Fan Cultures
After living in Korea for 3 years and then working for an Asian media company for 2, I’ve come to find fans, fan cultures, cults, etc. a bit scary.
I’m not sure whether or not fans are more intense in Korea or I just never noticed them in the United States, but Korean fan culture is extremely intense and competitive. For example, Korea holds a collaborative concert for various artists to perform, Dream Concert.Well in 2008, there was an e-war between the fans of Girls’ Generation (fans are named Soshi) and the fans of the male groups, DBSK / TVXQ (Cassiopeia) and Super Junior (SuJus). This war eventually broke out when the fans of the male groups turned off their glow sticks and boo-ed the Girls’ Generation group as they performed.
The Soshis retaliated by tearing up posters and walking out during performances. There were rumors claiming that a Soshi fan was walking around threatening to stab people although it has not been confirmed.
This type of fanship is pretty common in Korea especially as fans are avid “netizens” (online citizens). I think most of the intensity is contributed to Korea’s entertainment market, more particularly their music industry, is quite small. There are 3 major entertainment companies: JYP Entertainment, S.M. Entertainment and YG Entertainment. No surprised, each of these companies have fans and sometimes the music groups produced from each company support other groups the company produces (I hope that made sense). I found that interesting because I never paid attention myself to the companies unless it was a celebrity company like Sean Combs’ (P. Diddy) Bad Boys Entertainment.
Reading Matt Hills’ fan cultures reenforced my idea of fan cultures although I was quote bias to begin with. On the other hand, it did make fanships more interesting to me. I didn’t realize how common and obsessive we can become to anything. It’s like an addiction and it’s difficult to see where we draw the line. I personally don’t have anything I’m completely obsessed with but maybe I just don’t see it as being overboard?
Not being an avid fan of anything myself, besides maybe enjoying the Twilight series too much, I do not understand how intensely some people care about different things. I had no idea about how much Korean people were interested in this particular concert, its crazy how disrespectful they would be to one group to show their dedication to another. I too like you find fan cultures a bit scary, there is no telling the extremes that some people will go to to show their support for something they are a fan of. Though it may not be considered to be a fan of something, I have heard in the news about a woman who pepper sprayed people during black friday who were in the way of gifts she wanted to purchase during the black friday sales. Could we consider black friday to be associated with some sort of fan culture taking into account how seriously some people take their shopping?