Kpop Online
The internet made waves amongst fandoms and fan cultures, but social media completely changed the way fans interact with their proposed idols.
Websites like fan-hosted forums, blogs, Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok on the Western front, Korean communities such as Naver, DCInside, Pann, TheQoo, and Instiz and messaging apps like KakaoTalk, Line, and Telegram provide an environment for fans, making it easier for them to cultivate communities that provide information and an atmosphere of togetherness. These websites feature fan-made content including photo
and video edits, discussion posts and polls, and distribution of idol-related information like schedules and television appearances. Added into the mix is paid services like WeVerse and Bubble, where fans can ‘experience’ messaging with their ‘ultimate bias’, receiving chats, audios, pictures and videos for a monthly fee. This further perpetuates the intimate (seemingly both platonic and romantic) relationship vibe that Kpop companies strive to achieve.
Additionally, the existence of fansites— a concept mostly unique to Kpop— can be found majorly on Twitter and Naver blogs, but sometimes on Instagram, too. Fansites
are run by fans of specific members, sharing photos and videos taken with expensive DSLRs, and their Twitter and Instagram accounts sometimes garner thousands of fans
. Fansites also emanate the impression that they’ve veterans and somewhat ‘all-knowing’ amongst fans; they’re privy to information before it is released, including idol schedules and appearances, they seem to be at every public— and sometimes private— event, and they have an endless stream of money to accommodate this lifestyle. Fansites may even create and sell merch, a separate entity from official merchandise, comprised of their photos in the form of photocards, photo books, postcards and the like; items like fans, keychains, phone cases, etc featuring photos or drawings of the idol; some even go as far as making dolls with changeable clothing
. With that being said, in recent years, fansites have caught some flack for exhibiting what is often interpreted as sasaeng/사생팬 behaviors.
Amongst Kpop fans, websites like Tumblr and Facebook were a hub for communities looking to share content, but somewhere along the lines, these sites experienced a ‘downfall’, so to speak, being left behind like ghost towns. As of August 2022, there has been a 25% decrease of monthly active Korean users on Facebook. Younger generations (born between the years of 1980 and the early 2000s) are seeking more modern applications and websites, like Tiktok, meaning the remaining users are aged around their 40s and 50s9. Like Facebook, the microblogging platform, Tumblr, has experienced an egress of users. This is largely explained with the website’s acquisition by Yahoo!, instigating their decline as websites like Twitter moved forward, innovation-wise10. Yahoo! subsequently sold their ownership to Verizon in 2017. Fan communities left in droves as Verizon began implementing censorship rules that left many blogs out of commission, with 30% of its user base leaving the platform within weeks of Verizon taking over11
. Of course, Verizon did not stick around to watch the fire it started, and sold the website to Wordpress within a handful of months. Nevertheless, Wordpress kept the rule that sent users away. Contrarily, the platforms Twitter and Tiktok have become a hub for Kpop fans, even though the latter also prohibits adult content. Between the years of 2019 and 2020, there were “over 6.1 billion conversations about Kpop in that time, engagement’s only growing on Twitter”
12, proving its importance to Kpop fans as means of conversation
with not only other fans, but with their actual idols on their official (often company-led group) accounts. Similarly, Tiktok showed similar success with Kpop content being shared “to more than 97 million in September 2021”13 and idols making more and more personal accounts
to share their own contents.