Hope you have a nice weekend. There is this thought that bothering me for quite some days now and after seeing them life I can’t shake it off. Since the last time a saw them life, 8 years ago, I have the feeling the fandoms has changed. All this discussion about which city was the loudest and has the best crowd. Now fans of other nationalities are being booed at the stadium, that is something that bothers me.
Actually, the main thing should be that the fans and the guys enjoy the concert and have fun. That the boys see, we are all still there to cherish and celebrate them. After all, this isn't a competition to see who can be the loudest—it's about everyone having a good time.
At the end of the day, the guys praise every stop and, with only minor variations, always say the same thing about every place. The only difference can be seen in their sheer joy during the concert, and that has nothing to do with sheer volume, but rather with their overall interaction with the audience, for example singing and dancing with them without phones in the hands, etc.
For many years now, everything in this fandom has turned into a competition. That solid monolith BTS thought they knew, the one that always seemed to support them without hesitation no matter what, has been falling apart for quite some time now, or at the very least it has been showing cracks for years.
Now it is all about which country streams more, which crowd is supposedly the best, which one screams the loudest, or which city sells out a concert the fastest. Every achievement has somehow become a scoreboard. Instead of simply celebrating that BTS are loved all over the world, people constantly compare themselves to other fans as if supporting the group has become a contest rather than something everyone shares. It is funny how nobody seems interested in competing over who can respect the group’s privacy while they are visiting their country. Imagine if people took the same pride in giving BTS space, allowing them to enjoy a meal, walk around, or leave a venue without being chased. What happened in Paris was embarrassing. Genuinely shameful. There were so many people calling it passion or dedication, when in reality it crossed the line into behaviour that should never be normalised.
In many ways, the fandom has become toxic. From a commercial point of view, it still works in BTS’s and the company’s favour because that obsession with being better than every other group or artist in the world ultimately benefits them. It keeps people engaged, motivated, and constantly trying to outdo everyone else. Every comeback becomes a race to break records. Every award has to be won by the biggest possible margin. Every chart position has to prove something. That level of dedication undoubtedly contributes to BTS’s success, so from a business perspective there is very little reason to discourage it.
But from a moral or emotional perspective, things have definitely changed. It sometimes feels as though kindness, patience, and simply enjoying the music have been pushed aside in favour of numbers, rankings, and online arguments. Fans who question certain behaviour are often labelled as unsupportive, while people who encourage unhealthy competition are praised for being dedicated. Somewhere along the way, supporting BTS stopped being enough for some people. They now feel the need to prove they are supporting BTS better than everyone else.
The fact that so many OG fansites, long time accounts, and fans in general have left social media has played a part in that shift. At the same time, a lot of newer fans joined with a very different mindset, and that has shaped the fandom as well. Every fandom evolves, especially one as enormous as this, so change was always going to happen. The problem is that some of the values that many people associated with ARMY seem to have faded over time. There used to be a stronger sense of community, where people felt connected because they loved the same seven artists. Now it often feels fragmented into smaller groups that spend as much time competing with each other as they do supporting BTS.
Is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe not if you are looking at it from the outside. A bigger, more competitive fandom is incredibly effective when it comes to supporting releases, breaking records, and maintaining BTS’s position at the top of the industry. If success is measured purely by numbers, then it is difficult to argue that the strategy has not worked.
But I also think the members themselves seem to understand that something has changed, and at times they even sound disappointed by it based on some of the things they have said over the years. They have repeatedly talked about respecting boundaries, about remembering that they are ordinary people outside of the stage, and about wanting genuine connections with fans rather than relationships built on entitlement. Those comments did not come out of nowhere. They suggest that they have noticed some of these changes too.
Looking at it from the inside, though, it often feels largely disastrous. Maybe it was inevitable for a fandom that has grown to this size. Perhaps no community with tens of millions of people could have remained the way it was in the beginning. Growth always changes culture, and success attracts people with very different expectations and priorities. I honestly do not know if there was any way to prevent that.
What I do know is that both BTS and the fandom have changed. That is simply the reality. Even for someone like me, who only joined six years ago, the difference is obvious. I can already see how conversations, priorities, and the overall atmosphere have shifted in that relatively short time. I cannot even imagine what it must feel like for people who have been here since the early years, watching that transformation happen little by little until the fandom became something quite different from what they first fell in love with.
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