Sometimes I honestly wish I never stanned BTS. I know many might judge this opinion, but I need to get it off my chest. There are times I wish I’d never gotten into K-pop at all. Wherever I go, BTS seems to be hated for no real reason. I started stanning them in 2018 and was shamed by classmates who said they "looked gay." As BTS got more popular in my country, the hate only got worse. People mocked them constantly, especially on Instagram. In 2019, I joined Twitter hoping to connect with other K-pop fans and army. At first, it was great. BTS posted often and the community felt active. But things changed once they opened personal Instagram accounts and stopped posting on Twitter. I took a 2-year break from Twitter for studies, and when I came back during their enlistment period, the space felt unrecognizable. I saw horrible, nasty posts about BTS getting thousands of likes. It wasn’t even constructive criticism, just pure hatred (no it was not even clapback) It was especially bad during the whole HYBE vs. Min Hee-jin situation and when Suga fell off his scooter. The comments were brutal, and it drained me mentally until I deleted the app. Army really messed up by getting involved in the Hybe vs. Newjeans drama. That gave haters a free excuse to target BTS. While some hate toward the fandom is understandable due to toxic fans spreading misogyny and hate toward other groups, the amount of hate Bts gets as a group isn’t justified. The actions of certain fans shouldn’t be a reason to target and dehumanize the artists themselves. And let’s be real some K-pop stans (especially SM and YG stans) don’t even hate bts just because of army, but out of some deep-rooted jealousy or rivalry. After that, I avoided most K-pop spaces except for following members on Instagram. I thought of joining the kpop and bts subs here in reddit thinking it was more balanced. People had fair opinions and didn’t seem as toxic(lol) I thought maybe this is where I can be part of a healthier community. But then I came across btssnark. I didn’t know what “snark” even meant I thought it was a fan space, but it was filled with hatred. People called it a “criticism space,” but that was just a cover. It was vile. What made it worse was how others defended it: “Other groups had snark subs too” or “It’s run by army, so it’s fine.” I get it toxic army behavior has hurt people. But that doesn’t justify the normalized hate Bts receives now. Btssnark has more followers than any other snark sub, yet people still claim BTS isn’t the most hated group. Meanwhile, whenever anything happens in the K-pop community, BTS becomes the punching bag. I’ve even seen situations where another group does something culturally inappropriate, but the top comments are about BTS. Like... what? Stanning BTS has honestly become exhausting. Sometimes I really wish I never got into them. But at the end of the day, seeing them still brings me joy. The problem was never BTS it’s the toxic side of K-pop fandoms that made it so hard. And that’s the saddest part. submitted by /u/thekiteinthesky [link] [comments]
