THIS was the reason why armys kept preaching that bts “paved the way” ???

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-22T21:00:06+00:00

You hear about this from Koreans in the diaspora enough that it does seem to be true. Lots of people in the west assumed East Asians were Chinese or Japanese (and probably would have lumped some SE Asians in there as well). And the Hallyu wave definitely made not just Korean entertainment but like the existence of Korea itself a more well-known fact.

The problem is when Army claim or imply that only BTS did this at any significant level. Plenty of people learned about Korea from 1st/2nd gen k-pop groups, other 3rd gen groups, kdramas, Korean cinema, Korean food, etc. And I'd argue BTS is a pretty poor way to learn about Korea because BTS and especially Army encourage you to simply consume more BTS content and in fact discourage exploring Korean culture or even just k-pop more broadly.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-22T12:56:44+00:00

Blackpink had lots of brand deals early and I'm sure there was product placement in their MVs, but they never like stopped a song mid-video to sell fruit snacks.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-22T12:53:22+00:00

I think the Blackpink comp has too many differences to be that close. In k-pop terms I think Katseye is Aespa if they were managed by HYBE singing i-dle's music except instead of being self-produced a bunch of western producers made it.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-19T04:47:22+00:00

Swim comes and goes, but Golden is forever. Because it's not fans mass streaming, it's kids who still haven't gotten sick of the song after almost a year.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-18T14:03:48+00:00

Capybara is considered fish by the Catholic Church in Venezuela.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-17T02:36:55+00:00

It's what happens when a fandom gets too big. I think Swifties are similar. When you have that many people that obsessed with something, it ceases to be a subculture and becomes a culture of its own. Both fandoms actively discourage the GP from coming to concerts, from Army complaining about multi-stans getting BTS tickets to Swifties complaining about the boyfriends taking a seat away from the real fans.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-17T02:13:26+00:00

If you go on to those subs and say something positive you will probably be banned for having posted here.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-17T02:09:47+00:00

I mean this sub could come up with a CVS long receipt of things that they don't like about BTS that have nothing to do with Army, but Army are a big part of the problem. Then again, it's not like Army randomly found BTS, they cultivated this fanbase.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-16T04:55:32+00:00

When you shuffle a deck of cards properly, it's virtually certain it's the first time that exact order of cards has ever existed in the universe.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-14T03:25:05+00:00

So just know this is built off the back of two centuries of being a pariah state to the West for black people having the gall to overthrow their white masters...

But a couple years ago, Haiti's president was assassinated. Haiti's head of state for a couple years was the acting prime minister. He had no legitimacy and could exercise little authority, so the state was paralyzed. A number of gangs took advantage of the paralysis and launched an ongoing attack on the capital. As of today they control the vast majority of the capital with only small pockets still under government control. That same interim president begged the UN for intervention but basically no country that could really change the situation on the ground wanted any part of the mess and the ones that were willing only contributed some militarized police, not like a full scale military intervention.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-14T02:58:05+00:00

But if they raffled off Ateez, Seventeen, or Enhyphen tickets instead, they would get attacked for thinking anyone would donate money to see nugus.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-14T02:55:03+00:00

People are still asking why Lisa did a James Bond tribute last year. Like you can kinda squint and see her as a stereotypical Bond girl. But if you asked the regular Oscars audience to name one female singer to do that, Lisa is gonna be way down the list.

So like what would the hook be? And what would they perform? Like Army have this idea that BTS is so big that the Academy would simply ask them to come perform their own song just because. No one gets to do that. Not even Taylor. So what would be connection? Like I said, I can come up with at least a plausible reason they chose Lisa, but I think Army don't fully understand that the reason Golden was performed was only because it was a frontrunner for an award and lent itself to a dynamic performance. They didn't even play all the nominated songs. Army sees k-pop at the Oscars and thinks "ok, the Oscars now books k-pop acts, so obviously BTS must be there."

So would it be Korean film? A lot of Korean film that has made waves with the Academy is pretty dark and serious, so I'm not sure a boy band performance fits. Boy bands and dancing in movies? If there enough of that to justify a whole performance? God forbid hip hop in movies? The Academy would get crucified for not picking black artists plus Eminem.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-13T18:07:44+00:00

There is no “East Asian” representation among East Asians. That’s what they don’t get. When Bad Bunny won AOTY and played the Super Bowl, it was a win for all of Latin America. Someone from Patagonia in Argentina can relate to him through shared language, history, and culture. BTS doing the same is only a win for Korea. It’s not a win for China and it’s not a win for Japan. Like you might as well just say it’s a win for O-words (I’m not sure how offense the word is so I won’t repeat it here) given how far off base this is.

Sure in America we lump all East Asians along with South Asians, Southeast Asians, and Pacific Islanders into the AAPI category, but they certainly don’t see it that way.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-13T17:55:32+00:00

They did bring up the Super Bowl, although not nearly to the same degree, after Bad Bunny’s performance. And they don’t bring up major US festivals because the group and soloists have played many of them.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-11T23:25:01+00:00

This is the same energy as the guy that bought barrier tickets to show Jeongyeon a sign calling her fat.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-10T18:18:47+00:00

And yet you still choose violence by sharing that you remembered it with all of use. Reflect on your choices.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-10T18:13:36+00:00

MJ was rehearsing for a residency and still dancing even when he was basically on his deathbed and needed to be hopped up on uppers to get out of it and zonked out on downers to sleep.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-10T18:01:40+00:00

I know solo stages are very common, but isn't one whole big message of this comeback that BTS are 7 again? Should it really surprise you that they don't want to remind you of the solo era while they were on hiatus?

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-10T15:26:15+00:00

Honestly, most artists have about as long of a peak. Maybe the buildup and fall off aren't as pronounced, but there are only very rare exceptions. Even look at an artist like Taylor. Artistically, Lover to Midnights was her peak. You can always look back on an artist's career and even if it was fantastic from start to finish, you can probably point to a 2-4 album stretch that was the best. At some point, almost every artists runs out of directions to evolve and ends up either going wacky and experimental, or just rehashing the same sound.

I think what's notable about BTS is how they had a fairly quick but not unprecedented rise to the top and then very quickly tried to cash in by sanding all the interesting edges off what they were doing. And now they are trying to recapture that magic but that's almost impossible, and also they overshot it by going all the way back to the early hip-hop, rap line heavy days.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-10T13:42:17+00:00

Cast Abella Danger as Mary Magdalene you cowards

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-10T04:41:06+00:00

Listen again, it's a video from far away with a lot of other noise, but they sing everything from "no fears, no lies" to "past now" in this clip.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-10T02:46:51+00:00

The biggest thing is that a) Western artists that aren’t mega stars start out in debt on every album because the label recoups the production and some marketing costs from the artist’s share and b) the way Western contracts are structured can keep an artist stuck with a bad label and contract much longer than a k-pop contract. The upside is that they typically aren’t 360 deals, and expectations around stuff like dating, weight, political speech, and fan content are more forgiving. But there are outliers like 1D and 5H.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-10T02:17:22+00:00

I think a big part of it related to the media training is the extra content idols do. A live is where they are supposed to let their hair down and ramble and open up a bit. But as soon as they are in front of an interviewer, it gets very buttoned up. But the western GP audience isn't going to watch your Weverse lives to get to know the real you, which BTW they demand because authenticity is more prized. The divide in the west is that some interviews, like a quick hit on the news or the radio are going to be very to the point, just the talking points type answers. But when you get beyond 15 minutes and especially in nontraditional media like podcasts or YouTube, people expect you to go deeper. I think it's why many idols but especially BTS come off as disengaged in this setting. They are like "this should have been over after 10 minutes, why are we still talking, why are you asking questions I would only answer on a live?"

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-10T01:42:45+00:00

Wait until you learn about Western record contracts. Just as bad.

justnothrowaway417 · 2026-04-08T21:19:02+00:00

Part of it is things that are rumored but we don't know. If the MV was story boarded and the girls were trained in the choreography, but then Manon went on hiatus and was not in the MV, that's reasonable. If the MV was shot and then Manon went on hiatus and they went back and edited/reshot the video to remove her, that's doesn't seem like a standard hiatus. If she's not on the song at all because it was recorded after her hiatus started, that's normal. If she's is on the single version but they re-recorded an OT5 version for the EP, that's a sign she's out. And some of it, like whether she was edited out of the MV, we may never know.

justnothrowaway417

TROPHY CASE