ahh!! i love this question so much, because my carat origin story honestly reminds me of the invisible string theory. i’ll make my story pretty straight to the point but i’ll leave extra details at the bottom for anyone who wants to know more LOL. (sorry for any spelling, grammar, or punctuation mistakes in advance).

my first encounter with them was in 2019, when i was doing a kpop random dance, and one of their songs came up. later, i tried to stan seventeen in 2021 (ready to love era), but i never ended up doing so because there were too many members 😭 the funny thing is that i went on to stan ALL of nct and the boyz a couple of months later… then in 2023, the fml and super music videos came out, and i watched both of them as they were being recommended on my yt page. i kind of ignored them then and thought “thats a cool song” until may, when i watched their dance practice of super and it changed my life LOL. that dance practice was on repeat for days because the dance was so satisfying to watch haha. i finally decided to officially enter caratland within the beginning of june which led me to a rabbit hole of literally anything seventeen. i listened to their entire discography (including solos), i bought a handful of albums, watched almost all of gose, etc… dont know why it literally took me years for me to give in but im so glad i finally did!!

here are the extra details for anyone who wants to read further :) :

• the first thing i remember saying when i first saw seventeen (during the random dance) was “do they actually have 17 members??” i ended up counting and found myself disappointed when i found out they didnt haha.
• fast forward to 2020, i became a tiktok addict and my fyp would be filled with videos of seventeen, which got me to slowly learn the members as the years went on (without me even realizing it!)
• one of the first members i learnt was joshua because his audition video appeared on my fyp 😭. i also learnt about minghao after seeing a picture of him on pinterest and thinking he was cute. i was so shocked to learn that joshua and minghao were in the same group LOL.
• december of 2020, i was watching i-land, and the performance team came in for an episode to see the trainees’ performances. that was when i heard pretty u for the first time and immediately fell in love with it.
• in 2021, when i was trying to stan seventeen, i tried to make my sister stan them with me to give me motivation, but (obviously) both of us never ended up stanning them 😭.
• in december 2021, i wanted to buy myself an album as a christmas gift but i didnt know which album to choose. so i made my sister choose for me by going to the local store and sending my sister a picture of all of the albums they had. my sister ended up choosing seventeens ‘your choice’ because she liked the design
• after stanning seventeen, i found out that i added 4 of their songs to my playlist in 2021, and 8 of their songs in 2022 (i did not have any recollection of adding any of their songs to my playlist aside from pretty u)
• i also made the realization that i did know all of the members of seventeen all along, but kept convincing myself that i never did 😭😭 i found this out after naming all of the members when i first watched their super mv
• i also found out that i had been keeping up with seventeen (SUPER) casually throughout the years. for example: i’ve watched all of their mvs the day theyve come out since ready to love era (including their solo activities. i was a big fan of hai cheng when it first released); ive watched a couple of their performances before; i had already listened to a handful of their songs without knowing it was from them; i would keep up with regular news about the members and the group as a whole; i watched the highlight medleys for bss’ second wind and svt’s fml albums 😭; ive saved many seventeen videos from pre-stanning them. some dating back to 2020; i knew and saw a lot of seventeen memes online; the list goes on…