Discussion: The Isolation of Boy Groups has killed their public relevancy

I will preface by saying this is not a perfect theory, and that for the most part it only refers to gen 4.

Now the overall idea is that boy groups starting from gen 4(though you could argue for late gen 3) have become increasingly insular in their content. This is not saying that their music or variety has become worse or more self indulgent, but rather that Companies have increasingly geared boy group content to cater to the fanbase than to the public.

Now one would argue that all group content is primarily geared towards the fandom first, and in certain respects you would be correct... HOWEVER the means of distribution is substantially different.

It's no question that BTS is more or less the blueprint of social media engagement for boy groups. However, BTS' media engagement wasn't entirely just social media and company produced content. If you're an old enough army, you would remember the time when RM was the most known member of BTS due to his constant time on variety shows.

And that is where I feel that a lot of 4th gen boy groups have been lacking. Their permeation in general Media is almost zero.

A different example is how quickly DKZ member Jaechan absolutely propelled the group's overall interest through the roof following Semantic Error.

Nowadays there's tons of Boy Group Reality Shows, Vlogs, and Variety specials... but almost none of it in general tv. Going back to gen 3 and especially gen 2, you could find countless male idols all over regular broadcast and film. You may be wondering, if that's the case, why hasn't it affected international fandoms? And the answer is fairly simple... we international fans have always interacted with kpop groups in this format. There's no fundamental change on our side of things cause it's always been via online video and social media that we've gotten this content.

And I feel that ultimately is what has caused an erosion of Public interest in Kpop Boy Groups. It's not cause the music is too noisey or that boy groups are all the same, or that men care even less about other guys now. I posit that companies have essentially created a media bubble around their boy groups which has had the adverse affect of making them a mystery to the general populace who aren't going to go onto youtube dot com to look up boy group #765

Quote from quarkie

Being well known among the public does not equate to anything except for being well known among the public. Cha Eunwoo is one of the most popular male celebrities in South Korea and Astro has only ever been mid-tier.

You also act like the isolation is by their choice. Do you really think companies just aren't sending their rookie idols to variety shows? They aren't being invited at all and if they are, they're being fucked over. There was a bit of netizen buzz when the Running Man spinoff premiered on Disney+ because there were episodes were a bunch of male idols from newer, lesser known groups had to wear masks over their faces and if they lost a game, their group names would revealed, but they couldn't take off their masks and the show refused to identify them by name.

Now how the hell are groups supposed to be well known when that's the offerings they're getting for variety shows?

I never said it was a perfect one to one (edit: Hell in my first sentence following the preface I make note of gen 3). But you'd be really disingenuous if you'd say that Astro before and After Eunwoo's explosion in popularity were in even remotely the same place. They were struggling to hit 40k and nowadays they do 300k, and a large part of that is due to Eunwoo's popularity publicly.

And I'm not blaming them, hell I feel it's not an either or situation. Which came first? The chicken or the egg? Did Companies restrict their idols more from variety or did Variety stop calling on idols. It's hard to say. I'm merely discussing a point of contention that I feel can be very obviously highlighted in this generation compared to previous ones.

Quote from BlackpinkHouse

Only old people watch TV. The kids are on the Internet and that's where Kpop markets itself, through Internet based content of every imaginable type.

I mean the internet content that's trending a lot are streamers and BJs which some kpop groups do emulate but I wouldn't say the vast majority. Like there aint really any kpop channels doing stuff like workman or Wassup