The Jimin Phenomenon: BTS, The Kings of Twitter
We must have all heard of the K-pop superstars by now, but if you’re not already an ARMY (Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth- the official name for BTS fans), don’t worry, we’ll catch you up real quick!
A seven-member group consisting of RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook, BTS is a boy group formed under BigHit Entertainment in 2013. The group are widely famous, having performed sold-out concerts around the world, including the Wembley stadium in London, and are currently nominated for a Grammy for the best pop/duo performance. Throughout their career, they have used various platforms to communicate with their fans on a daily basis, especially Twitter and the V app. This constant communication with fans has meant that their fanbase, ARMY, always have something to talk about! Almost every day, “stan Twitter” (the fandom side of Twitter) is abuzz with a new BTS related update, and “the locals” (the non-fandom and more general side of Twitter), somehow always find Jimin on their feed.
With over 33.1 million followers on Twitter and 25.8 million members on the V app, it is no surprise that many of BTS’ tweets are the most liked tweets of all time, and a livestream by Jimin on the V App was the first to reach one billion hearts. They have also won the Billboard Music top social artist award every year since 2017, ending Justin Bieber’s 6 year reign. The group have used this growing platform of theirs for many charitable purposes, like when fans matched the $1 million donation made by BTS for the Black Lives Matter movement within 24 hours, and the Love Myself campaign they ran in partnership with UNICEF.
According to an article by BBC the freedom to communicate with fans more openly, as opposed to the strictly monitored social media accounts of other K-pop groups, has helped the group to grow on platforms such as Twitter. However, most of their tweets are in Korean and the translations do not seem to be accurate. On the V App as well, we find that BTS mainly talk in Korean. This is of course, what one would expect from a Korean artist, and they are by no means meant to speak in English to accommodate someone else’s interests. Yet it is more difficult to promote them to a Western audience, or see what the hype is about, when subtitles are not available on the V App, or a heartfelt message is translated into gibberish.
Despite this however, fans have been translating all their tweets and adding subtitles themselves, and accounts have been set up to translate what they say into various languages for non-Korean ARMY. BTS has also taken the initiative to help fans learn Korean, so the language barrier shouldn’t be a huge damper for BTS’ growth any time soon!
