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it is not the responsibility of fans to unilaterally adore every single piece of output from the artists they are fans of
a part of the enjoyment of art is the engagement with it - of asking, what is this thing trying to say, and how successfully has it said it? is it trying to say anything? how has its message affected me, how is that different from how it affects other people
i think there are absolutely people who do this in bad faith, & that& #39;s how you get racist takes and misogynistic takes on boy bands and their output from people who would rather stereotype music and its production than engage with the actual art and the context that it exists in
but fans are not reviewers and they aren& #39;t a part of any band& #39;s PR outfit, and to say & #39;you are only a fan if you loudly love this art, and any expression of critique, or even discussion that isn& #39;t hyping the art for existing, is anti-fandom and bad& #39; is frankly absurd
and, i would argue, misses the point of being a fan! do you think your faves just want you to consume their output without thinking about what it means or why they wrote it? do you think your faves don& #39;t want you to form a personal relationship with their music?
this is not to say, time to saddle up and go trashing an album you don& #39;t like in the threads of everyone who enjoys it, that& #39;s asshole behaviour
but to slam into people who are saying & #39;i refuse to agree to loudly adore a piece of art i haven& #39;t even encountered yet, just because the artist i am a fan of has made that art& #39; as though those people are saying & #39;artist sucks& #39; is shitty as hell.
people are allowed to engage with art on a level that is significant to them and they& #39;re allowed to do it in their own space (that space being their own twitter, where you are welcome to block them and no longer participate in that engagement if you don& #39;t agree with it)
the things that people post to their own twitter are, by and large, for themselves and the people who follow them to engage with. there is no expectation that the artist will see those things, and frankly no wish for them to see it
there is no twitter account on this earth that could say anything that would in any way impact the sales of an artist as meteoric as the one i& #39;m Very Obviously Talking about here, and when we& #39;re talking about fans with a couple hundred or even couple thousand of followers
there is no *possibility* that the artist will see their thoughts. the thoughts aren& #39;t about the artist. they are about our own experience with the art that has been produced, with the way that art is being consumed, with the effect that consumption has on the consumer
no one is trying to hurt your faves by saying & #39;i won& #39;t be pressured into loving a piece of art& #39;. they& #39;re just saying that a) they want to experience the art before forming opinions on it and b) if they experience that art and don& #39;t like it, that doesn& #39;t mean they aren& #39;t fans
it just means they don& #39;t like this piece of art, or aspects of this piece of art. or maybe they like parts of it, but there are pieces of design that don& #39;t work for them, or individual songs they don& #39;t like, or metaphors they think are weak
maybe the artist has tried a genre for the first time and not nailed it, maybe you like the entire album but have a critique of the environment it was formed in, maybe you have thoughts about capitalism and IPOs, maybe maybe maybe--
there are as many ways to be a fan as there are fans, and i would argue that insisting - and by insisting i mean dogpiling and harassing and sending anonymous hate messages and death threats - that the only way to be a True Fan is to adore without thought the work of your fave
all of that behaviour actually makes real the stereotype of boy band fans as mindless, feral fanatics, because that is exactly what you are doing when you insist that every fan must love an artist and a piece of art in the same way that you do
i was going to say & #39;anyway this is about BTS& #39; but it isn& #39;t about BTS at all. it& #39;s about army, and the way that army harasses, insults, makes miserable other members of army for things they perceive as insult, when the people they are hounding are actually just being fans
what is fandom if it& #39;s not spending your time and effort and money on engaging with the artistic output of someone you love? just because a person is not engaging in a way that you want them to doesn& #39;t mean that they are insulting or hurting your faves
it just means that the relationship they have formed with that art and that artist has a different shape to the one you have formed with that art and that artist. and that& #39;s okay. that& #39;s what we want.
the ability of BTS& #39;s art to appeal to people of different walks of life, different ages and genders and sexualities and experiences, is a part of the draw. it& #39;s a part of what has made them such a powerful artistic force in the world.
of *course* all of those millions of people are going to have different thoughts and feelings and understanding of the art they are encountering. how could we possibly all think and feel the same way? how could we possibly *want* that? this is how we learn about each other
the ability of art to create conversation over the whole world is amazing, and i would argue - as we& #39;ve seen with a lot of projects BTS have done with their art installations in major cities - a part of the whole point of BTS& #39; artistic output
you don& #39;t get to decide what art means to other people.
