Rosie, i would love to hear your opinion on the theory a lot of jikookers seem to have about how taekook “does fanservice” considering your thoughts on the idea that any of them would need fanservice.
I personally don’t think they do fanservice, because just as jikook don’t need to, they dont either. They are close friends like all of the members and it just doesn’t make sense for them to do that.
However, a lot of jikookers believe that there’s a fanservice element to taekook because of how tae used to frequently answer mostly taekookers on weverse (he still does, but less frequently) and how since ot7 are back together again he seems to post jk on his ig more than any of the other members, even pictures of occasions where we later find out other members where also there.
I don’t think that necessarily points to fanservice or anything cynical like that, but i do find it curious how often those things happen
This is going to be LONG.
This ASK feels incredibly ironic now, after everything that's happened today. Honestly, my God.
I don't know. I got this ask a few hours ago, and from the moment I read it I had a pretty immediate answer in my head. I knew exactly what I wanted to say. But the more I thought about it, the more I started wondering whether my answer makes me sound like a hypocrite, whether it makes me look cynical, or whether people are just going to think I have double standards. Maybe it does. I genuinely don't know.
The thing is, I don't usually describe what Taehyung and Jungkook do as fan service, at least not in the strict sense of the term or the way people usually use it. When most people say "fan service", they're talking about something that's manufactured, fake, or deliberately performed to create a narrative that doesn't actually exist. It's the idea that people only behave a certain way because they know it'll attract attention, keep fans interested, or sell a particular image.
I don't necessarily think that's what's happening here.
What I do believe, though, and this is something I've gradually come to conclude over the last few years, is that Taehyung and Jungkook are very aware of the audience they're posting for. I think they know exactly what certain sections of their fandom enjoy seeing, and I think they deliberately choose to give those fans that kind of content every now and then. I don't think that automatically means the interactions themselves are fake. I think there's a very important distinction between something being genuine and someone consciously deciding to share it because they know how it'll be received.
To me, those are two completely different things.
I also think that willingness comes more from Taehyung than Jungkook, although Jungkook definitely plays into it as well. Taehyung has always struck me as someone who's very aware of how his fandom reacts to certain things. He pays attention. He notices trends. He interacts with fans in a way that often feels quite intentional. Jungkook does it too, but not to the same extent in my opinion. Sometimes it feels like Jungkook simply goes along with it, whereas Taehyung is more proactive about creating those little moments that he knows people will talk about.
At the same time, I think that highlights a massive difference between how they interact with their own fandom and how Jimin and Jungkook interact with theirs.
Jungkook clearly doesn't mind posting certain kinds of content. And when I say content, I'm specifically talking about photos, videos, selfies, posts, or things uploaded to social media. I'm not talking about people spotting them together in public. I'm not talking about them going out for dinner, shopping, walking around, or simply existing in the same place. Those are completely different situations because they occur regardless of whether anyone sees them. I'm talking about content that's intentionally uploaded online, content that people are supposed to consume, regardless of whether it's posted through official BTS accounts or through their personal Instagram accounts.
That's where I think the difference lies.
They do seem to, for lack of a better phrase, feed their shippers from time to time. I don't really know why, although I can make a fairly educated guess. At the end of the day, Taekook shippers make up a very significant portion of Taehyung's individual fandom. Whether people like admitting that or not, they've been one of the biggest and most active sections of his fanbase for years. If you know that a large percentage of the people supporting you enjoy a certain type of content, it isn't particularly surprising that you might occasionally post things you know they'll appreciate.
That doesn't automatically make those moments fake. It just makes the decision to share them intentional.
And I think that's the distinction people often overlook. Something can be completely genuine while also being deliberately posted because you know exactly how your audience will react. Those two ideas are not mutually exclusive.
This isn't anything new, either. We saw this long before they enlisted. It disappeared for a while simply because circumstances changed. They weren't together; they were in the military, and naturally, there wasn't much opportunity for this kind of thing. But now that they're spending more time together again, we're seeing those patterns come back.
We've seen them visiting cities together, going out for meals, and spending time with each other outside of work. We also know they rarely do those things alone. Staff members are there. Friends are there. Hobi is very often there too. Yet when the photos eventually appear on social media, they're usually framed in a way that doesn't necessarily communicate that wider context.
Whether that's intentional or not, it inevitably reinforces a narrative that already exists.
And that's basically what so much of today's discussion has revolved around. The photos and videos they both posted, the Weverse accounts Taehyung chose to reply to, and the whole situation with the fan account that the official BTS Twitter account followed and then unfollowed.
So I completely understand why people interpret those things the way they do.
Would I personally call it fan service? Not necessarily.
Because for me, fan service implies fabrication. It implies pretending. It implies creating moments that don't genuinely exist. I don't think that's what they're doing.
What I think they're doing is making conscious decisions about what they choose to share publicly. I think they know exactly what people will take from certain posts, certain photos, certain replies, and certain interactions. I think they're perfectly aware of how those things will be interpreted.
That doesn't mean the interactions themselves are fake. It just means the decision to show them isn't random.
So maybe I'm contradicting myself. Maybe I'm just trying to convince myself that it isn't fan service when other people would absolutely define it that way. I honestly don't know. But for me, intentionality and fabrication have never been the same thing, and that's why I've always struggled to use the term fan service in this particular context.
Now, none of that means I think today's events prove one ship over another, because it's exactly the same argument I made last night.
The fact that we don't see Jimin and Jungkook together doesn't automatically mean anything. Equally, the fact that we do see Taehyung and Jungkook together shouldn't automatically mean anything either. If we're being intellectually consistent, then the same standard has to apply across the board.
The biggest problem in these discussions has always been that people focus almost exclusively on whatever happened today, this week, or this month. They look at one new photo, one video, one interaction, and build an entire conclusion around it, while completely ignoring everything that came before.
But that's not how you evaluate patterns.
You have to look at the whole picture.
Not just the tiny corner that's just been painted.
I don't know if that analogy makes sense, but it's the best way I can explain it. If all you can see is the newest brushstroke, then of course your interpretation is going to be different. You're reacting to one isolated detail without understanding how it fits into everything else. But once you step back and look at the entire painting, years of interactions, years of behaviour, years of consistency and inconsistency, your perspective naturally changes.
That's something people rarely do. Some people simply forget everything that happened before because they're caught up in whatever is trending that day. Other people don't forget. They deliberately choose not to look at the wider context because it doesn't support the conclusion they already want to reach.
And I think that's where a lot of these discussions go wrong.
That being said, I do think the way Taehyung and Jungkook interact with their fans is noticeably different from the way Jimin and Jungkook interact with theirs. To me, that difference has always been very obvious.
That's also why I've always found it funny when people insist that Jimin, particularly Jimin, feeds the shippers, because I genuinely don't think that's supported by the history. If we're actually looking at years of interactions instead of isolated moments, the person who's consistently given people the most so-called content, information, or whatever you want to call it regarding Jikook has almost always been Jungkook. Yet somehow Jimin is the one who constantly gets accused of encouraging the narrative. I've never really understood that.
So personally, I think the way both pairings present themselves publicly, whether that's during concerts, in front of cameras, away from cameras, in livestreams, or through social media, says a great deal about the nature of each relationship and about the boundaries they've individually chosen to establish with their respective fandoms.
And that's one of the biggest reasons why, personally, I find it much easier to believe that Vmin could be real than that Taekook is.