i wanna know why fanbases of thai actors are obsessed with trends what is its purpose?
I'm not the best person to explain this so allow me to quote and redirect you to one of my all time favorite post simply explaining the practice of "trending hashtag", written by friend @virtualtadpole and i think you might find the comments section also full of insightful sharings
The fan practice of coordinated Twitter trend pushing - let's discuss
For the average Twitter user: (Sorry, I'm old, I can't get around to calling it X)
Twitter hashtags originally helped people identify the topic of a tweet, and made it easier to follow what people were saying about it.
Live-tweeting as you watched and checking the conversation in the hashtags was one of the experiences of following a popular series In the olden days. (Say, 10 years ago. I don't know if this is still possible, given the deluge of tweets made for any given episode nowadays?)
The trends used to mostly reflect what people were organically talking about, i.e. they tweeted because they had something to say about the topic, not because they had to say something. This is no longer quite the case.
Since Twitter made personalized trends the default, most people haven't paid much attention to the country trends, but you'd still notice that over the past few years an increasingly large proportion of trending topics have been about celebrities.
For fans: (I've never participated in fandom Twitter, so these are outsider observations)
K-pop stans were always a huge part of Thai Twitter. As the BL fandom overlaps a lot with K-pop, it imported a lot of its culture.
Most fandoms have always had an interest in seeing their favourites and their works appearing in the trending topics, which can serve as recognition for the artists and their fanbase.
As the trending algorithm was designed to deemphasize perennial topics and hashtags (real oldies may remember back when Twitter had to adjust the algorithm to stop Justin Bieber from trending all the time), tactics were developed to hack the algorithm, so to speak.
These developed into "trend parties", with people coordinating timing and hashtags (not to be used before the scheduled time) for maximum effect. Main fan club accounts would announce these details in advance, and many companies and brands encouraged it, sometimes making the announcements themselves.
As the industry grew to increasingly value online engagement, fans took these coordinated tweeting even more seriously, working hard to push trends in order to help their faves gain exposure (and more work). Increasingly detailed instructions were given out, and people arranged to follow each other to boost their follower counts up to the point where they could contribute to the trending status.
This has become something of a competition between fandoms, and the ability to push a trend has somewhat become a measure of a fandom's size, power and dedication.
For companies like GMMTV:
The largest portion of GMMTV's bottom line has always depended on sponsors and advertisers - these are who they mean when they refer to "customers" or "clients". Though direct advertising in series and their broadcasting used to constitute half their revenue, as much now comes from hired artist events.
As most of their audience watches online, TV ratings don't mean nearly as much as engagement for GMMTV and their advertisers. Some metrics that they use to measure the performance of a series are OTT platform viewership numbers, number of tweets/posts, and actors' direct engagement in the form of Instagram follower numbers.
GMMTV clearly appreciates series (or artist events) making Twitter trends, as it's a metric they can sell to advertisers.
They must be aware that a lot of it is the result of coordinated action by fans, but do they mind? Should they? In the end, fans/viewers are part of the product package that they're selling to their real customers - the sponsors and advertisers. (Except when the fans are purchasing merch or concert tickets, in which case they become the customers.)
For advertisers and marketers:
This part I'm mostly curious about, as I don't know how they think. Surely they must know that the trends are mostly a result of coordinated fan action, but what do they make of the fact? Do they see it for what it is - a measurement of the degree of engagement by dedicated fans, but likely not the general public? Does it bother them? Or are they happy with it, as they're already targeting these dedicated fans as their target demographic?
Clearly, it must depend on what they're selling. So beauty and skincare products, sure. But inkjet printers? If I sold them I'd want my metric to reflect broad popularity over a diverse population rather than a concentrated group of hardcore fans, dedicated though they may be.
But even if the numbers are manipulated, they might still be a good enough indicator. Coordinated or not, there has to be a large number of people pushing these trending topics, and that's an easily reachable audience in any case.
But I guess in this age of influencer marketing, most brands probably love these dedicated fandoms, as they're easy to target and possibly convert. And even if they don't directly become customers themselves, the fans' loudness can still help amplify the exposure given to the products their faves are endorsing.
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In their post, @virtualtadpole is discussing trending specifically in relation to GMMTV since it's originally posted in that subreddit but I think at this point in time, it's becoming a practice across all channels. In the age of declining TV ratings, most Nielsen ratings not being made public anymore, Twitter trends become an attractive alternative metric to measure the success and reach of a series -> something crucial for project owners/producers to determine the things that might follow the conclusion of a series be it brand presenter couple job for actors of a series or fanmeeting of a series...
This is even more important to series that are exclusively online original series of platforms like WeTV or iQIYI that aren't aired on TV (for example: My Stand-In, Top Form, Knock Out...) that the streaming numbers also match the statistics for trending. Streaming numbers on the platform alone don't always translate to people who are passionate enough to spend 1500 baht on a ticket to the final EP screening or 300 - 1000 baht on merchandise for the show. For example, I've seen merchandise being announced and then retracted because there just wasn't enough pre-order numbers ┗( T﹏T )┛.
This practice might seem even more aggressive or competitive among fanbases of branded pairings within the same company like GMMTV or DMD, since I think it's pretty safe to say that resources are limited and the more exposure a pairing can have or the more popular the pairing is, they are more likely to receive job opportunities (this does not always necessarily mean opportunities in the form of an acting work) either as a solo artist or couple's work. The fanbase might seem obsessed with it because they want their favorite pairings to be able to work with better directors, get better scripts, work on higher value productions and if the current project isn't that good in trending/popular, there's a chance of the company won't give that pairing another work (not very true because GMMTV has given works continuously to couples whose first series weren't that 'popular' or 'well-received')
I hope that answers some of your inquiries nonnie. I'm not someone specialised working in PR and marketing so this is just my take as a 10 year casual viewer of lakorn and thai media consumer.