On Fan Labor

A while ago I wrote a post about what happened to Belle & Sebastian fans in the late 1990s and early 2000s and how they gamed the online voting for the 1999 Brit Awards to win the band the Best Newcomer Award. Belle & Sebastian--to refresh your memory--were a genuine, all natural, organically formed indie band, signed to a tiny indie label, and who had a small but obsessive fandom of True Believers. Fans believed that if they could win the Best Newcomer Award for Belle & Sebastian then it would prove… something, something good music and it would spread the message of Jumper-core Twee-pop Inclusive Be Yourself-ness to all the locals out there who needed to hear it. 

Belle & Sebastian themselves were not in on the plan, as you can see from the recording, and the incident continues to rank in on those “TOP 10 MOST SHOCKING THINGS TO HAPPEN AT THE BRITS” along with Jarvis Cocker waggling his bum at Michael Jackson and the legend Boy George kissing Andy Bell on stage in the extremely not-gay-friendly year of 1989. 

Belle & Sebastian were so not in on the plan that the only people the band sent to the Brits were the trumpet player (come on, it was the 1990s) and drummer who only attended so they could enjoy the free booze. The two band members take the stage with dazed expressions and all they can get out is, “Bizarre night. Thanks a lot.”

The whole thing backfired in spectacular fashion. The world very much did not become disciples of the Church of Twee and, on the contrary, were rather annoyed that these Belle & Sebastian fans had gamed the voting. The additional attention did no favors for the group either who suddenly found themselves under a lot more pressure and scrutiny. They would enter a dark period that only really resolved a few years later when they did a hard reboot and shed (as much as possible) the cult-like, insular culture that had built up in the fandom.

What am I trying to say here? That this is one of the only examples of a genuine indie act on a small label pushed by their fans into a mainstream spotlight.

 The album they were nominated for was released on Jeepster Records who had like two employees and who would almost immediately after this run into financial trouble when they were unable to sustain the level of support needed for an act like the newly internationally famous Belle & Sebastian.  

What is not an example of a genuine indie band on a small label pushed by fans into a mainstream spotlight? BTS winning Top Social Artist at the BBMAs in 2017 and, also, everything related to BTS in America. 

The reason I’m bringing this up is that I was pointed to a truly baffling thread from a Blue Check Army Journalist. She admits there is something of a cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile her celebration of things like Billboard chart rankings while also remaining critical of the politics around those rankings but then says this:

but i don't think i would have seen BTS performing on SNL if it hadn't been for the cumulative efforts of fans who came before and figured out how to make the industry pay attention. i'm sure they would have rather just enjoyed the music but they put a lot of work in. i'm sure some people look at all this work and organization on the part of fans and see it as somehow manipulative or inauthentic, but i think things like streaming parties and buying projects are the *definition of organic.* 

Emphasis added by me. She claims the fans (read: BTS fans) figured out how to make the industry (read: American music industry) pay attention to BTS by “putting a lot of work in.” And that this work of streaming and buying by fans is the definition of organic ergo BTS’s recognition by the American music industry (and therefore her own “discovery” of the group like a modern day Christopher Columbus) stems directly from that organic work put in by self-directed fans. 

That is a lovely fairy tale and if it was true would certainly be a story for the history books.

But it’s not true. 

I can certainly verify that BTS fans like my friend from Episode 24 put in a lot of work calling and buying and streaming. But was it all self-directed as the Army Journalist assumes? We’re to take it on faith that a major Kpop entertainment company--which BigHit very much was in 2017--does not have a single fan engagement coordinator on staff. Not one person who is paid to engage with the fandom and report on trends and to guide the fandom agendas to suit the company’s interests. 

In fact, in this Blue Check Army’s world, a company run by an ambitious man with strong ties not only in the Korean entertainment industry but whose cousin runs billion dollar company Netmarble and who was immediately ready to capitalize on this new global popularity with talk of an IPO launch as early as December 2017, was perfectly fine leaving the fate of his only moneymaker boy group in the hands of (*checks notes*) some fans. 

Sure, Jan. Sure.

I do think it’s highly likely BigHit was caught off guard by the initial push to get BTS that BBMA in 2017 and by the initial, organized fan work that built from the template One Direction fans had set a few years earlier. But the company figured it out soon enough and has been setting the agenda for this new crop of activist western fans ever since. 

That this Blue Check Army Journalist appears to be very enamored of the “fan-driven” narrative is no mistake. One of the very first things I noticed about the televised American performances was how the camera lingered on the hysterical fans in the audience, warping the traditional idol-fan relationship so that our love was what was on display, not the charms and skills of the idols. BTS in America became nothing more than a mirror held up to the crowd, reflecting fans’ ideas of their own moral superiority back at themselves. It’s not a mistake that BigHit encouraged fan translations rather than providing official English translations just as it’s not a mistake that much of the media coverage around BTS in English is tied to either the fans own fan activities or personal essays of fan self-discovery. Very little serious discussion of their art, craft, or, indeed, their place in the greater context of idol groups takes place. When music critics have tried--I still link to the reviews from Alexis Petridis in the Guardian--they are ratioed and harassed for breaking the mirage these fans have built up.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again now. There is nothing remotely organic or natural about gaming the charts and awards through mass fandom streaming and voting. It wasn’t organic when Belle & Sebastian fans did it in 1999 and it’s not organic now. Gaming the charts like that is simply… a game. Winning at charts through manipulation doesn’t make you well known or well liked. That’s not how charts work. It’s like opening all the doors in your advent calendar to eat the chocolates ahead of time. You can open the door to December 25th but it doesn’t make it Christmas.

For better or worse, in the closed communities of pop fandom (Korean and American), this kind of mass streaming and buying has now become an expected part of the game. The stakes have been raised so high over the last few years when it comes to numerics that fans of popular pop artists such as Ariana Grande or, yes, BTS, are now obligated to stream/buy like crazy or face the reality that 99% of regular music listeners aren’t lined up to play a video or song on repeat on the first day it’s released. They’d all look like flops. Without this fandom work, the metrics for actual hit songs would probably look a lot more like BigBang’s “Bang Bang Bang” released 5 years ago and about to reach 500 million views because people are still watching the MV or  Yonezu Kenshi’s “Kanden” a hit song in Japan this year which took about four months to crack a million views on YouTube but which is still going strong. Japan does not have a mass streaming culture in pop music. Yet.

But even with all the fandom work from normal rank-and-file pop fans like my friend from Episode 24, was that really enough to get booked on Saturday Night Live in 2019 so that this Blue Check Army Journalist could see BTS, become a fan, and write an article on them for Atlantic not four months later, kick starting her climb through the Blue Check Army ranks? 

I’m going to say… No. What our friend is carefully gliding over here is the work done (and deliberately not done see also: translation) by BigHit as well as the promotional and behind-the-scenes work done by Capitol Records, Halsey’s label, in order to get “Boy With Luv” and BTS on Saturday Night Live.

“But it was the fans that got BTS noticed and that got them those deals because their music is just that good.” Counterpoint: No, that’s not how the music business works and it’s incredible to me that a professional journalist would continue to push this narrative. Even twenty years ago with Belle & Sebastian, the music business didn’t work that way. And they actually were an indie band rehearsing in a church basement. What fans did in America is help slot BTS into the empty space left by the dissolution of One Direction as well as offering themselves up as willing participants in and boosters of the old dying industry as represented by things like… Billboard Charts and Dick Clark Productions and iHeartMedia.

I think it’s totally fine to be a BTS fan and to enjoy and be excited about their music. Hell, I still enjoy their (older) music and videos even after all the harassment I’ve received from their fans.

My concerns (and why I keep coming back to this) are with the narrative getting pushed by people speaking with authority like these Blue Check Armys. Not only do I find it dehumanizing towards the idols themselves as people who have been essentially erased from the fandom narrative but I think it’s very dangerous to keep pushing this fan-driven narrative that obfuscates the very real behind-the-scenes work done by BigHit and American labels like Columbia and Capitol. It puts an obscene amount of pressure on fans who then go on to do things like empty their bank accounts to spend money they don’t have on mp3s, skip classes and exams to stream, and so on because BTS IS DEPENDING ON ME, PERSONALLY. Will obsessive fans do this anyway? Yes, but responsible adults and especially adults in journalism shouldn’t encourage it. There’s no bigger project here except for the one to build the BigHit brand. There’s no unique message being transmitted by performing songs written by the same songwriters writing for every other act on the American Top 40 charts. BTS’s Jin recently posted a lovely solo song called Abyss in which he has a line about his voice, how he’s unable to speak/sing… would there be anybody to listen even if he could get the words out? Or would they be too busy streaming/buying to pay attention?