Almost every single BTS fan I know got into BTS because of some experience of grief. I don’t think too many outsiders know about this particular aspect of ARMY. People get into BTS when we lose someone, when we lose a relationship, or when we are disappointed in the world in some other way.
BTS’s music, stories, and lyrics are about grief. Their most popular song, Spring Day, the one that ARMY charted after all seven members entered mandatory military service to remind them that we are always listening, is about the Sewol Ferry tragedy.
The ferry sank on April 16 2014, drowning 304 passengers onboard. Most of the passengers had been high school students. The ferry had been overloaded by the company due to greed. After the tragedy, the government censored attempts to publicly mourn the deceased and protests related to the injustice of what had happened.
Spring Day is BTS’s most popular song. ARMY remembers the song as part of BTS’s Wings era. Through the Wings and HYYH eras, BTS talks to young people and tells them that they never go through their struggles alone.
Many people get into BTS because of grief, because we lost someone or something. A grief teacher once told me that the best way to move through grief is to move with music and voice with other people in community. ARMY is that community for many of us. The best part of ARMY is the community. We write stories for each other, draw art for each other, and we even make tea for one another when we are waiting in a long line. Most BTS related events are not put on by a multibillion dollar company but are fanmade. Fans make games, make jewelry, and give little gifts to each other at every single BTS related event. ARMY is one of the most caring spaces I’ve ever encountered.
Much of the success of BTS has to do with ARMY. In her book BTS, Art Revolution Jiyoung Lee studies BTS’s path towards fame. She found that it was ARMY who broke down the fanbase into segments and assigned each segment a certain number of radio plays. Not only did ARMY organize and mobilize for BTS songs to be played on the radio, the fans also rewarded stations with listens by streaming en masse and even buying gifts. Due to ARMY’s hard efforts, BTS songs started to rank in the west.
You can promote a thing all you want but if the fans aren’t there then they’re not there. In BTS’s case, the fans were there.
BTS always recognized ARMY back. The members gave handmade gifts to ARMY, shared inside jokes with us, and sometimes even showed up for fan events. It was like they acknowledged the fans as a community who shares love and pain, joy and courage.
Something horrible has been happening. Since October, Israel has been bombarding Gaza.
The first time I saw signs of ARMY in Gaza was when rescuers found Taehyung photocards in the rubble very early on in October. Tears came to my eyes. I had seen that photocard of Taehyung before, have one of Yoongi from the same photoshoot on my wall. Here was someone who is the same as me who wasn’t here anymore.
The bombing hasn’t stopped. ARMY has been talking about the killing of Fatima Galib Mansour recently. Fatima, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike with her family, was an ARMY who loved art. She had gotten her friend into BTS so that they could enjoy it together. How many of us got into BTS because of a friend? Because we wanted to share their joy and love?
Now that friend no longer has Fatima, the friend who was their first connection to BTS, the friend they chatted about which member they liked best with, the one who first showed them BTS’s songs.
Fans have been trying to boycott HYBE, the company behind BTS, for a long time. Since HYBE incorporated and bought Ithaca Holdings, appointing Scooter Braun as CEO of HYBE America, fans have been trying to get Braun fired from his position. Recently, those efforts have been amped up. Fans have parked vans outside of HYBE headquarters, are mass emailing, and are mobilizing to try to get our voices heard. Braun is a vocal supporter of Israel—the occupation that killed Fatima.
What kind of company, responsible for managing musicians, actively supports an occupation that kills its own fans?
Fans are usually taken for granted. We do a lot of labor, promoting BTS and making art about them. Fans don’t own any of the labor that we do because we are fans. We do it out of love for BTS and for each other. Fans are okay with not being compensated for our labors of love but we do not want to support a company that kills us. A company is made up of people and embodies the values of its leadership. As long as Scooter Braun is a part of HYBE, HYBE is a company that supports an occupation who kills ARMY.
A lot of us got into BTS because we lost someone. In ARMY, we danced and sang in a community. That community was built with someone’s labor. The labor of BTS members themselves and the staff around them were poured into the project but fan labor has always existed side by side with BTS’s own efforts. How could BTS and ARMY, these spaces built for art and healing through a decade of hard work, be entrusted into the hands of someone who supports a genocide that is killing BTS’s own fans?
Fans are drawn to BTS because of the group’s messages about grief, about injustice, and about friendship. Now, Palestinian ARMY are dying. This is an injustice. These are our friends. I know that BTS wrote Spring Day because they care when young people are killed by unjust systems. And, still, fans are dying. A manager is someone who is supposed to manage the relationship between a celebrity and their fans. For BTS and ARMY, who is in charge of managing the relationship between young people who are dying and those who claim to speak for them?
If you are an ARMY, please consider following ARMY4Palestine which is a Palestinian run account advocating for the rights of Palestinians, ARMY, and human dignity.
