{"id":2703,"date":"2018-10-28T23:34:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T03:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/?p=2703"},"modified":"2018-12-09T17:05:01","modified_gmt":"2018-12-09T22:05:01","slug":"btsxcitifield-part-2-joining-the-army","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/btsxcitifield-part-2-joining-the-army\/","title":{"rendered":"#BTSxCitifield Part 2 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Finding BTS + Joining the ARMY = Going to Citi Field"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><code><a title=\"20181006_092151\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/fleep\/31280485368\/in\/datetaken\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1930\/31280485368_f7fabeaf3d_z.jpg\" alt=\"20181006_092151\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" \/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/code><\/p>\n<p>This post is part of a series, see\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/btsxcitifield-part-1-the-backstory\/\">#BTSxCitifield Part 1 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c The Backstory: How Trump and #MeToo led to finding #BTS and joining the ARMY<\/a> to start from the beginning.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Remember when I said I wasn&#8217;t sure if I even remembered how to blog since it&#8217;s been so long?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, I managed to misconfigure an IFTTT trigger and caused an endless loop of alerts about the new blog post being posted to Twitter, which posted a blog post on here that I had tweeted, which triggered a new tweet.. lol.\u00c2\u00a0 Like a noob all over again!\u00c2\u00a0 Thank goodness a RL friend texted me to let me know about the problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Thanks Phil!<\/p>\n<p><code><\/code><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Wow, sorry about all that tweet spam. Misconfigured IFTTT trigger, doh. How embarrassing. &#x1f60a;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u201d Chris M. Collins (@fleep) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/fleep\/status\/1055997133348917248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 27, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So back to the story.\u00c2\u00a0 Exactly how did\u00c2\u00a0a middle-aged (!) white lady living in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio get into a Korean boyband?\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/btsxcitifield-part-1-the-backstory\/\">In the last post<\/a>, I talked about my unexpected reaction to the election of Trump and the #MeToo movement, and how my inability to cope with the endless cycle of upsetting news led to an American media\/internet blackout.\u00c2\u00a0 Shutting off the information flow opened space for new interests and hobbies at a time when I was in need of distraction, and that was the context in which I discovered BTS. [1]<\/p>\n<p><code><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Km0beyc0mes\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/code><\/p>\n<p>I also mentioned that the first BTS songs to catch my ear were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GZjt_sA2eso\">Save Me<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BVwAVbKYYeM\">Dope<\/a>, but I&#8217;m trying to remember what it was exactly that prompted my deeper dive into BTS.\u00c2\u00a0 In the beginning, it was hard to distinguish one boyband group from the next, EXO, Winner, GOT7.. The whole K-pop genre was a stretch for me musically, and I found the &#8220;super innocent yet super sexy schoolgirl&#8221; vibe of the girl groups especially disturbing.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/kprofiles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/AOA.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"432\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>K-Pop girl group AOA in what appears to be typical &#8220;sexy school girl&#8221; styling.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Even if they produce a catchy tune, I have a hard time supporting an industry that over-sexualizes young women like that.\u00c2\u00a0 I suppose the boy bands are not so different, since sex sells the world over, but it feels somehow less in your face with the men than it does with the women.\u00c2\u00a0 I&#8217;d say BTS in particular seems to dress fairly conservatively these days, though there are shirt-ripping and belly-showing dance moves from their earlier videos.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/img.kpopmap.com\/2017\/04\/kpop-idols-school-uniform-concept-bts-768x512.jpg\" width=\"768\" height=\"512\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>BTS in school uniform styling, not sure what year this is from though.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Digging around in my YouTube history (yikes, not recommended!), it looks like a fan-made video I stumbled upon about the BTS &#8220;alternate universe&#8221; story might have been an early hook.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s basically a short film explaining the fictional universe that connects many of their albums and music (sort of like a rock-opera). It tells the story of 7 high-school friends who drift apart, facing their various painful childhoods and personal demons as they grow into adulthood.\u00c2\u00a0 But one member, Jin, has the ability to time travel, and as he watches his friends meet one tragic fate after another, he rewinds time searching for what to change to bring them all happiness, failing over and over again in each alternate timeline.<\/p>\n<p><code><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/n4o70iBIDNs\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/code><\/p>\n<p>The time-travel story arc crosses several album cycles and if you search for &#8220;BTS storyline&#8221; on YouTube, you&#8217;ll find a plethora of fan-made videos with theories about what all the clues mean.<\/p>\n<p>As a newcomer to the BTS scene, I think it was the fans&#8217; obsessive attention to detail and endless theorizing as much as the storyline itself that caught my interest.\u00c2\u00a0 Over the next few months, I began to realize that it was a truly global phenomenon.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, North America, all around the world there were <del>crazed<\/del>\u00c2\u00a0passionate fans following these guys&#8217; every move.\u00c2\u00a0 It made me wonder how this baby-faced K-pop boyband had somehow developed a following that was so intense it crossed time zones, national boundaries, language barriers, cultural differences, age, sex, gender.<\/p>\n<p>Korean fans (or fans who speak Korean) translate their work into English, and other fans translate it from English into other languages.\u00c2\u00a0 On Twitter, which seemed to be the preferred social media channel, there were endless conversations, in every language you can imagine, at any time day or night, sharing, arguing, debating, writing fan fics, producing their own videos, explaining, theorizing, analyzing.\u00c2\u00a0 (Look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?f=tweets&amp;vertical=default&amp;q=%23bts&amp;src=typd\">live, global BTS feed right now<\/a>, how many languages do you see?) [2]<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/BTS-YOURSELF-Photobook-Photocard-Official\/dp\/B07543FNTG\/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1540778334&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=BigHit+love+yourself+her\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/61bdAZHAeAL._SY355_.jpg\" width=\"244\" height=\"355\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And the band was producing a near continuous stream of new content themselves, releasing their new album <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Love_Yourself:_Her\">Love Yourself: Her<\/a> in September 2017, with new videos, new theories, new tweets and posts.\u00c2\u00a0 The synergy between the band and the fans was.. well, crazy.\u00c2\u00a0 It sucked me in.<\/p>\n<p>It was like watching a reality television show unfold in real time, except instead of seedy cat-fights and endless love triangles, you had these innocent, hardworking Korean guys from an underdog small-time record label trying to beat the odds, and fans from all over the world cheering them on, and over and over again, I had the thought that the international dialogue happening between BTS fans was so different from the hate-filled &#8220;us vs. them&#8221; rhetoric happening in the US.\u00c2\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure how to describe it, but it felt like&#8230; the exact opposite of the toxic brew of ugly Trumpist nationalism.<\/p>\n<p><code><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rH1PVvFj8cE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/code><\/p>\n<p><em>BTS performing &#8220;DNA&#8221; at the American Music Awards, November 2017.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>By the time they came to the US and performed at the American Music Awards in November, I had passed the threshold from casual observer to proto-fan, and by May of 2018 when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Love-Yourself-Tear-BTS\/dp\/B07BZBBVLF\">Love Yourself: Tear<\/a> was released (which went on to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/tamarherman\/2017\/11\/16\/bts-by-the-numbers\/#2e52e61c7f3b\">break a zillion records<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0including landing at #1 on the Billboard charts), I could have passed any &#8220;You&#8217;re an ARMY If..&#8221; quiz.\u00c2\u00a0 I even had a handle on all this newfangled fandom jargon (wow it made me feel old) of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=Stan\">stanning<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=bias\">biases<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=ship\">ships<\/a> and K-Diamonds and I-Lovelies.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn&#8217;t just the band.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn&#8217;t just the music.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn&#8217;t just the fans.<\/p>\n<p>The real catch is the thing that unites the fans and the band, an infectious\u00c2\u00a0<em>hopeful optimism\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>that crosses every language, cultural, or age barrier.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though they are so young, their music tells the story of a group of boys growing up and trying to discover how to live a meaningful life in a world of such disparity.\u00c2\u00a0 And even though I&#8217;m 42 years old, I&#8217;m still trying to figure out how to live a meaningful life in a world of such disparity, too.\u00c2\u00a0 Their solo albums and side projects delve into how hard it is to overcome anxiety, perfectionism, and depression, and through their music and countless interviews, it&#8217;s clear they&#8217;re figuring out that fame and fortune don&#8217;t buy happiness if you don&#8217;t like yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 And here it took me 30-some years to discover that.\u00c2\u00a0 How wonderful would it have been if I had realized it in my 20s?<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I&#8217;m as cynical and jaded as the next gal. Yes sometimes the lyrics are cheesy, and yes sometimes the music is pure pop syrup, and yes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/entertainment\/kpop-hard-life-1.4545627\">the K-pop machine has an ugly underbelly<\/a> including sexual abuse, suicide, and contracts that aren&#8217;t far from indentured servitude, and yes the band is a commercial, capitalist enterprise making zillions of dollars with their $50+ t-shirts, and lightsticks, and this, that, and the other.\u00c2\u00a0 BTS and BigHit Entertainment is a business, BIG business, and they are monetizing the passion of their fans to make a killing (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/tamarherman\/2018\/08\/02\/korean-entertainment-conglomerate-cj-em-bts-label-big-hit-entertainment-to-create-music-venture\/#5fb174fb3c4b\">Forbes reported in March 2018<\/a> that Big Hit Entertainment was valued at 783 billion KRW, or $687 million USD, I&#8217;m sure that&#8217;s only gone up since then).\u00c2\u00a0 That&#8217;s all completely true.<\/p>\n<p><code><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nQySbNGu4g0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/code><\/p>\n<p><em>BTS &#8216;Fake Love&#8217; dance practice session.\u00c2\u00a0 Even if you don&#8217;t like the music, you can&#8217;t tell me that isn&#8217;t art.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And.. somehow I don&#8217;t care.\u00c2\u00a0 Somehow, I&#8217;m glad for them.\u00c2\u00a0 Somehow I still find sincerity in their finger-hearts and silly smiles, earnestness in their practice videos and sweaty concert performances, optimism and a refreshing naivete in their lyrics and rap wordplay.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why not a bunch of young guys from Korea who have still have the\u00c2\u00a0unbelievable youthful audacity\u00c2\u00a0to think they can change the world?\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, that&#8217;s what turned me into an ARMY.\u00c2\u00a0 Adorable Representative MCs for Youth.\u00c2\u00a0 At a time in my personal life when I felt despair, I happened upon a global thread of hope through BTS and their fans, a reminder that young people all around the world are struggling, thinking, hoping, trying to find a way to live and move forward, and that the way forward is as it has always been, one step at a time, to just plain not give up.\u00c2\u00a0 To not let cynicism win.\u00c2\u00a0 A reminder of the joy of music, the release you feel dancing to a good beat, and the inspiration that came from seeing the often smiling, sometimes tired, but still hopeful faces of 7 Korean boys who aren&#8217;t yet ground down by the machine, the world, life itself.<\/p>\n<p><code><\/code><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Could we, without relentlessly criticizing, let people have their pumpkin spice, and avacado toast, and their fandoms, and their D&amp;D, and their too-early-Halloween-decorations, and whatever little harmless things in which they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve manage to find a tiny shriveled flower of joy?<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u201d Mr. Roger (@RogerC137) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RogerC137\/status\/1034979674387038211?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 30, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<em>A favorite tweet from a few months ago..<\/em><\/p>\n<p>As the last album of the Love Yourself cycle came out in August 2018, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B07F99WH5Y\">Love Yourself: Answer<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0(which also went on to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/articles\/columns\/k-town\/8473971\/bts-most-simultaneous-hits-world-digital-song-sales\">break a bazillion records<\/a> including #1 on the Billboard charts again), BTS and the Adorable Representative MCs for Youth became (part of) the antidote to my Trump depression.\u00c2\u00a0 BTS and ARMY culture shows that there are other ways to to respond to the challenges the world faces other than tribalism and building walls, and that good music, good art makes us think, feel, reflect, absorb, change, and no joke, it can be healing.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who has watched a BTS video has seen the Big Hit Entertainment intro: &#8220;Music &amp; Artist for Healing&#8221;.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Indeed.<\/p>\n<p>So after all that, I did what every other self-respecting ARMY (who could afford it) did, and started planning a trip to see them live when they came the States for their <a href=\"http:\/\/bts.ibighit.com\/btsworldtour\/\">globally sold-out Love Yourself World Tour<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Coming soon,\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/btsxcitifield-part-3-the-experience-awesome\/\"><strong>#BTSxCitifield Part 3 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c The fans, the show, the experience &#8211; so awesome<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>[1]\u00c2\u00a0 My rekindled interest in Korean culture was not my only new diversion.\u00c2\u00a0 During <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cincinnati.com\/story\/weather\/2017\/11\/18\/strong-winds-knock-out-power-thousands-tristate-residents\/877590001\/\">an unusually long power outage in November<\/a>, I dug through the closet and found my guitar, and have been faithfully teaching myself to play (again, but kind of for the first time).\u00c2\u00a0 I took piano lessons as a kid, and played clarinet very badly in grade school, but this is the first time that I&#8217;ve passed the threshold of playing an instrument well enough to really enjoy it.\u00c2\u00a0 And practicing requires a level of obsessive repetition that feels almost meditative, it&#8217;s given me\u00c2\u00a0an enormous amount of solace.<\/p>\n<p><code><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/457288557&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true&amp;visual=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/code><\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t make fun, I know I&#8217;m not very good at singing OR playing, but that&#8217;s the first song I learned after picking a guitar up again for the first time in 20 years. (I&#8217;ll say it again, Music for Healing!)<\/p>\n<p>[2] BTS landed in the 2018\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guinnessworldrecords.com\/world-records\/471737-most-twitter-engagements-tweet-interactions\">Guinness Book of World Records for having the most Twitter engagements<\/a>, apparently more than Trump and Justin Bieber combined.\u00c2\u00a0 I find that really funny for some reason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post is part of a series, see\u00c2\u00a0#BTSxCitifield Part 1 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c The Backstory: How Trump and #MeToo led to finding #BTS and joining the ARMY to start from the beginning. &nbsp; Remember when I said I wasn&#8217;t sure if I even remembered how to blog since it&#8217;s been so long?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, I managed to misconfigure [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[509,442,10,11,315,20,24,26,453,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bangtan","category-culture","category-deep-thoughts","category-democracy","category-life-online","category-media","category-music","category-politics","category-spritiual","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2703"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2941,"href":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions\/2941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}