And the “Best Fandom” Award Goes to…
TL;DR: Kpop fandoms do have a hierarchy of status which is quantitively based on the number of MV’s a group has that have 100 million views and the amount of awards they have. This is due in part to the fact that these are achieved and gained through the efforts of the fans to continuously stream and vote in order to show appreciation for their idols. It has come to a point where awards are now awarded to “Best Fandom”. Overall, the hierarchy of status is primarily determined by the hard work of the fandoms for each group.
“‘I Am the Best’: Kpop Hierarchy of Fandoms”
Most fans in a Kpop fandom don’t show their love for their idols by sending letters written in their menstrual blood like sasaengs. They more often than not would express their love by showing as much support for the idols as they could which is demonstrated by how much their actions positively impact their lives and careers. Fandoms are communities created by fans in support of an idol group of their choice. They use different methods to support their idols such as voting on award shows, streaming music videos, pooling money together to donate to great causes under the name of the idol group, or buying special gifts for the group. Not only does this positively impact the reputation of the musical group, but it, specifically the view counts and number of awards received, also impacts the reputation of the fandom. This, in turn, creates a hierarchy of fandoms where those of higher status are more successful in continuously carrying out these goals and those of lower status may not have reached that point yet. The fandoms that put more effort into supporting their idols through these methods (continuously streaming to increase view counts, always voting every day on award shows, etc.) and successfully reaching their goals in a timely and tangible fashion are ones of the highest status (best fandoms) in the hierarchy of fandoms.
The most common example of status affordance among the fan culture is the emphasis on continuously streaming music videos of certain groups in order for the music video to reach 100 million views. When a music video’s view count reaches a number close to the 100 million mark, fans in the comments start advocating for everyone to start streaming the music video continuously so that it reaches 100 million. For example, as of this far, the popular Kpop boy group, EXO, has had four music videos pass this milestone mark (“Call Me Baby”, “Growl”, “Overdose” and “Monster”). On some of their other music videos, fans are seen trying to rally other fans to also bring up the view counts. This begs the question: What is the significance of 100 million views to these fans? As a fan who has participated in streaming videos continuously myself, attaining this amount of views is a way of showing how dedicated the fans are to their artists of interest since not too many music videos globally have reached this amount of views. We often push for these milestones to be hit right before big anniversaries or celebrations for the artists as a gift to them, and it is way of making some fandoms stand out in comparison to other fandoms. This demonstrates the idea that achieving status among fandoms is measured by who has more videos that have reached 100 million views. The more videos that reach this milestone, the higher the fandom is in the hierarchy of loyalty and support for their artists of choice in the area of music videos. This can be applied to follower and subscriber counts as well. Although fans don’t typically rally together to increase the follower counts of their favorite artists, they do celebrate when they reach certain milestones like making hashtag trends or special posts when an artist has reached 5 million followers on Instagram. Reaching important and measurable milestones is essential in this culture to establish relevance and dominance of one fandom in a sea of fandoms as there is always at least one group that debuts every two weeks in South Korea.
Views are not the only way fans in fandoms establish their dominance and high status. This is also demonstrated by their participation in all aspects of the voting shows to help their artists of interest win awards. Though the amount of views on their current promotional track do factor into their overall score for music shows, 100 million views on the music video is not the top priority as that is only a portion of score. Fans from all over the world help out with other aspects that affect the score such as digital album sales, physical album sales, online voting (social media scores), live voting, and rankings on the charts and from judges. As a fan of GOT7, I have seen the results of the iGOT7 (fandom name for GOT7) community coming together help fans learn how to stream music videos, vote on Korean social network apps, buying both digital and physical copies of their album, and more. A common trend that I see is that GOT7 lacks relevance in the charts which hurts their score, but the efforts made by their fans has compensated for this by excelling in other categories. However, now, GOT7’s promotional tracks reaches the charts and fans continue to support them in the other categories. As a result, they have been receiving even more awards, effectively increasing the status of not only the group but the fandom as well. This reveals and supports the idea that status as a fandom is earned by how much effort and support a fandom has for their artist of interest which is quantitatively measured by how many awards the artists manage to win. Helping them win awards is just another way fandoms show their appreciation for their group because artists cannot win without the support of the fandom. The more awards they receive over an extended period of time, the more powerful and dedicated the fandom is in comparison to others. In a sense, the amount of awards an artist receives and the amount of views on music videos are the main markers of status, or status affordances, that differentiate not only the actual artists but the fandoms as well.
Because there has been such big rivalries between fandoms over who is the top fandom, Soompi, a Korean news site that also hosted its own annual awards show, created an award for “Best Fandom” in the Kpop category a couple years ago. Unlike the other categories where fans had to vote which nominated group best captured the title they were on the ballot for, “Best Fandom” was determined by fan participation on Twitter. Votes towards a fandom were counted by the amount of tweets with “#Team(Group)” and would only count if tweeted during the two one-day periods set by Soompi. The main kick was that there was no limit to how many times a person could vote because it was all entirely on the number of tweets. It didn’t matter what you wrote in the tweet as long as it included the hashtag. In the most recent Soompi Awards, I participated in this process and tweeted the support hashtag at least 108 times on my Twitter made specifically for online Twitter voting. Soompi’s official Twitter announced half-time results after the first 24-hour voting period, and it was a heated battle between GOT7, BTS, and EXO. This sent fans on a rampant tweeting spree in order to secure first place as the best fandom. Inadvertently, during this process, the support hashtags eventually broke into Twitter’s worldwide trends, showing how massive the support is on a global front. Eventually, the results were released in February, and iGOT7 was deemed the “Best Fandom” surpassing second place, EXO’s 16.4 million tweets, with 20.8 million tweets. This result demonstrates how seriously fandoms take these competitions and awards in terms of actual status and that the result of such healthy competition creates an outcome exponentially larger than what most would anticipate. With this specific example of status, it shows that there is a divide between fandoms where the groups with the most amount of and most dedicated members are at the top of the ladder, reaping the benefits of helping out their artists, increasing their popularity and giving them a lot of awards. Fandoms and artists that generally fall towards the bottom of this ladder don’t receive these benefits nearly as much, but they are still able to cultivate and grow their fanbase. This could be due in part to the possibility that the world community may be more biased towards some groups or agencies more than others, but at the same time, groups with smaller fandoms like GOT7 have been able to rise up with their efforts for their idols, so it does depend on the fans.
Ultimately, though, the status of the fandoms from these three examples seems to be more so dependent on the fans themselves rather than the amount of fans or the agency that their artists come from. Some may argue though that just because fans have the social media accounts and time to continuously stream videos and vote a lot doesn’t mean they are a better fandom than others. They may also argue that these counts of awards and views serve no purpose as fans aren’t paying as much attention to the content but rather the bragging rights. While I agree that streaming and voting a lot doesn’t automatically grant a higher status to fandoms and that some fans do emphasize the counts to brag, these counts do serve a purpose in the process that makes a fandom a better fandom than another and not every fan is motivated to continuously vote and stream by ego. Because Kpop has attracted international audiences, there are many fans overseas who are a part of a fandom, but they cannot support the artists in person at fan meets or multiple concerts that are held in South Korea. Additionally, most Kpop groups only come to certain countries and towns when on a world tour, so most fans do not have the opportunity to support them live. Because of this, the only means of support that most international fans can provide is helping with the online voting, donation, and viewership counts to help win their idol honors and awards. For me, I can’t afford to go to concerts or South Korea to support my group, but I try to support them by buying their albums (which helps with the award show scores) and voting for them as much as I can. When they do win an award or reach the 100 million milestone, I feel the satisfaction that I contributed in helping them win that award and made it a conspicuous reality to them. In this context, that’s what I believe makes a fandom higher in status than another. Fans from all over come together peacefully to put in as much effort as they can into these counts to award the idols for all the hard work they do. In doing so, they are making the name of the group and its content more well-known and promoted to unreached audiences. Addressing how some fans use these counts as bragging rights, they are in the vast minority, but what motivates them to brag is based on the idea of “fandom wars” where two or more fandoms argue over which group is better. These rivalries resort to fans pointing out small flaws in the opposing group, and often times, because views and awards are quantitative, fans may use these numbers as an objective argument in defense of their group. It’s not completely justified, but in the heat of emotional arguments where their group’s integrity is threatened, statistics are often used to strengthen their arguments. When people bring up how the company from a group affects the popularity and status of the group and fandom, it’s important to note that although it does factor a bit into the status, there are many artists in the Big 3 companies (YG, JYP, and SM) that do not have strong or big fanbases. These status affordances do hold merit, especially for audiences overseas or audiences who don’t have many funds. This is one of the only ways in which most fans can let the idols know how much they support them and how much they are willing to do for them. When fans work together and respect each other in reaching these goals for their idols, that’s what makes the best fandoms. Even if they don’t reach some of these goals, it doesn’t make them any less of a fandom if they have done their best collectively and with integrity as other fandoms. The status of a fandom is determined mainly by the fans themselves, as individuals and as a community, and their actions in supporting their artists and helping their artists’ dreams come true. It is with this main goal in mind that drives fans to work hard, and as a result, the fandom and artists are much closer to reaching the top of the ladder of status.
