#famously hakyeon is the most nevernude but also he's arguably the hottest member of vixx and that's POWER

[sanstropfremir]

"like the whole bts thing as parasocial friends instead of boyfriends is genius but oh god the damage it id" can you elaborate on this? idk if i wasnt into kpop back then or what but what happened 😅

oh there wasn't actually like, an 'announcement' about it or anything lol. so basically bts' whole new marketing strategy post their failure to hit big as a hiphop group was that they were self-produced 'anti' idols with an emphasis on 'loving and accepting yourself' and 'making a supportive community'. which, on the surface, those are not bad things. kpop fan communities are often support systems for those involved, and you should try to at least be neutral about yourself. and there has been a distinct lack of community and community building in the western world + with the age of the internet and people are desperate for it, even if it's not something that people are cognizant of, so just on paper, it isn't a horrible idea. HOWEVER: when that push for community comes directly from a company, the company and the community get capitalistically intertwined and there becomes no way to separate the two. plus, it makes an extremely toxic community, as we've all seen, because the foundation of it is based on capitalism and consumption, while simultaneously hiding the fact that it's based on consumption, because fans will do overtime defending the company because the company pushes the community branding.

the other big part of this is pushing them as 'authentic' and 'real'. obvs this is straight up just not true, BUT it heavily appealed to western and intl fans who on the surface don't really understand the kpop model (it's also the western pop model but marketing™️) and who had orientalist views that kpop is 'manufactured' by the company and therefore 'not real music'. by presenting bts as these anti-idol figures that are 'fighting against the industry' (this was a big part as well), you hit a tonne of the demographics that wouldn't be caught by typical boy group marketing and it's precisely engineered to catch western fans. and a lot of those fans are not going to be familiar with how the industry works, and because bts' content is numerous and separated from the industry, it creates a closed loop where those fans never interact with any other groups' content and feed back into 'the community' perpetually.

also they pretty notably have done very little 'racy' content compared to other groups of their age. esp since they started doing their western push they've been pretty buttoned up, which i'm not gonna begrudge anyone who has personal boundaries about that kind of thing, but it IS unusual to family-friendly brand an entire group like that, which further enforces the "they're your friends" narrative.