This is gonna be a (hopefully small) rant that no one asked for, but maybe this will reach some people and open their eyes? I’ll start off by saying I’m a huge fan of bts, and I have been for almost 5 years now. The music they’ve created and the accomplishments they’ve achieved have made me so incredibly happy and proud. But lately, I have pulled away from calling myself an army. Not because of bts, but because of the numerous fans who call themselves army, yet they either bash on other bands, disregard the fact that fans of other bands are human and deserve to be treated with at least a certain level of politeness, or hate on the members of bts, save for their bias and maybe 1 or 2 others. And in the last year or so, I’ve seen what used to be a moderately peaceful fandom turn into a large group of downright hateful people, that I frankly don’t want to be a part of.
PSA: If you are triggered easily, read this paragraph before you go and hate comment on this. If not, you can skip this Now, I know that not all fans are like this, I’ve seen living proof of this, not to mention the countless amazing fans that show their support in a calm but loving manner, but it just seems like more and more of these fans keep popping up and just making everyone sad. I understand that bts is becoming more popular, and like any popular group, not every fan is going to be the nicest person on this earth. I also understand that bts is not the first group to have fans like this, I know because I am a fan of those groups too, and I’ve seen those fans in action. What I’m trying to say is I know that this stuff has happened before, and I’m not trying to make this seem like it’s more important than the other groups' problems, and if I could I would make a similar rant about those groups’ fans too, but I only really have enough energy for one, and most of my points in this rant would probably be repeated anyway. The reason I choose bts instead of, say, exo/got7/seventeen/etc., is just for the simple fact that I have been a fan of bts for longer than any of the other groups, and it saddens me the most to see this fandom go to complete horsesh*t.
OK now onto the bulk of this. If you say you are a fan of bts, great! That means you love and appreciate Kim Namjoon, Kim Seokjin, Min Yoongi, Jung Hoseok, Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung, and Jeon Jungkook. Becuase all 7 of them make up bts, and it would not be bts without 1 of them. You can’t say you are a fan of bts and then go make a whole twitter account dedicated to why you hate Taehyung, or why only Namjoon should be in the group because he’s your bias. Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly fine to have a favorite among them, but if you’re going to claim to be a fan of bts, then that means you have to love all 7 of them. Now, say you heard the entire hixtape album and you really like it! That’s awesome! But then when you check out bts’s music as a whole, you find out you’re not really a fan. To me, that’s perfectly fine, because you are allowed to have your likes and your dislikes. You could say something along the lines of “I really enjoy J-hope’s music as a solo artist, but I really can’t call myself a bts fan because I couldn’t get into their music as a group. But I do love and support j-hope’s individual works”. In my opinion, that’s completely fine, because you’re not claiming to be a fan of bts, and then only supporting 1 member/hating on the other members. It just gets on my nerves when someone claims to be a fan of the whole group, and then only supports one or two members. If you only like (for example) Yoongi and Jungkook, that’s completely fine. Say that you enjoy their solo works, but dont say you’re a fan of the whole group when you don’t mean it.
