No need to shade TikTok hits, OP. There are many ways for a song to gain publicity, virality and popularity and TikTok is one of them. People liked it, end of. If it was a BTS song that grew mostly due to TikTok, I know all of you would change your tune and be bragging about it instead. E.g. Jin’s Super Tuna.
However, there are many other ways for a song to become a GP hit, be it through radio, playlisting, YouTube & other social media, collaborations between big names, controversy ala Old Town Road, etc.
In My Universe’s case, BTS was introduced to a whole new bunch of listeners who were never into Kpop and Coldplay is huge among Europeans especially. Most of its airplay is coming from Europe and some parts of Asia. It started off with fans from both sides supporting it but as shown in the last couple of months, has grown beyond that. Nowadays, when the BTSchartdata account posts MU’s daily streams, they barely get any fanfare or replies telling others to stream and such. Even I only listen to it once in a few days but yet it’s still gaining 2.3-2.4M streams even after Christmas.
Based on my encounters with the song in real life, My Universe is not the type of viral song that had people sharing dance covers on social media or talking about on trending topics like TikTok hits do. It’s the kind of song that gets casually played in public and people around me start softly singing along to it while doing their own thing because they recognize it without me bringing it up or even mentioning BTS. Would you call that a sleeper hit?