How K-pop Fans Hijacked Police Apps and Far-Right Hashtags to Bring Awareness to Black Lives Matter
By: Fatima Zaidi
BTS at a fansigning, 13 April 2014, in Gimpo Photo by Jin10seconds - 140413 김포 팬사인회 김석진
Chicago— On May 31, the Dallas Police Department alerted locals to send in videos of “illegal activity” using their iWatch Dallas app amidst the first wave of protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Instead of videos documenting the footage of violent activities in the protests, users of the app were instead met with hundreds of K-pop artists’ fancams. Fans of K-pop hoped that by crashing the iWatch Dallas app, they would flush out such videos with creative edits of their idols.
In addition to submitting fancams to the iWatch Dallas app, K-pop fans also flooded the Dallas Police Department’s Twitter with similar videos. Some fans additionally made edits where the first few seconds of a video showcased a fancam, and the remaining time showed footage of violent activity by police officers.
Fancams have been designed so the singing and dancing of a specific member in a band are highlighted throughout the entire performance. These videos can either be captured by fans in the audience — hence the term fancam — or, they can be professionally shot on stage. Some of the fancams included performances from band members in BTS, NCT, Ateez, Got7, Blackpink, and hundreds more.
However, within just a few hours, the Dallas Police Department followed up with a tweet saying that the iWatch app was down due to “technical difficulties,” an issue that K-pop fans also experienced. The fans, however, continued to upload fancams, memes, and even recipes this time beneath the tweet.
The efforts of K-pop fans became so widespread, that users began to post more news stories in hopes that fans would utilize their creativity and speed to lessen the coverage and information on a certain topic, or, to bring more awareness on a prevalent issue. K-pop fans have been known to work collectively to flush out information containing negativity towards a noble cause, resulting in only critical information to be present for social media users.
K-pop fans also posted links to various organizations and data points so the hundreds of viewers would have easy and quick access to information on the Black Lives Matter movement, police brutality, and the inequity that the Black community has been experiencing for centuries.
“A lot of big fan accounts have been sharing links to petitions, donation links and just raising awareness in general,” said Alyzee Boisjolie, a K pop fan on Twitter who tweeted a fan cam to the Dallas Police Department. “Also, a lot of smaller stan accounts have been very vocal about the issue too by doing the same as [the] big [accounts].
I know a lot of people on social media see us as annoying little stans that just post fancams everywhere, but we are more than that. As soon as something like [this] happens I guarantee you we are always very vocal about it and try to do whatever we can to help.”
It’s sometimes difficult for K-pop fans to address issues that are negatively impacting Black citizens, while also battling racism that is seen within the fandom and the K-pop industry. Some idols have used references to racist and discriminatory people. On May 22, BTS’ Suga released his sophomore mixtape, D-2, which contained 10 tracks. One of the tracks, “What Do You Think?” includes in the introduction a man speaking a sermon in English. That specific sermon was delivered by Jim Jones, a cult leader who led a mass murder-suicide of approximately 909 people, 304 of whom were children.
“A lot of his Black fans expressed their discomfort with the use of the sample in the song,” said Boisjolie. “Because of that, a lot of people in the fandom were telling Black fans that they were exaggerating and overeating the issue and overall invalidating their feelings which caused a lot of Black fans to leave the fandom.
Also, during the BLM movement on social media, a lot of fans asked their idols to speak out, however, a lot of fans were telling them (fans) that they didn’t care about the movement and that fans should stop asking the idols to speak out about it by saying ‘we stan ‘x,’ and not Black [people]’ and other gross things like that.”
In March, the global superstars, BTS, had to cancel their concerts due to COVID-19. Upon hearing this news, Suga, one of the band members, donated money to a coronavirus relief fund. When fans heard of Suga’s donation, they took their refunded money from their tickets and donated it to the same organization. Similarly, when news broke out that BTS donated approximately $1 million to the Black Lives Matter movement, fans, together, also donated an additional $1 million.
However, these efforts aren’t limited to just Twitter. On Instagram, K-pop fans have used their edits, memes, and fancams to take over police and MAGA hashtags such as #maga2020, #BlueLivesMatter and #WhiteLivesMatter.
Twitter users have also practiced a concept known as “rickrolling” where the main tweet contains a glimpse at information that catches the person’s eye or piques their curiosity. Instead, when they open the thread of tweets they find numerous links and resources on what the person can do to support the movement.
All of these creative methods have produced fruitful results in not only humanitarian, but also political issues. The motivation to make sure the public is informed on events befalling citizens, and what they can do to help is a concept that has been strengthened in artistic, and sometimes even hilarious manners.