Why are international fans so useless compared to Korean fans?

I have a theory. I believe ifans, besides chinese and japanese fans, not matter how crazy they seem, don't take Kpop that seriously. For Ifans Kpop is a very important hobby, for the others is their life. How much are you willing to do for a hobby? If you ask me, not much.

I mean it’s not rocket science. You go out of your building and see death threats vs a far of set of fans who don’t speak your language and who are not really tangible it’s obvious what will have more of an impact.

It doesn’t really matter if ifans do the exact same thing Koreans do : Korea will always be more influential. Because of proximity.

For one they are not in Korea, hence they don't seem like an immediate threat. if ifans don't have the numbers like Armys or don't spend like Chinese or Japanese, they will be overlooked by a businesses

Quote from icyruios

Korean fans can boycott the fuck out of the group, send funeral wreaths to the company, drag their faves to filth when the company does something they don't want.

Like for Seunghan situation when they announced he was going to rejoin activities within 48 hours all that shit happened and the OT6s which are mainly Korean fans got what they want.

But international fans which are mostly the OT7s being useless as fk, did nothing for the past many months. No boycott, no protest no shit nothing to try and get their faves back into the group because they are pathetic as hell and didn't do shit.

"Let's boycott the concert" but nope that didn't happen because they are all talk

In the end even right now the fans are still doing absolutely jackshit and just suck thumb and accept fate.

Display More

The same was happened with nevies. Korean nevies were OT5, they bullied Soojin and CUBE, and they got what they wanted. International fans supported OT6, launched "Gidle is 6" campaign, but there was not any continuation. We could defend OT6 and enforce CUBE to bring Soojin back if we boycotted all Gidle activities, including Soyeon and Yuqi solos.

However, CUBE saw only one side of conflict. That side pushed to expel "a problematic member". The company was freaked out that even did not provide a legal defense from defamation and malicious comments. Another side - OT6 did not push on CUBE.

I must to say after all that nevies (both - bullies knetz and bystanders ifans) betrayed Gidle in 2021.

They just whine on Twitter

kfans are physically there, and if u know anything about sm bg fandoms they are most deranged mf ever

like this is NOT NORMAL but sm dont care

I-fans can help but not when they go against this kind of fans, like I said this is a waste of time general bc those same fans will drop those groups later, call them hags and go hunt a younger group

rinse and repeat

Quote from Varenka

Western fans don't spend enough money. If K-pop companies made more money from western fans than Koreans and were confident that they could rely on them, then K-pop companies would listen to them more. They don't because we don't. Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, SEA: these are the areas that have shown willingness to spend big, and K-pop companies will cater to them and listen to them.

Also, to be frank, the western fandom not only spends less but are more divided in opinion. Don't let online Twitter and Reddit fool you.

Pretty sure most of the profit comes from international markets.

I don't think it has anything to do with Korean fans investing more, because last time I checked Chinese fans do the most bulk buying and they're not even paid dust by the companies. Even hybe, whose huge capital comes from international market doesn't give a f about the international fans but would cancel one of the most anticipated comebacks of their biggest groups over protests by Koreans.

Quote from icyruios

Korean fans can boycott the fuck out of the group, send funeral wreaths to the company, drag their faves to filth when the company does something they don't want.

Like for Seunghan situation when they announced he was going to rejoin activities within 48 hours all that shit happened and the OT6s which are mainly Korean fans got what they want.

But international fans which are mostly the OT7s being useless as fk, did nothing for the past many months. No boycott, no protest no shit nothing to try and get their faves back into the group because they are pathetic as hell and didn't do shit.

"Let's boycott the concert" but nope that didn't happen because they are all talk

In the end even right now the fans are still doing absolutely jackshit and just suck thumb and accept fate.

Display More

Because frankly they don't really give their heart and soul to a foreign act.

Quote from NmiXXSupremacist

I have a theory. I believe ifans, besides chinese and japanese fans, not matter how crazy they seem, don't take Kpop that seriously. For Ifans Kpop is a very important hobby, for the others is their life. How much are you willing to do for a hobby? If you ask me, not much.

yeh to us it’s just a hobby, to them it’s a full-time job

Sigh. It's been stressful watching what was going on for me since this is a group that I genuinely like and likely the last Kpop idol that I will stan. With that said, I think I side do not fully grasp the full issues of why the K fans were so vehemently against SeungHan. It's not a simple matter of the fact that he dated but of course many do not want to understand why and instead want to act superior to K fans by ignoring and even ratioing and harassing K fans who try to rationally explain things to them. I know because I saw it in action on X and it was truly ugly and all of this was before SeungHan's announcement of return/withdrawal.

And so my theory on why I think I fans are not effective is multifold.

First is the fact that many who were going to boycott RIIZE were already boycotting, which meant that the majority of RIIZE's sales were from K fans and also, to some extent, from Chinese and Japanese fans. Even a high school economics/math could tell you where the profits were coming from if you looked at numbers for RIIZE. My acquaintance who visited Korea told me that RIIZE is everywhere in Korea from their music being played in cafe to their ads being plastered in many places. So yeah, on the economic side, it's pretty elementary why SM would choose K fans.

Second, the fandom itself barely knows SeungHan. He was active as RIIZE for a little over two months. I'm one of those who came to know RIIZE after SeungHan was put on hiatus. I have my favorite and I liked what I saw. RIIZE had a significant influx of people come into the fandom when SeungHan was not active, and to someone like me who uses social media for quick information scans, he did not really register. This means that the fandom itself was not on board with boycotting. I can say a lot about what a boycott means to a rookie group that was barely months old when the boycott was underway on the I side, but I won't go there since it's outside the topic.

Third, as much as people can understand/speak Korean, they often miss cultural, political, and sometimes even business aspects of Kpop. I did think it was funny how gaslighted I side of the BRIIZE was on how much support they thought SeungHan had before K BRIIZE protested. They mistook K side ignoring SeungHan as them being ok with him or at least many I fans tried to paint it that way and that he had a lot of support in Korea when in fact he doesn't. I fans and SeungHan's own K fans have created a lot of hostility among the K fans about their treatment of the active members. As the people on theqoo joked, they achieved what not even politicians could - solid opposition from the majority of fandom from Korea, China, and Japan.

There are other issues which factored into it of course but just providing the major obvious ones.

People are acting like Riize situation was solely on kside, but it wasn't. K, c and j fans were involved and pretty much this is their fb, let's be real, their international presence is small small small and even with Seunghan I think they would be the sme bg with the smallest inter fb bc of their concept. So yeah, ifans love to talk, but do absolutely nothing to change things and k, c and j fans are crazy enough to destroy the groups reputation if they don't like how things are going, specially when they are 70% of their fb...

Btw this goes to all groups minus BTS, BP, Twice and the rare cases SKZ, Ateez, MonstaX and probably a few ones where their i fb are big enough to "swallow" the k ones, but even them can't afford a really k, c and j boycott.

In the end kpop rely heavily in Asia (I know k, j and c aren't the only Asia countries, this one I'm including even touring in big arenas and stadiums, merch sales, etc) like always and I doubt this will be different in the near future.

I think it's not only K-pop, Korea can cancel anyone very fast

Even if the whole country loved the person one day before

I've been out of the loop of Kpop for quite a while, apart from a few select groups, but reading up on the Seunghan situation and I feel so sorry for him.

Quote from icyruios

Korean fans can boycott the fuck out of the group, send funeral wreaths to the company, drag their faves to filth when the company does something they don't want.

Like for Seunghan situation when they announced he was going to rejoin activities within 48 hours all that shit happened and the OT6s which are mainly Korean fans got what they want.

But international fans which are mostly the OT7s being useless as fk, did nothing for the past many months. No boycott, no protest no shit nothing to try and get their faves back into the group because they are pathetic as hell and didn't do shit.

"Let's boycott the concert" but nope that didn't happen because they are all talk

In the end even right now the fans are still doing absolutely jackshit and just suck thumb and accept fate.

Display More

Easy they can't make direct literal impact on their fave idols. Ifans do not spend the same amount of money the domestic fans spend . THINK who's running all the fan clubs? Fansites and the photographers that give you all these exclusive pictures, who's getting into the fan signs whoa bulk buying albums and merchandise who's gifting idols items? Not ifans. Then you add on the inherit issue that many things can only be done if you have a Korean ID or Korean phone number let alone know how to navigate the processes to purchase things set up events work over minor legal documents etc. lastly physically close. Unlike you two oceans away I'm not afraid of a Ifan but a domestic fans likely knows my name my family seal, my address my family and friends names and faces where I work my dorm my group members personal information and where the hell I'm at in the agency 24/7. Plus likely lives a block away from me. Yeah I think I'll be more worried about domestic fans. Plus ifans miss out on understanding their faves in a fundamental level. It's extremely difficult to understand a complete stranger when you don't share the same language culture traditions and ethnic backgrounds Soo much gets lost in translation or missed entirely that shit is invaluable, most can't understand how big of an impact that makes on things