K-pop was always kind of a joke, as a listen to "Gangnam Style" or "Gee" makes clear, and given the campily ironic distance BTS's "Butter" brings to K-pop-'n'-Western pop dynamic, K-pop has become a joke once removed, which is like seeing a punch line approaching a mile away. I would suspect a young RM (Rap Monster, then) would never approve of such rap lyrics on "Butter" as "Ice on my wrist, I'm that nice guy/ Got that right body and that right mind/ Rolling up to a party, got the right vibe/ Smooth like butter/ Hate us, love us/ Fresh boy pull up and we lay low". Not only are they lazy, but they are unabashedly so. So not only is BTS embracing the joke, but they are content in being the butt of the joke now for mere commercial gain, a la Psy with "Gangnam Style".
It's been said that the message of the LOVE YOURSELF trilogy of BTS-- to use the label "trilogy" loosely here-- is really just an invention by them in desperate need of something new to pretend to be saying about Korean youth; the trouble with that theory is that most of their fans at the time was buying the hype; i.e., falsehood. If that's the best anybody can come up with to say about this generation, then this generation may not be very interesting in the first place. And their pop music reflects that.
