Random Storytime: How a cute idol turned me from an “anti” to a lifetime stan😔🎀

Okay, so let me just preface this by saying, I got into K-pop when I was really young, and I’m definitely not proud of some of the naive decisions I made back then. That being said, let’s get into it lol. I was introduced to K-pop when I was 13 by a friend, and one of the first groups I got into was BTS, along with EXO, SNSD, and TWICE. I was really into BTS, like obsessed. Blood, sweat and tears had just dropped and everyone was positively losing their minds. My bias at the time was Jimin, and I was honestly starstruck in a pretty intense (and not entirely normal) way. As I got more and more sucked into the fandom, as most fans do, I came across shipping. One popular ship at the time was Jimin and Seulgi from Red Velvet, especially after their joint performance of "In the Name of Love" with other main dancers at one of the year-end award shows. I didn’t take this well at all. In the most immature way possible, I started feeling irrationally hateful toward Seulgi and Red Velvet as a whole. Dumb as hell, I know. I never spread any hate publicly, but in my head, I just couldn’t stand them. I never engaged in any fanwars or did those like hate tweets against artists, just silently despised them. Fast forward a bit. While I was never a fan of just one group (I was a multistan and watched tons of variety shows featuring all kinds of idols), one day I happened to watch Red Velvet’s Weekly Idol episode. I think I was bored or maybe ran out of TWICE and BTS content, because I’d avoided RV like the plague up until that point. But I watched it. And that was the turning point. They were so funny and sweet, and the one person I really didn’t like, Seulgi, ended up doing a cute little aegyo bit. My heart lurched. She was so freaking adorable. Like, imagine being so cute that you turn a part-time hater into a full-on stan. I still remember it was a little bit where she stretched her hands out, and did like a little “gimme gimme” motion, and it was just omg. It was almost like another part of my brain was unlocked lmao. Aegyo is life changing and I will not stand for any of the new K-pop stans claiming it’s childish lmao. It’s so absurd but it did its job. I was officially charmed. I started liking all of them, listened to their songs, and fell in love with their music and personalities. Their concepts were so peak, and the music was hypnotising. They quickly became one of my ultimate groups, and my bias is now Irene. They’re still one of the groups I love most. Looking back, it’s honestly hilarious. It just shows how immature fan behavior can be when you’re young. That experience taught me not to take fanwars seriously anymore, because now that I see any fan war on my TL, I just go wow it’s just a bunch of kids arguing online. submitted by /u/Ausonia7 [link] [comments]