I kind of covered this recently in another post, but YouTube threw a short at me last night that I can’t stop thinking about, so I thought I’d talk about it here, as an addendum to my Fanning the Flames post.
Watch the YouTube short that made me write this here.
This guy is called Chan, a Korean Australian with a ferocious talent, and common sense in spades. He’s the anchor member of a talent-dense Korean creative team called Stray Kids, and also makes up a third of their production unit. They’re labelled as K-Pop, but that’s seriously underselling them, unless you ignore the fact that they do their own thing in a range of creative spheres. The image of K-Pop is of manufactured lineups, heavily controlled, curated, and over-produced by third parties. These boys are pretty much directing and driving themselves, so I think they’re really in a class of their own.
Anyway, in the video linked above Chan responds to some very entitled fans, who comment on his livestream. One that really stuck with me was the fan telling Chan not to call out fans when they misbehave. He’s very measured in his response, but he makes his position clear: if you don’t want to be called out, then behave yourself. The fool who thought they should be able to break rules without consequences got consequences, and provided a case in point for my attitude towards fandom. I feel like too many fans consider it their right to do whatever they want, as some sort of privilege of obsession. What they want ranges from imposing their own fantasies on their idols, then punishing them when the fantasy isn’t adhered to; through breaking the rules at events like concerts and other public appearances; to demanding special treatment during livestreams, as it were. It’s not okay.
If you are fortunate enough to have an opportunity to interact with someone you stan, you need to respect their boundaries, feelings, and need for safety. You need to realise that there are vast numbers of others with as much privilege as you, and it’s not safe or practical for so many of you to have the kind of access and rights that you’d like to have. You may know a lot about your idol, to the point that you feel like you have a one-on-one relationship with them, but the fact is that you don’t. You’re a tiny component, a single cell, of the gigantic organism that is the fandom around your idol. When your idol says they love you, they are talking about that entire unit, because that’s what they see when they look back at you. They can’t possibly see you as an individual. That would take a metaphorical microscope, which only comes out in in extraordinary circumstances, and for a very few fans.
Anyway, that’s what I wanted to say…