The year is 2018. The newly-opened laundromat opened a block away from my apartment building, and it was my turn to do laundry with my mother on this cold, winter day in February. It was during the week, so the laundromat was empty that afternoon. As my mom and I waited for our clothes to be done in the dryer, the owner of the laundromat decided to put on music videos of various Asian artists. It wasn’t until this one video came on the screen of 9 girls in a very colorful setting. I wasn’t sure what language they were singing, but the song was super catchy. After seeing the name of the song appear on the TV, I learned that the cute and catchy song playing was called “Knock Knock” by TWICE. TWICE; I feel like I heard of the name before… After listening to a couple of other songs from the group play on the TV screen, I was interested to learn more about the group and see what other songs they had out. Me, thinking that “Knock Knock” was their most recent song, I learned that even though this song was only released a year ago, it was their 3rd most recent song to date. These girls are working hard, huh? I went home and decided to do some more research on the group, and from there, well, the rest was K-pop history.
Until K-pop became a part of my own history.
Hi, my name is Liz, and I’m here to explain to you all about the stages of being a K-pop stan, as told by someone who was once a K-pop stan herself.
The first stage: the discovery.
Discovering K-pop is always something exciting, especially if you are not naive to its origin country, South Korea. Sure, you’ve heard of Spanish music and other music genres related to their native countries, but K-pop songs have a different appeal. They’re colorful, they have young and talented artists, they’re all gorgeous and fashionable, and if you were lucky enough to discover K-pop in its later generations, you would even have some English lyrics to sing along to just so that you had their songs stuck in your head all day. K-pop in a whole has something that many of us (especially millennials) miss in music: successful boy and girl groups. Our first taste of it was with groups such as The Spice Girls, TLC, Destiny’s Child, Boyz II Men, N*SYNC; the list literally goes on. It’s something that western music hasn’t mastered since it’s very cringe but highly successful Fifth Harmony days a decade ago. To see these different groups live their lives as one and to treat each other more like family than band mates gives us that feeling that we experienced with groups we grew up listening to.
Plus, these K-pop groups were young, fresh, which makes us relate to the genre even more, and yes, even in older generations when K-pop debuted artists in their late teens. The genre as a whole is fascinating, and with something fascinating, you learn more about it.
The second stage: the research.
You search on Spotify for the group you’re currently into to listen to their discography and to your surprise, they release new music every 3- 6 months. What? You’re trying to tell me that these groups can release multiple albums a year? We were lucky if we got a new album from our favorite western artist once every two years. You have a lot of music to catch up on now. You’re vibing, you’re putting songs on repeat, and now you’re interested to see if these songs have music videos to them. So, you go on YouTube and before you know it, you are down the rabbit hole of music videos, funny “iconic” moments of the group, and the infamous “Guide to [insert group name here]”, and now you’re sitting there watching a 30 minute video about each of the members in said group. You get to know the group and its members a lot more, and now YouTube recommends you videos of music videos from other K-pop groups; mine was BlackPink. At this point, you’re well diverted in a couple of groups thanks to YouTube and the K-pop encyclopedia, K-Profiles.
The third stage: Bias choosing.
There are two types of people in this world: the people that like every single member of a group equally and think everyone should be treated equally… and then you have those who only really like one person of a group, which is something K-pop encourages listeners to do. Pick a bias, but that member’s version of merch, album, and anything that is member specific to you bias. Maybe you like the main vocalist of a group. Maybe you gravitate towards the rapper of the group. Perhaps you are always rooting for the underdog of the group, the member who doesn’t really have a set position, but is still super talented. You start to realize that this bias is now one of your favorite K-pop artists, so you start watching content of the group just to watch your bias. You coo and you smile, calling him/her cute and catching all the Korean lingo that you hear them say. This group is now your favorite K-pop group of them all. You know their discography by heart. You’ve watched every video and variety show of this group to exist online with English subtitles. If the group was created through an “American Idol-esque” talent show, you watched every episode of that. You know each members MBTI and birthdays and ages and even blood type. Listening to their music isn’t enough anymore.
The fourth stage: The identity crisis.
Annyeonghaseyo! Jeoneun Liz-imnida! You think you could learn Korean on a little green bird app so that you’re able to understand your K-pop idols without the subtitles. Yes, you also learned that they are called idols instead of artists. You’re starting to pick up little Korean phases by binge-watching all of your favorite idols livestreams and online content, and you start to use them in every day conversation because it’s different. At this point, the K-pop interest you had is now slowly becoming a part of your identity. You only talk about Korean idols and K-pop, your content on social media is just a K-pop dumping ground of stuff, and your playlists on your Spotify mainly consist of K-pop music. You’re in this weird phase in life where you feel like this is the most authentic you’ve ever been with yourself, but feeling as if liking this specific genre of music is not age appropriate for you. You watch other K-pop stans online and notice that they not only listen to their favorite groups, but they buy their albums. I mean, we bought our favorite artist’s albums when we were growing up; this is just an extension of that really! You find an album that you really like and you either order it on Amazon or eBay since those are the only places you know that sell anything and everything; including K-pop albums.
The fifth stage: The K-pop collecting community.
You’ve bought every single album and version of each album for your favorite groups and notice that each one comes with a Photocard. You keep the small stack of photocards until you realize that the other ones that come in that particular album are much cuter, or, they are of your bias. You really want that card so you can put it behind your clear phone case and show the entire world who your K-pop bias is. You look online and notice that someone on social media is looking to trade the card you want for the card you already have on hand. You decide to open up an Instagram account and put a picture of your bias’ face as your profile picture. Your username has either the words ‘sale’, ‘collect’ or ‘trade’ on it. You put up the cards you want to sell or trade for with 500 hashtags, hoping someone has the card you’re looking for and is looking for the one you have on hand. You are now officially a K-pop collector: you create templates of all of the cards you need to obtain this collection, you buy trading card sleeves and binders to store your photocards in once you get them and yes, never let them see the light of day again, and now you are actively looking up the hashtags to see if you can go on the hunt for your most wanted photocards. You’ve picked up the lingo of the community, you’ve put yourself out there so that other collectors know who you are, and this is possibly the easiest way you can make a group of friends ever. You feel as if you finally belong in a community and feel seen.
You finally feel like yourself, until you realize that being a K-pop stan isn’t really an identity factor.
The sixth stage: The toxicity of every community.
You find yourself noticing a couple of bad things in the community you confidently called home for awhile. You’ve grown into it; you’re considered a veteran in the community, and everyone knows who you are or you’ve interacted with at least most of the community you’re a part of. Of course, this aspect applies to smaller fandoms within the K-pop community, unless you’re well-known in different fandoms; a multi-stan as they put it. You start to notice things just not being the same anymore; the appeal is losing its shiny exterior. You find it hard to spend money on things like photocards and albums, but you still do because you haven’t quite let that go yet. You find yourself not trading or selling things anymore; you just toss out anything and everything that isn’t selling. You still hold onto your presence in the community just to say you’re in the community, but you find yourself coming around once every comeback or whenever you are desperate to sell some things. You’re starting to view the community in the way many outsiders would: obnoxious. Obsessed. Delusional. You can say these things because you were also once obnoxious. Obsessed. D E L U S I O N A L.
At this point, you know more about the community and understand that the industry’s tactic is to make fans because that idols personally care and love them; of course with the cost of buying thousands of dollars worth of albums to even be considered the chance for a minute and 30 seconds of screen-time with your favorite group. You understand that K-pop is mainly harmless, but so harmful for those that lack the skills to be aware of these industry tactics. At this point, you realize that K-pop is just another genre of music, and there’s nothing truly special about it besides the fact that a community was built around it for it seamlessly being ‘different’.
The seventh stage: The casual K-pop listener.
If you made it this far, you might find yourself spending your money on other things that bring you joy. You might listen to a couple of K-pop songs here and there, but you don’t find yourself buying anything K-pop related. You don’t really talk about K-pop in the way you used to. You lost contact with those who you call friends in the community simply because you’ve realized that outside of K-pop, you really didn’t have much in common. You either delete your K-pop based social media accounts or make them inactive. The posters of the different K-pop groups you loved slowly come down from your walls. You begin to put your K-pop albums away in the closet and throw out any duplicates of albums you were holding onto just because. Your collection becomes smaller or it’s non-existing these days.
The last stage: The former K-pop stan.
You reflect back on your days being an active K-pop stan. It makes you cringe a bit, but you can’t deny the fact that it came at a part in your life when you needed that. You knew that part of your life was important and needed in order to be where you’re currently at and where you’re going. You feel like you’re losing a huge part of yourself; long gone are the days when you introduced yourself as a K-pop collector. So what are your interests and hobbies? Well, shit; I don’t even know. Some days, you grieve the days where you got excited for comebacks from your favorite K-pop artists with the friends you made in the community. Let’s call a spade a spade: you grieve the loss of your identity.
The chapter that you were so afraid of ending one day has come to an end, and like with everything else in life, you learn to move forward with life simply by letting time pass by.
Hi, my name is Liz, and I am a former K-pop stan.
Letters From Liz. 