doc pt 3

BtS wins AMA and thanks ARMY

BTS most streamed group on Spotify 5th most streamed artist

Jimin posted this letter on Weverse 11.23.24 after winning the daesang for Visa Fan's Choice. Go on Weverse to get the full letter. 

Intentional Misinformation is Not Promo

      There have been several rumors this past week that have gone around social media surrounding Jin's new album and single release. I've seen these things shared on Threads as if they were fact and the things shared on Threads were probably a lot tamer than what was on Twitter. I don't even want to know what went on over there. The clout chasing attention seeking annoys me. By this I mean people who post things to get attention. Some people seem to have this need to be first to share information and to seem like they are the ones with all the tea or info and they make things up or share fake pictures or leaks to get this attention. This is negative behavior to me and is to be avoided.

     The first rumor I saw was a post copied from Twitter saying that Anne Hathaway is going to be in Jin's video for the single, "I'll Be There." Well we know now that that wasn't true. I believed it at first but I don't think I shared it. It was presented as truth and not a joke. A lie isn't a joke to me. I did see well meaning people share it who just didn't know that it wasn't true. Don't spread lies. 

     The next rumor that went around was that Jin will be hosting the MAMA Awards in Nov. This one they actually made a fake clip from a fake article to support. Many people shared this one and I had to stop myself from commenting on every single one that came across my feed as fake news. I reverse searched the text in the fake article being shared and there was not a single hit that came back in search that went back to an actual article. Red flag #1. There should have been a news article that it went back to and there wasn't even a tabloid or K-media link to this. 

     Red flag #2 - not a single post included a link. As ARMY when sharing information we should never be posting news or clips without a link. We all do it from time to time but when there is major announcement information you should be sharing the original link so we can all see the source and read the full article or watch the full video. With video there is a lot that is taken out of context and even edited by some and shared to be made to look the way they want it to look. Context is important. If you post news please add a link from a valid source. Tabloids do not count as a valid source and neither do X/Twitter posts unless there's a link there in that post but it's better to post the actual link than the Twitter post link because those without X/Twitter have very limited access to see what is in Twitter post links. 

     Red flag #3 - The MAMA Awards posts daily on Instagram and they are promoting the tickets for the awards. They have posted the lists and clips of performers at both locations it is being held at this year, Japan and Los Angeles. They started posting presenters last night in 3 separate posts on IG. I don't know if hosts were included in the presenters lists but Jin is not mentioned at all. 

     This rumor is particularly annoying because they went as far as to fake a news report (not the first time someone has done this to lie about something BTS related and ARMY related and called it promo). News blogs in Asia picked it up and are writing articles about it but saying that it isn't confirmed. The fact that they are doing this spreads it. Like fake pictures, it gets put into the search system and pulls up when you search it. Google's AI was pulling it up as a fact on 10/23/24 when I searched it and saying that Jin has been selected as a host of the awards show. I submitted an AI feedback report and I no longer get the same message when I search. I guess they corrected Gemini after the correction in my report. I don't need to explain how bad this is that AI is taking rumors created by ARMY on Twitter and posting them as fact. I know some people shared it because they thought it was real but people may see it and think it's real and plan travel around it and buy tickets expecting him to be there and that's unfortunate. They should definitely fact check before spending money but they wouldn't even have to consider it if ARMY wasn't making up lies in the name of promo. Once again, I don't find lies for promo funny or cute.

**updated: MAMA announced the hosts on 10/29 and Kim Tae Ri will be hosting for the Japan site of the awards and Park Bo-Gum will be hosting on the US site. Jin is not a host of the MAMA awards for this year. **

     The third rumor I saw was just plain stupid. It may sound harsh but I tell it like it is. It was just a stupid post. The account posting it is trying to be a BTS update account on Threads and should have shown more maturity and should have used their platform with more responsibility. This post basically started saying that Jin had been hospitalized. All I needed to see was that and my anxiety kicked in. I was scared for him. Then the post goes on to say it was because he overheated or something cheesy and dumb related to him being hot in a physical attraction kind of way not a fever, temperature, medical emergency kind of way. It's not funny to scare people and even less so to put out there that someone we care about has been put in the hospital. This is putting negativity out there that could come back and actually hurt the person in my opinion. The less that's said that's negative about the guys, the better. This earned an immediate block for the account posting it. It's not ever going to be funny to joke about someone's health in a negative way.

     Apparently this is more crap that started on Twitter because someone got it into their heads that there wasn't enough promo for Jin's album. This is just solo and manti behavior. Why are people acting like this and having the audacity to call themselves ARMY? ARMY protects and supports BTS both as individual members and as seven together. They have told us time and time again that they control their promotions and set things up the way they want to. Not only do they tell us, they show us their process via Bangtan Bomb videos after things come out. How can anyone call themselves a fan and see the hard work they put into every aspect of creation and promotion of their albums, singles, eps, performances and then complain that it isn't enough or wasn't how they would have done it? Well you know what you're at home watching and no one asked you and most people complaining don't work in the industry or have business or marketing degrees so they have no idea how any of this works. There is absolutely no need for all this idiotic nonsense. Jin's promos have been great and just the way he wants them. We are getting clips, photos, schedules for things, in game promos on In The Seom etc every day almost. Why is ARMY acting like selfish solos? 

     This could backfire when it comes to general population or "locals" as we call them. The average person is not going to get that any of this is to get them to listen to a song or an album and if they watch a video expecting to see a beloved celebrity with Jin from BTS and that person is not there they are likely to see ARMY as liars not that it was a "prank." Locals won't stream an album or buy it all of a sudden because they heard Jin was hosting an awards show and they tuned in and he wasn't there. MAMA awards is also not for the weak (hi it's me, I'm the weak). This is one of the longer shows and the timezone differences can be brutal for international viewers. Buzz will be generated and people will be let down and once again see the fandom as a joke. 

     There are going to be people who say, "it's not that serious" or "it's just a joke" and as I said , I don't see it that way and many others don't either. When you have an account with over 20k followers and would rather post rumors than voting and streaming encouragement then you have a problem. Period. Unfortunately, the internet has changed journalism and fact checking has become a thing of the past. I linked an article written about Jin hosting the MAMA awards but there were several, all from Asian based publications. The media scrapes through Twitter and uses ARMY tweets as quotes (and solo too-maybe I'll cover that another time) and writes whole articles based on what is said. They angle their articles positive or negative depending on how much drama they can stir up. Instead of the kinds of articles where they talk to people personally via phone, email, or in person, they now use Twitter posts. Twitter of all places...used as pull quotes too. This is unprofessional to me and they don't even ask or get permission because the posts are public. Threads is now able to be indexed on Google meaning your Threads show up in search now just like Tweets do so I don't doubt they will be using Threads and Blue Sky posts as well soon so be careful what you share or engage with because you are amplifying it. 

     With all of the lies we fight from K-media and tabloids why would we condone ARMY putting out fake news and allowing our own community to be contaminated with it? People who fight misinformation are already tired of explaining to people that things put out there for attention and clicks are lies. It's exhausting. I will be blocking and muting people who continue to share these things. Jin's promotions are his choice and are great. If you can't trust that then you aren't ARMY to me. Don't like his promo or want to add to it? Make your own graphics- not lies but date/time/ name of album or song etc and put it out there. Share the ones already out that graphic designer / editor ARMY are putting out. Or how about just sharing your streaming or voting screenshots. That's better promo than lies. 

     Knowing how much Jin loves ARMY I couldn't imagine how upset he would be that people took it upon themselves to spread rumors as promo and that they call themselves ARMY but don't trust the marketing decisions made by the members for their individual projects. They are seven different men with distinctive tastes. Everyone's promo is not going to look the same nor should it. This is basic common sense. People need to learn to stay in their lane as fans and stop trying to control things the artists do. This looks like sabotage rather than promo and it makes the fandom look bad. Stop participating in this mess. 

What's With The Recent Mass Bullying in Kpop?

      About two months ago, we BTS ARMY were in the trenches fighting for Yoongi during the scooter incident. He dropped a scooter on its side, a kick board scooter with a seat like teens ride in the US. This was not a motorcycle or Vespa type but a lightweight little scooter. Not rehashing everything here but we ARMY fought Korean media who set out to destroy Yoongi's reputation with lies and misinformation (things I'm convinced they knew were lies but ran with anyway not anticipating the power of ARMY to call them out on it.) We fought and we protected Yoongi the best way we could and we did that alone.

   Other Kpop fandoms either went silent offering no sympathy or they participated in the hate train against him making things worse. You see, I haven't forgotten the malicious fake ARMY TikToks they did encouraging drunk driving and pretending it was ARMY posting them. I haven't forgotten the pictures taken from Pinterest and the hashtags they trended on Twitter creating a fake Suga challenge. When Yoongi was being bullied and having death threats and wreaths sent and having fake forums set up online with fake fans pushing for him to leave the group, they didn't reach out. They didn't band together to shout loud for us. They joined in and laughed in our faces. Like bullies do. 

     "ARMY only has BTS and BTS only has ARMY" we said as we re-charted Agust D songs and made block lists to keep negativity off the timeline. We did a K-media blackout and forced some agencies to apologize (however half-assed these so called apologies were). Banners of support were put in front of Hybe and all over from International ARMYs showing love and support for Yoongi. A few individual celebrities showed support and Coldplay's massive fanbase of Coldplayers offered support and encouragement as did Brazilian Beehive. We got nothing from kpoppies but we didn't expect anything anyway so it came as no surprise. One thing we did say was this bullying is a major issue and if it can happen to us (BTS/ARMY) it can happen to you too (other Kpop groups). 

     Fast forward to now. We're right back in the trenches again. A whole new wave of hate trains started and it feels like deja vu with a little 'I told you so' thrown in. A mass malicious campaign to kick Seunghan out of Riize took place and however things went down, he's no longer an official member of the group. The same thing haters and (probably paid) malicious actors tried to do to Yoongi happened to Riize. Seunghan didn't do anything wrong to be kicked out and neither did Yoongi for them to call for his dismissal. But this mass bullying "worked" because SM didn't stand behind their artist. 

    Riize fans have called for ARMY to help and ARMYs have shared petitions and shared hashtags in support. I made a comment the other day that I was staying silent though I agree he was treated unfairly and I wish the best for him in the future. Funny how ARMY is accused if being so toxic but when other fandoms need help some ARMY are willing to lend a hand despite not getting anything in return. I said I would stay in my lane and be quiet but something else happened to change my mind.

     As I watched the rest of Kpop support Riize, including some ARMY. The hate train shifted back to Yoongi. Why? It's been two months. His case is over. He paid an unfair fine and it's done. Well the haters figure they got rid of a Riize member so they're coming at BTS again. Well Hybe isn't SM and neither is Big Hit. BTS owns their company so Yoongi isn't going anywhere. ARMY is back in the trenches standing up for Yoongi as always. BTS is 7 and will ALWAYS be 7. 

     Haters sent funeral wreaths to intimidate Seunghan. This is a malicious practice of bullying that is somehow a trend in South Korea now where Kpop is concerned. Sending death wreaths as if to say 'you're dead' or 'your career is dead'is the way hate is expressed by cowardly bullies who hide their faces behind medical masks as they send giant funeral wreaths with taunting statements on them attached to ribbons adorning the flowers. These are floral arrangements meant for sending condolences to families of the deceased. They left the wreaths up so he could see them as he left the building. How this is allowed and tolerated in South Korean society, one that already has a high suicide rate, I have no idea. You would think this kind of intimidation and bullying would be punished. I mean you fall off a scooter and they call for your head on a silver platter but sending death threats in the form of funeral flowers is fine. God forbid you have a relationship as a Kpop idol but death threats in the form of funeral flowers is fine apparently. I saw a video where fans had left supportive messages for Seunghan and he got the chance to read them and that hit my heart some kind of way. I'm glad he was able to see that and I hope it drowns out all the hate. 

   The funeral wreath bullying came back to Hybe. The people who did it were caught on camera because they had the audacity to stay onsite at Hybe with the wreaths. They were boo'ed by International ARMYs as ARMY made sure to stand their ground and show love and support for all 7 of BTS particularly Yoongi who is the target of these haters. Food trucks and message trucks helped overshadow the negativity of the disgusting wreaths. ARMY wearing purple and carrying purple ribbons chanted the 7 members names known as a fan chant and calmly protested against haters in front of Hybe. ARMY on social media made memes and TikToks sharing support and thanks for ARMY that was available at Hybe to represent the fandom. They also shared the footage of the bullies so people will know somewhat who is behind this malicious behavior. Threads ARMY as well as Twitter ARMY reported as much as we could to the new Hybe portal. 

     As we went about reporting accounts we found out that there were other attacks supposedly planned against Enhyphen and Shinee. I don't listen to any of these other groups but at this point that is irrelevant. I'm ARMY only but the more I heard about this the angrier I got. I don't want to see anyone get hurt no matter what group they are from and this now feels like it is bigger than just a bunch of brainless antis. This seems like a coordinated attack and someone in the industry is behind it. Several lines have long since been crossed and exorbitant amounts of money have been shelled out for these very expensive funeral wreaths. They can go for about $4k each! There were multiple wreaths lined up side by side totaling possibly over $20k and up for a whole line of them. I don't think the average hater sitting behind a computer has that kind of money to flush down the toilet. I know they do some fundraising but, are there enough of them to have raised about $20k plus in a few days to pay for all these wreaths? I don't know. It's possible but in my opinion not as likely.

     I have a theory that seems to be one shared a bit certain social sites. My theory is that Min Hee-Jin or MHJ is behind this. It's just an opinion at this time, a theory. She is the former manager (who knows what is going on with that messy situation but as far as I know I will say former manager) of NewJeans who has beef with pretty much all of Kpop right now. She has several lawsuits going on with Hybe, Belift, and Source music. You can read all about it here because this article sums up the drama better than I could. She wants to destroy BTS because apparently she thinks Bang PD stole the idea for BTS from her. This is a pattern that will continue and sounds like narcissistic behavior to me. She has openly stated that she will use whatever she can to bring about their downfall and will use whatever media she can even if the stories are not true. This makes me speculate that the whole scooter incident was possibly a setup. It's not unfathomable that someone she hired tailed Yoongi after work when he went out with his colleagues in the service and this person knew he was drinking and called the police giving his location and saying that he had been drinking. He was followed by those cops as we see on the video. They didn't just appear out of thin air. 

   MHJ used to work for SM as a creative director. Both Riize and Shinee (ok just noticed the names, trying not to giggle because that's cute) are with SM Entertainment. I don't know the circumstances of her leaving SM but Google says burnout which seems a little bland to me. Not downplaying burnout because it is a real thing but I doubt that's why. Other rumors are that there was an issue with the concept she was planning for a girl group and her concept was rejected by higher ups and they decided to focus on developing NCT. This is just a rumor and not confirmed. But if this is the case then she may be trying to get revenge on SM's boy groups. Her thinking seems to be that she does no wrong and everyone else just takes from her.

     Riize was targeted by hate trains to get rid of Seunghan who was on "hiatus" for having had a girlfriend prior to becoming a member (as far as I know). Another dumb reason to kick someone out of a group. I mean to be real SM has a dirty history with how they treat their talent and they also have had criminals in their midst that have seen and hopefully will see jail time for actual crimes. To kick someone out for dating is just stupid. It may sound harsh but in the rest of the world, like Yoongi's scooter mishap, this wouldn't have even raised eyebrows. After the hate campaign, Seunghan was removed from the group. According to fans of Shinee they are the being targeted next on the list with haters going after Onew. I don't know the details of why the hate train is coming for him and Shinee but it doesn't even matter because none of this makes any sense. By that I mean it's all just hate for hate's sake and none of the reasons will make sense because none of these artists deserve this at all. There's no way to justify any of this at all.

     The targeted hate trains are going after Enhyphen as well. There are two members of Enhyphen they are planning to target to get them kicked out of their groups. I have no idea why they would want to kick them out either but Enhyphen is with Belift Labs which is the same company that Illit is with. Belift is suing MHJ due to her allegations of plagiarism against Illit. See the pattern now? Everyone according to her has stolen choreography or concepts or something or other from her. I hope all these other fandoms fight back and fight back hard and smart and I hope these other companies actually stand behind their artists and won't let haters win in their bullying. 

     MHJ's karma is coming. Whether she is behind this particular shit storm of events or not she has done enough. She made he bed and now she has to lie in it. Hybe will have their hands full dealing with what's to come with her and I hope they make all the right decisions there and don't try to be lenient with any punishments to her or anyone else involved with interfering, bullying, or attempted sabotage of other groups. 

     What can we do? There are petitions going around and they can be effective if used the right way. I will link the one I signed. The hope is that the media will see the petitions (I guess by scrolling through the site? ) and articles will be written and these causes will be brought to the attention of the people who need to see them. Ideally since this one is really gaining traction and has over 10k signatures now, someone on the South Korean side would take the petition and print it out with all of the signatures and comments. It needs to be formally presented to people who make laws so they can see that there is a global interest in ending the use of these funeral wreaths as a bullying tactic. They also need to know that this is an issue bringing negative attention to the country and how it is perceived globally. Allowing these people be bullied , publicly shamed, and sent death threats is wrong. Here is the link to the petition if anyone wants to sign. It can't hurt to try. 

     Idols are human beings and deserve to be treated with respect. If you don't like an artist it takes nothing to mind your own business and keep scrolling. Focus on what you do like without trashing other artists who are also working hard to make it in a difficult industry. I never understood hateful culture of anti-fans. Idols should be able to date in peace without being kicked out of the group for it or dropped by their label. A very minor mistake like Yoongi's riding on a scooter after having a few drinks (a little kick board scooter) should be forgiven and don't warrant calls to be forced out of the group. No one thinks of what this does to a person's self-esteem and mental health. Losing a career can be devastating and haters sitting behind a computer and hiding behind a mask shouldn't get to ruin people's lives while the public closes their eyes to bullying.

***Media: Check out this video starting at 9:24 for more info on the Min Hee Jin/ Belift/ Source Music drama 

Asian Entertainment and Culture YouTube 

Beware of Blue Checks

      Blue checks used to mean something good on social media. I used to be a sign that you were on an official page for a celebrity or public figure and that what was posted was coming from that person or their team. For less famous people with blue checks it meant that they had achieved some kind of status symbol, clout, that meant that they had arrived somehow at being popular enough for a verified seal on their account confirming that that account was their official one. That was all cool until Elon Musk came to Twitter with his fascist views and unhinged unstable behavior causing advertisers and users to leave in droves. In order to try to keep users and advertisers on board and make back some of the money he was losing, he decided to charge for blue check verification as a subscription and open it up to anyone and everyone. To get a blue check all you had to do was subscribe to a monthly paid plan. This is when things started going way down hill and they haven't stopped tumbling yet.

     Because people bought the hype and started paying for Twitter and getting blue checks, there is no longer any real credibility on any social media sites for celebrity accounts. Impersonators use celebrity names in their display name and get blue check subscriptions on not only Twitter but Instagram,Threads, and Facebook now. Because Twitter started it and it worked, all of the other major social media sites followed suit and offered the same thing, paid verification. Public figures have to constantly put out notices advising users not to fall for scams using their names because now that anyone can use the name and put a blue check beside it, you don't really know if an account really is the celebrity you think it is. You can't even always go by how many followers they have now because if 1M people fall for the same fake account then that account has 1M followers despite being fake. Platforms don't really do much anymore when you report impersonators. I have reported more BTS impersonation accounts  on Threads/ Instagram than I can count and I don't think a single one was ever taken down. Hybe/Big Hit put out a statement recently on X/Twitter advising ARMY to beware of impersonation accounts. There are official lists made by ARMY on X/Twitter and Threads that point out the real BTS accounts. BTS doesn't have any individual accounts for members on X/Twitter (just a joint account and Big Hit official account) and none of the members nor Hybe nor Big Hit is on Threads at all as of the writing of this post. 

     Beyond just getting to seem like a celebrity, having a blue check provides you with incentives like supposed better customer service if your account gets hacked. Twitter offers longer posts to blue check holders by allowing them more characters, the ability to edit posts, supposedly a better reach meaning posts guaranteed to be shown to more people on the app and the most diabolical of all incentives- pay for play with regard to engagement. Now I'm not saying that creators, editors, shouldn't be paid for their content. People who use it for good are fine. The blue checked ARMY accounts who got checks to protect their accounts from hacking (if that even really works) or to get more characters so you can make longer posts without having to break them into several threads, that 's all understandable. They subscribe for valid reasons. I'm not knocking those choices because that'a a legit reason to get a blue check. The issue I have is the misuse due to monetization incentives.

     On Threads you can qualify for the Threads Bonus Program. I believe the criteria is you have to have 1000 followers or more on Instagram and decent engagement according to IG. Not sure how many you have to have on Threads to qualify. Once you get into the program you are paid based on posts on Threads as long as they stay within the guidelines of Threads, IG, Meta. This has led to the same thing with blue checked troll accounts on Threads seeking engagement through manipulative means like the ones on Twitter. On Twitter, BTS related posts get bombarded with troll spam comments from blue check trolls. You can tell they aren't ARMY because they often are footballer bro squad types with Ronaldo or some footballer as their profile picture or memes as their profile pic. They go under posts about BTS that are popular and say rude things in order to rile up ARMY into commenting back to them. The comment equals engagement and if they get enough of that - the comments , good or bad, they get paid. They will play the evil role of making hateful comments to make ARMY mad enough to comment back or some will pretend to be interested in BTS and will ask questions or make praising comments that are fake just so they can get ARMY to comment something positive back because all comments count towards their paycheck. In my opinion fake baiting positive comments are manipulative too so I steer clear if something looks fishy because I've seen people pander to ARMY to get attention then just when they have a ton of ARMY attention they turn on BTS and ARMY.  They get pulled into fan wars or get attention from other fandoms who want them to listen to and promote their guys. We've seen this happen with "reactors" on YouTube. 

     The other side of this is the blue check rage bait paid accounts. They make whole threads that are engagement bait hoping to get people angry so they will argue and the poster will get paid based on views and comments likes and shares. These are the people posting rude things like, "which fandom is the most toxic" and "which member of BTS is the hottest?" (seemingly innocent question but put out to make people argue about their looks and draw solos and visual stans into confrontation with OT7. ARMY is the largest most active fandom and these trolls know it. They use ARMY for engagement. The person posting the last question wasn't even ARMY and the first question was a set up to get fan wars started in their comment section. Trolls think that hiding their IG link will stop people from going to their IG to check them out. Well I will still go and sometimes that is the most telling of all. Asking questions to ARMY to get engagement when you stan another group and never mention BTS or don't follow them on IG is a giant red flag to me. Threads says they are looking at ways to combat engagement bait posts but I will believe it when I see it. 

   When you see posts like this it should be an instant block. I know I have caught myself responding before but I am reminding myself to stay focused and just block. Don't pay their bills by commenting. Don't quote to make a comment, don't re-share, don't screenshot to discuss because all of these things count as engagement. It's best to ignore. If you see a page that's claiming to be Big Hit, Hybe, or any member of BTS on Threads and it is blue checked, as of now it is fake. In the future always ask other ARMY or look for the official list (which I will post on the information page on this blog). If something seems suspect like you are suddenly seeing bait posts, swipe "not interested" and block. There are several accounts that don't have blue checks that still do the bait post for engagement thing hoping to get likes and follows. Just avoid it at all costs and resist the urge to comment. Trust me I know the urge to clap back is strong and I have fallen for it myself but taking a breath and not giving these accounts what they want is better than telling them to f -off. 

      

Correcting Misinformation: Photos and Videos

     This past week we celebrated the 30th birthday of our Bangtan leader Kim Namjoon aka RM. It was nice to see the timeline full of support for him and seeing the feed full of positivity. There were touching tributes thanking him for saving ARMYs from difficult times, the usual thirst posts praising this handsome man (not complaining because Namjoon is gorgeous), lots of really cool fan art, and video clips remembering moments from the past. I think one of my favorite of those is the birthday when he was spinning around in the chair and he accidentally blew out the candles on his cake. He's so funny. He's my bias and I didn't think I could come up with anything to say on Threads so I just posted my birthday reel that I do for all of the guys' birthdays and I left him 2 short messages on Weverse wishing him a happy birthday. 

     Over all everything was cool until I started to notice several people using the wrong photos of him in their posts. They were using a picture of Lim Hyunshik from BTOB that they got from Pinterest or Facebook groups (BTS Facebook groups are notorious for spreading misinformation so if you are on there please be aware of this). It was annoying because how do you call yourself an ARMY, which to me is beyond just being a regular fan, and post how much you love a member of your ult group and post the wrong picture of them as a child in your birthday tribute?

      I politely informed a few of the posters that they had the wrong picture up and informed them of who they had posted incorrectly. The first person I informed deleted her post hours later and let me know she deleted it. That's how these things should go. I made a post on my Threads account asking ARMY not to use that picture and I posted the photo of Hyunshik with a side by side of him wearing the same thing as an adult as he recreated the picture of himself as a child. I thought that was common sense enough to show that it was not Namjoon. The second person I commented to didn't get it at first and proceeded to go back and forth with me over it. That's when I realized what a real problem this is.

      Because they got the picture from Pinterest, they thought that anything pulled up on Pinterest is somehow automatically legit. Pinterest is used by many as a search engine, is it not? Well the thing is, all of these search engines are run by AI and AI is trained using the information fed into it by humans. This happens whether you intentionally add to it or not. The internet uses all kinds of content to feed AI. This user on Threads showed me the screenshot where she had put "Namjoon baby pictures" (or something to that effect) into the search on Pinterest and the first pic that shows up is this one of Hyunsik. She was adamant that it was Namjoon because that is what she was shown. I asked her to search "Hyunsik of BTOB" and see if it comes up and sure enough the picture not only showed up but it showed up where other people had made posts saying "this is not Namjoon this is Hyunsik." That's when she got it and acknowledged that the picture was mislabeled when she found it. 

     When you tag a picture, caption it, or otherwise label it as someone or something that it is not, the searches are going to show it as that (if enough people do it). There are so many people who have wrongly listed this picture as Namjoon that when I reverse search it using Google Lens I have to scroll past at least 10 to 15 links from all across the internet until I get to one that mentions Hyunsik. That's pretty bad because all over YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, X/ Twitter and everywhere else this pic is being put out there as Namjoon and even the corrections are being ignored. I saw one where the person being corrected by a member of BTOB fandom says to them that Namjoon confirmed that it was him (giant eye roll). Why are people like this? You know if someone took the pic of Namjoon in the bumper car with his dad wearing coveralls or the one where he was rollerskating in the Mickey Mouse tee (his actual baby/child photos) and insisted over and over that it was say, a member of EXO, ARMY would flip out. Don't be that embarrassing ARMY that can't pick your ults out in a lineup. It's a bad look and spreading misinformation makes it harder for other newer ARMY to learn things and have the proper information. 

     There is another picture that goes around from time to time as Jungkook and that isn't him either. This picture is of Hongseok from Pentagon. Once again I called out the person posting this months ago on Threads and I told them this was not Jungkook. They proceeded to argue and when I asked for a source they gave Facebook which is not a valid source when people ask where you got something. Always provide a link. The official BTS Facebook is valid but a Facebook group or fan page is not. I told them they were wrong and provided a link I found to the photographer's X/ Twitter page where they still had this photo shoot listed proving this was Hongseok and not Jungkook. They argued that it was an edit. Why would anyone edit the pic? None of the arguments made sense and all were irrelevant once I showed proof. Blocked. Once again this is disrespectful to Jungkook and to Hongseok who deserves to be credited in his photos as himself. It's a beautiful photo shoot altogether and he's a beautiful man. He deserves to be credited properly. 

Hongseok of Pentagon 

     Mislabeling and wrongly crediting photos to an artist is one thing. Some people sharing them have no idea because others are lying to them about who these people are so they can get attention to their accounts from having "exclusive" photos no one else has (by labeling the wrong ones as BTS). Intentionally sharing photoshopped, AI generated photos is a whole other fight in dealing with misinformation. 

     The issue there is that people can't tell when a picture has been faked with AI or run through apps for AI or photoshopped. Some AI photos are blurry around the outline or the shadows are all wrong. The easiest giveaway for me is when the fingers are all messed up (multiple fingers or mangled or missing) and the writing is faked or not legible (sometimes AI fakes language by trying to sort of blend letters in multiple languages together and it creates an illegible mess). Then there are the real photos that people feed into apps like Rimini (I think that is the name) and they ruin perfectly good pictures of idols by adding crappy makeup or facial "flaw" editing to them. These are the pics usually that have Taehyung with double lids on both eyes and same with Namjoon when ARMY knows Tae and Jin both have one mono lid eye and one double lid eye and both of Namjoon's eyelids are mono lids. 

     Besides adding makeup and giving the guys unnecessary cosmetic changes, I have seen people splicing members of two different groups together to make a sort of hybrid. This is next level weird to me. I scroll the timeline and see a photo of a BTS member with features added from someone else from another group and ask how do people have time for this nonsense? A while ago there was a fake Jimin photo going around with him in military clothes sitting in a room. The background kind of looked like a hotel though which would be odd because he was deployed. Looking at the face though, I knew something was wrong with it. Jimin is hot and this version just looked weird and over done. I used Google Lens to reverse search the photo and I found out why. It was a photo of Kai from EXO that had his face mixed with Jimin and photoshopped. The stupid things people do on the internet for attention never cease to amaze and disgust me at the same time. I think the person posting that one blocked me for correcting them because they had tons of engagement from posting the picture and when faced with taking it down they decided to leave it up because most of the comments were praising Jimin. That's fine, I shared the original to show that it was faked. 

     There are also videos being spread that are not BTS and are being labeled or captioned as the members. There's one that started on TikToK as a joke saying the baby Jackie Chan was in a movie with looked like Tae. Some one started spreading it with the caption cut and said it was Tae. Nevermind that Tae was a teenager when the movie came out. Because Jackie Chan did the Simvest promos with Tae they took a movie clip and lied about it being him for likes. Just don't spread things without fact checking. If you ask for a source and the poster ignores you ask other ARMYs or look it up yourself.

     Have you ever used Google Lens? It can be a good app to use to get information whether you are looking for a item you saw somewhere and want to buy it, looking to find out if a photo is real or AI, or looking to see if a photo has been improperly tagged as someone else. Google Lens is available in the Google Playstore and Apple app store. Download the app and to reverse search a picture in the app you open the app and it takes you to your photo gallery. Click on the picture you want to search and Lens looks for it. It pulls up searches from across the internet where that photo was found. You may have to scroll a bit to find the proper information due to misinformation but do your research. Look for legit sites and check with knowledgeable ARMYs for confirmation or clarity. Lens doesn't always work though. Sometimes I get messages saying it's hard to identify people or a bunch of totally unrelated things. Most of the time, I get enough to work with to find out if something is real or not though. If you doubt that something is real (ex AI pics) or think it may be tagged as the wrong person but you can't confirm it, don't share it. It's that simple.

     There's always a reason why I try to correct misinformation. It's not to be mean or seem like I know everything because I will be the first to admit that I don't and I'm still learning every day. How are we going to have knowledgeable new ARMYs that enjoy the fandom if they keep getting fed lies and "jokes" that no one is in on except clout chasers? Correcting things now means not having to do it later. Correcting it now means not embarrassing the fandom when the boys come back with viral posts or pics that aren't them tagged/captioned as them. We can do better. 

How To Vote When Multiple BTS Members Are Nominated

  There has been some drama this week over voting and we need to address it and get this covered before we roll into end of the year voting. The issue of how we should collectively be voting when there are multiple BTS members nominated is what is causing arguments within ARMY. When you break it down it all comes down to math, basic math, nothing complicated. It’s not rocket science and I feel like constantly having the same conversation gets exhausting for those of us that get it. Name calling of OT7’s being called solos and antis because they disagree and can actually see the big picture will not be tolerated. Trust and believe you will be blocked and we will keep it moving. 

     When we are voting and multiple BTS members are nominated, the first day or so should be the day you vote for whomever you want. Rankings will be evident after the first day. I’m going to use the current September birthday voting on MNet as the example here because that’s what prompted this post though we have been going through this a lot, especially in chapter 2. Right now Jungkook and RM are both nominated as they both have September birthdays (Sept 1 and Sept 12 respectively). So Jungkook has been on top with Plave bouncing back and forth with him vying for the top spot. RM has been in 3rd place. Jungkook and Plave both have about 35% of the vote as of today (9/10) and RM has 7%. This is NOT rocket science. Hell, this isn’t even freshman algebra. Common sense says you vote for Jungkook if you expect BTS to win at all. I said what I said. As an RM bias, yes it does suck but that’s the way it is. Being OT7 means you do not always get to vote for your bias. Voting for RM means giving up votes that could go to JK while Plave will move forward off of those lost votes. RM has too much ground to make up to get from 7% to 35% + of the vote. He would need to have more than 35% to surpass both JK and Plave. To move from 3rd place to 1st takes more effort than moving from 2nd to 1st or maintaining 1st. 

     Properly addressing the elephant in the room would really take a whole other post and I really don’t have the words or time for all of it but, to touch on the issue a bit right now I will just say it. This fandom has too many diet solos who don’t get that having a bias does NOT mean you ignore other members for ANY reason. By diet solos, I mean people who consider themselves ARMY but don’t ride for all 7. I’m a Namjoon /RM bias. Do you have any idea how hard it is to see him constantly at the bottom of all these votings? All the shitty excuses I see people using for not wanting to stream for him but will call themselves ARMY? All the thirsty comments that we giggle and “teehhee” at but at the end of the day more than enough of the people making them are just attention seekers because if all of them streamed and voted he wouldn’t constantly be on the bottom. Have you noticed how we hardly ever struggle when a maknae or vocal line member is up for awards but when it’s hyung line we fight and it’s always the same ARMYs I see kicking ass to stream, vote, and otherwise support hyung line.. Those same ARMYs do the same for vocal line as well, consistently. These are the ones getting called solos for having more than an ounce of common sense. 

     Choeaedol did a September birthday vote at the beginning of the month. The same situation occurred  with RM and JK. RM finished 5th. Fifth! Jungkook lost to Plave, so he was second. Now theoretically since Jungkook’s birthday is gone, we should have been voting on MNet for RM because his birthday is after JK’s. I guess we aren’t as organized a fandom as we used to be or as logical thinking. I don’t know. Just my opinion. So here we are. On MNet for this vote you get 12 votes per day. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be winning this outright. Don’t split the vote.

    Why is this important? Because it goes beyond birthday votes and if we can’t get it together for a simple birthday vote ad on an app then what does that mean for end of the year voting. End of the year voting is important because this is where daesang awards (group of the year, artist of the year, etc) are won and lost. We have so much competition and with fandoms often teaming up against BTS to win, buying votes on Twitter, cheating with VPN’s, and playing manipulative psychological games like guilt tripping (cosplaying as ARMY multis and saying they choose another group to vote for because BTS has enough awards and to let someone else win) we don’t need to be divided over this. 

      Last year there was an end of the year vote on Choeaedool that was for best male artist (I believe that was the category-best male artist or best male vocalist).  V, Jungkook, and Jimin were all nominated. After the first day or 2 of voting, Jimin was in the lead out of BTS, Jungkook and Tae were further down. It was obvious that we needed to put our votes behind Jimin to win. Kang Daniel was the main rival for first place. We kept telling ARMYs to vote for Jimin and not to split the vote because all 3 will lose if the vote is split. Same situation where making up the ground between 4th or 5th place takes more work than going from 2nd to 1st or just maintaining 1st on a daily basis with consistent votes. We lost to Kang Daniel because people didn’t listen and continued to split the vote all the way down to the last day. Being stubborn and not listening to more knowledgeable ARMY does nothing to help BTS and that’s why we are all here. Not for our individual egos (I hope so because I’m here for BTS). It hurt to watch an end of the year award slip away like that.                       

     In conclusion, let’s use these smaller voting opportunities to practice voting and for those newer to voting to get used to it before the end of the year awards come up. Before I joined ARMY online, I didn’t know anything about voting for awards. In the US we only have MTV awards and Billboard that are voted on (besides Nickelodeon -do they still do that?). Everything else is decided by an exclusive panel of judges. You don’t know who they are unless they say they are on a panel. This is why Grammy's are so all over the place because the people who consume the music aren’t the ones making the decisions on who they think should win or and have no say in who is nominated. With K-Pop it’s different and voting to win awards is ARMYs love language with BTS to show them that we are here for them. With BTS enlisted and not returning to us as a full team till the end of June 2025, it’s highly important now that we show our support. Awards help us do that, even smaller ones.

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.

ARMY Appreciation Post And Update

      It's been one long month. Somehow the weeks seem to have blended into one another inside the bubble of ARMY and social media. I want to thank all ARMY who have been in this with us from the beginning of this K-media bullying Yoongi fiasco. ARMY who fought relentlessly and who continue to protect all 7 of BTS members, thank you. If you streamed, reported accounts, told others when they posted and shared misinformation that they were wrong, if you sent positive notes to Yoongi on social media, shared the positive blog posts, streamed, bought songs, watched videos, made block lists, or anything positive that I missed you are seen and we thank you. Thank you Philippines ARMY for putting up the banners near Hybe and any international ARMY who helped with funding. Thanks ARMY who participated in block lists and got people on board with keeping clout chasers in check (more on that in a bit because I have some thoughts, you know I do).  

     I have been ARMY since 2018 but I didn't really become active in the social media part of the fandom until BTS did "My Universe" with Coldplay. I had a Twitter but it was for keeping up with politics and news and I followed a few Coldplayers on there. I used my personal Twitter and it turned into a stan account then. Things were cool for a while until things changed the deeper I got into the fandom there. I learned a lot but I also saw a lot that was really bad. I deleted my account this past spring and haven't rejoined. I probably never will. I'm not bothered about it because I am on Threads and IG. I don't do Tik Tok or Facebook for the same reasons (way too much toxicity in a lot of areas I don't want to be exposed to). So coming to Threads the first day the app launched and being there since the beginning has been interesting. 

     What Threads ARMY started as a safe space that was supposed to be non-toxic is being tested by haters and clout chasers. I honestly don't know anymore who is worse, antis or attention seekers. Now lets get one thing out of the way. We all want attention but the way we want it is different. I don't care about followers. I never did. I'm not getting paid on any of these social media platforms. I have 0 blue checks and I don't have 1000 IG followers so I don't get paid there or on Threads. The attention I like is how we all get hype on release days, how I have a post about "Are You Sure?" that has over 5k views in less than 24hrs (a lot for my small account). That means locals may watch the show and it means good things for BTS ratings on Disney+. Other so-called "ARMY" among us are clout chasing and making it look like they have good intentions and I am not here for it. With everything happening with Yoongi and with antis attacking the other member's accounts and MHJ still up to her nasty tricks I am not playing with anyone here. 

     When knowledgeable ARMYs tell you to delete tabloid drama just do it. Do not argue. I had someone show on my feed who posted something that was a lie from Koreaboo about Jimin's dad. This lie had been proven false with receipts over a week ago. I tried to tell her her info was wrong and not to spread it and she said basically to keep scrolling if you don't like it. I said 'OK bye' and blocked her. Then I see someone spreading old ass Samsung lies again. The Samsung thing about them deleting Yoongi was one insignificant Samsung account on Twitter that deleted one pic. It was not one of their major accounts. This got blown up by Koreaboo and turned into the lie that ARMY was boycotting Samsung. Where? I'm not boycotting them and no other ARMYs I follow are either. I have been Team Samsung since before BTS were ambassadors. I have been Team Samsung since some ARMY were in diapers. I was using Samsung before iPhone came out. No stupid post by someone who doesn't have the common sense or decency to fact check before rage posting is going to cause me to "go break my phone" so I can get an iPhone as someone posted. 

     NewJeans has a contract with Apple and shot one of their videos on iPhone. MHJ is their manager and has made it no secret that she wants to destroy BTS so that NewJeans can take their place at Hybe. There has been speculation that she is behind all the media bullying of Yoongi because she has a friend who wrote at least one of the malicious stories against him. What are these people who are quick to call for boycotts of anything going to do if it turns out that MHJ paid off the media to smear Yoongi and her girls represent iPhone? Are they going to jump to Google Pixel next? No shade to any of the companies because all of their phones are good. People just need to be conscious of what they are saying when they use their platforms to call for people to do something like this based on gossip and rumors.  Sorry not sorry but if you run with rumors and share without fact checking and share rumors out of anger as if they are facts then you deserve to be on a block list and you are not ARMY. Does anyone bother to think that if this blows up more Samsung might say they will actually go with others as ambassadors because ARMY is being a pain in the ass over nothing? I know contracts end and Samsung already has promos with TXT and Enhyphen. BTS likely has not done anything with Samsung that's on hold to be released later so any promotions that are already out featuring BTS members is probably all there is for now. NONE of the more major divisions of Samsung deleted any Suga pics. Only Samsung Germany on Twitter. Stop spreading misinformation. We have been over this. Fact check and ask before posting or sharing. 

     The thing with block lists needs to be addressed because the people sharing misinformation should be added to these lists too. If you are told that you have made a post that is misinformation and the person explains why and you like their post for a boost and don't delete, what that tells me is that you are here for clout and to boost your followers or likes and not here for BTS. How so? Some people join fandoms and use the group so they have something to post about and so they can have a community of followers, then use fake news and scandals from the group or artist to post about. They know there are those in the fandom who will seek out these gossip stories or seek out the drama and will feed that and they know their likes and follows will go up if they post something controversial. This happened this past week with fake ARMY posting Yoongi's photo lineup at the police station. As soon as ARMY found out that he was going to go to the police station to participate in this and we found out how humiliating it is intended to be for anyone accused of a crime, we posted Purple Ribbon Project posts and forewarned others that if they were seen posting video or pictures of Yoongi at the police station that they were going to be immediately blocked. So why then when they had at least two or three days of warning would they post anyway? For attention. All the ones who dared to post police line pictures with captions saying things like "Yoongi we stand with you" were particularly disrespectful. I need people to start using their brains. There are hundreds of thousands of pictures of BTS out there -official ones- and they chose the photo lineup to show support. One account posted this type of post today. Literally this morning. Days later! Be for real. This is all done for clout. I know I use that word a lot but that's what it is. They want a type of attention that's achieved by doing something performative rather than from doing something genuine. I guess that's the best way I can explain my use (and probably over use but I don't care) of the word. Good attention=ARMY sharing things they like, supportive photos of Yoongi in good times// Bad attention and clout chasing= "OMG can you believe this?" and proceeds to post Koreaboo screenshot and pics of Jimin's dad's restaurant taken out of context. This is the difference in normal attention and what I call attention seeking behavior. They will take negative attention because to them that's still attention and it also equates to anti behavior in my opinion.

     No one is forcing you to block anyone if you see these block list posts. Common sense says don't just block blindly and I would assume most of us have that. You should always go through the account and look for yourself if you don't mind seeing what you find there. Now I will warn you, there is an account on the block list that we encourage Twitter users to block. This account has graphic sexual content being used to bully a member of BTS and it is in the form of drawings and vile cartoons. We cannot post that kind of stuff and say "hey block this account here's why" and share screenshots of that on Threads. I didn't want to see it when it was sent to me and brought to my attention but now if I see that name on a block list I know exactly why it's there. We go through these accounts so you don't have to but you have the ultimate say in who you block. I was told that we have power and that people are going around blindly blocking people because of these block lists.  How do you know that? Are people going around bragging "hey I blindly block people no matter who made the block list." I doubt it. I think we struck a nerve with people who are scared to be blocked. Well that's just the way it is. Some people are annoying and I usually just mute before I block but these people doing actual harm to Yoongi by spreading his police line pictures and people libeling the names of family members of BTS and potentially getting themselves caught up in libelous company slander need to be blocked. Don't like block lists? Don't participate. Keep scrolling like I do when I see posts about things I disagree with. It's not that hard.

    The thing about social media is that it is all built around being social. Blocking keeps things off of the timeline whether you block or someone else blocks to keep it from you (protect you from it). On Threads, any and everything you respond to is shared with your followers. On a daily basis I see my moots congratulating people on random things, fighting the patriarchy, talking about other groups and fandoms they belong to, sharing Korean learning advice, etc and if anything doesn't click well with me I swipe it away or click "not interested' and keep it moving. If you see a post of something that belongs on a block list and you engage with the post guess what? Now that post is on all of your follower's feeds with your response to it. It's best to DM someone and ask them to remove a pic rather than to ask on the feed. I have done this too but now I am trying to do better. If you block it it's likely less people will see it. 

     I understand that some people might use block lists to try to get rid of people who haven't done anything wrong but frankly what's stopping people from going into a group chat and saying "Jane Doe is annoying lets DM all the ARMYs we can to block her"?  Absolutely nothing. If people block you you should just get over it because maybe they weren't for you and you weren't for them. It happens. I haven't seen anyone add anyone to the block lists I have participated in that didn't belong there and I have no control over what someone else decides to do on their end if they end up being inspired by something me and other ARMYs do. We already know solos have block lists on Twitter where they add OT7s -who cares? We don't want to see or deal with them anyway. Maybe some saw names listed on the block list then went to block them and didn't see the Yoongi photo line pics so they assumed it was a "witch hunt." That's because some deleted them when they found out they were being added to lists and blocked. You can tell if something has been deleted recently on Threads because a block sometimes shows up grayed out that says "Content Not Available." That something that was deleted isn't always something bad but in the case of these posts it was. I still ended up blocking all the ones like this on the list because they all had other things I didn't like on their pages on Threads or on their IG (yes I check there too before I block). There were toxic shippers making inappropriate comments about the boys sleeping arrangements in "Are You Sure?' and some with edited pictures shipping members with girl group members intended to start dating rumors. Unacceptable.

     I will do a post about Threads in the future because there is a lot to get into about how things work there as opposed to how things work on Twitter. Lots of new people joined this month that are coming from Twitter as ARMY (or fake ARMY seeking attention) and we have to clean up our space because it is definitely not how it was even two or three months ago. We will be OK though. ARMY always pulls through and this too shall pass. Great work this month on protecting and showing love to all members and putting shields up to protect Yoongi. We will be fine and the guys will be fine. This too shall pass. 

Apobangpo! <3