Let's say you're scrolling through Twitter,rubber sub sedged in tied sex videos and you come across across a tweet that includes a particularly hot take. You click through to read the replies only to find them inexplicably filled with 30-second videos of dancing K-pop idols. The topic at hand may or may not have anythingto do with K-pop — so, what gives?
Even if you don't hang in K-pop Twitter circles, it's becoming hard to avoid the trend. These videos are fancams: short, often fan-shot clips of Korean idols or groups performing live. Recently, fancam replying is the act of responding to any post, any argument, with a fancam, no matter the context. Usually accompanied by stan Twitter language, the dramatic fan vernacular of devotion found mainly online, fancam replies look at a post and quickly divert the topic. Comments like "anyway, stan ____" or "maybe if you stanned X group," accompanied with a fancam ignore the poster in place of promoting their favorite K-pop idols.
It might seem like a harmless way to drum up support for the groups, and it's not all that different from any fan expressions of love online. But more recently, fancams are being used as a force to derail posts, shut down criticism, and outright harass people after tragic events. Non-fans, called locals, are confused. And K-pop fans are frustrated that the behavior of a few reflects poorly upon them as a whole fandom. They're just performance videos, right? How did we get here?
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The rise of the fancam culture online
The international proliferation of K-pop in the past few years has been due, in large part, to social media. Of course, fan blogs and sites dedicated to celebrities have existed since the '90s, but being able to get up close and personal with your beautiful faves, virtually, is easier than ever.
Regardless of the group, K-pop fans have a reputation for being incredibly dedicated and loyal. (Although lately, these traits are often attributed to BTS' fanbase, who are called ARMYs, with oft-used phrases like "we on that Bangtan Sonyeondan shit for life" — implying that even after BTS' popularity fades, their loyalty will live on.) Nothing is a better reflection of this ride-or-die attitude than the prevalence of practices like fansites and fancams.
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Fansites are exactly what they sound like — websites run by a group of fans that are dedicated to one specific idol or group. They will keep track of their schedules and follow them to as many concerts, fan meetings, and public appearances as possible. Armed with professional-level camera and recording equipment, the fans that manage the site shoot high-quality content like photos and videos of live performances, and upload them online.
Produced by fansites and proliferated by social media, fancams are videos focused on a specific idol during concerts, awards shows, or music variety show performances. If you only care about one member in the group (controversial, but OK), or if you want to highlight a specific member's talents, these are for you.
They definitely toe the line of legality due to questions of copyright (the same reason Broadway has a love/hate relationship with bootlegs), but their content undeniably helps sustain fandoms, and agencies tend to look the other way because it helps strengthen their brand. In an article published by Cardiff University titled "K-pop, fansites and fancams: the effect of new media technology on fan practices," fancams are described as "basically free advertising — fansites are constantly releasing high quality idol-related content online, and they aren’t being paid to do so. [They're] beneficial for idols as it increases media recognition."
This influence became increasingly obvious when it became clear that fancams could directly influence popularity and revive a group's career. Take EXID, a 5-member girl group under the label YD Entertainment, for example. They never really managed to catch much public attention after their debut in 2012, and their 2014 single "Up & Down" was failing miserably on the charts. That is, until a fancam focused on member Hani went insanely viral (it's currently at almost 30 million views) during a performance of the song.
According to K-pop news site Seoulbeats, as a direct result of the fancam, the song suddenly started topping charts, the group was nominated for awards, and their TV appearances increased in the span of just a few months. The formula became clear to fans — spam the fancams online, rack up views, and your idols stay on top.
But then many fan groups on Twitter started taking it a step further than pure support. The fancam became less of a digital billboard, and more of an aggressive pop-up ad.
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Anyways, stan
Everyone just wants their favorite groups to succeed. K-pop is slowly showing the growing pains of an oversaturated market (as of 2018, there were 300 active girl groups, and around 160 boy groups,) and not everyone can achieve the record-breaking, chart-topping international dominance of BTS.
As a phenomenon that has mostly been contained in Stan Twitter, the reply of a fancam usually signifies a level of loyal support. It may not even be malicious, as oftentimes people use fancams simply to get others interested in their favorite group, or to encourage fans of similar groups to follow their account.
The behavior starts to really grind peoples' gears when users posting fancams wave off all other acts in favor of their own (at best), and, at worst, derail actual critiques and constructive discourse. This is especially true when fancams are spammed on posts detailing an issue having nothing to do with their group, or sometimes not even K-pop-related at all.
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It is true that this can be an effective tactic when it comes to shutting down a conversation for the right reasons. Dropping a fancam and saying nothing further than "anyways, stan" shows an unwillingness to engage directly with trolling, hateful comments, or ignorant people. And sometimes, that's absolutely for the best. After all, people aren't always interested in listening to reason.
ARMYs are well-known for a similar tactic: Spamming the replies of people making ignorant or casually xenophobic remarks about BTS with this letter, implying that they're too busy to take the offender down directly (which they can, and they will). They've also tweeted fancams with the hastag "#channel9apologize" after a major Australian news station aired a segment about BTS featuring several racist comments.
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But it's hard not to feel slightly cynical about these good efforts. After all, posting fancams still ultimately benefits the poster. If the tweet is popular or controversial enough, the traffic will increase the view count of fancams attached to even the most banal comments, heightening your fave's popularity. When Twitter went down recently, there were wide-spread fandom freakouts over a temporary glitch that deleted view counts from all Twitter videos. Make no mistake — it's a numbers game to keep your faves on top, and views are always a priority. Even though fans might not intentionally be motivated to post for promotion alone, many are.
Visibility is important for musical careers to thrive, yes, but the urgency with which people jump to promote fancams to millions of viewers seems less necessary for already popular groups. If they have a loyal fanbase who loves them, and their music videos already have millions of views, why spam fancam replies at all?
Of course you should uplift lesser-known artists you believe in — BTS didn't pave the way overnight, after all. But even other K-pop fans have commented that the prevalence and usage of fancams can actually have the opposite effect in peaking interest. There's a backlash to the hype machine when the hype is too intrusive.
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What crosses the line into using fancams for evilcomes from straight-up harassment.
Maybe if they had stanned
Not every event is an opportunity for promoting your faves. Yet a truly, truly baffling subset of the fancam reply trend has recently emerged out of the aftermath of unfortunate tragedies.
Twitter stans have replied with K-pop fancams to tweets about people who have died or fallen ill, saying "maybe if they had stanned ___." Yikes. The implication is that their misfortune was cosmic karma. Most recently, fancams tweets popped up after the death of Disney Channel star, Cameron Boyce.
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But he's not the only one who received harassment — after K-pop idol Samuel Kim's father was murdered, some posted fancams alluding to the death to promote their idols.
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Many of the accounts posting nasty comments have since been ratted out as trolls trying to make K-pop stans look bad, but there seem to be enough of them that are genuine (or genuinely delusional) to catch the wider public's eye. While these replies might seem like outliers, they represent the underlying issues with the fancam trend overall — not being able to read the tweet room.
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Fancam replies have become like the desperate post-grad at a casual networking event, jumping right into a conversation on vacation spots and immediately blurting out "I have several years of marketing skills!" Even those making valid critiques during a serious discussion feel the need to punctuate their point with a fancam.
It shouldn't have to be said that you shouldn't use a tragedy as a launchpad for someone else's career. Even during other discussions, though (especially non-K-pop ones,) fancams feel like disengaging, putting up a mask, virtually saying "talk to the hand."
Twitter can be a dumpster fire when it comes to discourse, and not every mean tweet justifies a lengthy, "civil" written reply. But we should all be giving each other a little more credit in our abilities to talk it out and understand each other without "cancelling" someone immediately. "Cancel culture" doesn't mean no one should ever be called out, but fancam replies do tend to "cancel" any possibility of further conversation.
Fancams have become a quintessential part of the K-pop experience, so they won't be going away anytime soon. It's a way of engaging with fandom that, on its own, isn't terrible, because sharing your love and support isn't inherently terrible. There are consequences, however minimal, for the fans and the idols themselves.
How does it look to others to use a real, live person as soapbox, or a "ban" button? That's not to say that someone posting a fancam reply on stan Twitter will send a direct hit to an idol, or fans', reputation. But by including them in the tweet, you are instinctively tying them to your agenda, good or bad. With millions of views plastered on the view count, it reads "we all, collectively, share this opinion."
And as BTS' Namjoon Kim said in this speech at the UN General Assembly, "we have learned to love ourselves, so now I urge you to 'speak yourself.'” So speak your truth, but speak foryourself.
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