Fan Culture: The Good and the Bad.

As humans, the feeling of belonging is something we seek out and crave. We all long to feel apart of something bigger than ourselves. There are thousands of belief systems to prove it. Whether you are religious, believe in fate or are part of a fan club or university society we all hope to feel accepted within a group of people. We do not like to feel isolated or that no one understands us.

K-Pop fan cultures are probably some of the most intense of all fandom cultures. People in the K-Pop community even have fandom names to use as identifiers, with one word people are able to have a preconceived image of you, they will either understand, relate to you or use that image against you. However having an identifier can also make you feel like part of a family.

I’m multifandom but I can somewhat understand the mentality of only liking one group as that is what I was like when I was younger. It saddens me that people still believe that by liking and supporting more than one group that you're somehow un loyal or not a true fan.

K-Pop has gained a reputation for harbouring some of the most obsessive fans. As someone who is at their happiest when at the height of an obsession, I’m not ashamed to admit that I am an obsessive fan. However, there are various forms of obsession. For these purposes I will refer to them as toxic and non toxic.

An example of non toxic obsession, would be being very interested in K-Pop whilst also having other interests and passions. Non toxic fans respect the artists as real people, who are entitled to privacy and know they don't deserve to be groped at while walking through the airport. They also usually respect that not everyone has the same taste in groups and don't spread hate.

People with toxic obsessions however are so blinded by their obsession they don’t treat the idols they love with the respect any human being deserves. They think because they are famous they are entitled to know every detail of their life, invade their privacy, stalk them, invade their personal space and make them very uncomfortable in many ways.

K-Pop fan culture has a lot of stigma surrounding it. Something often perceived as negative / annoying by people outside of the K-Pop fan culture (even by people in the culture) is the screaming fangirls. If we are being honest, where there are bands that people become invested in, there will be fans passionate enough to scream for them.

K-Pop is very international and internet based so it's quite easy to find someone with an idol as their display picture in completely unrelated parts of the internet. Twitter and tumblr are especially K-Pop friendly and some fan accounts can become annoying to non-K-Pop fans on the platform. A lot of fans also often group together to trend hateful hashtags attacking other groups for no legitimate reason. In addition to this most K-Pop fans will also be automatically assumed to be koreaboos.

I'm not denying the existence of negatives within the community, only saying I wish people wouldn't judge an entire community based only on its negatives such as 'annoying fans'.

The main point I wanted to make with this piece is that, often fan culture can deter people from a whole number of things and prevent them from seeing the talent, passion and hard work behind all the fans, toxic and non toxic.

Any instance of fans preventing someone from discovering something they love saddens me.

Moreover as someone in the K-Pop fandom, I know the positives largely outweigh the negatives. Talent. Hard Work. Passion. Three of the biggest reasons I stay in the fandom on the days the drama gets to me.

As well as having people to cheer on, just like any football fan with a passion for seeing their team succeed.

Kaitlyn.

#blog #Kpop #fanculture #obsession