Fandom Activism
In light of Kpop fandom failing to produce a mass movement (or even a small movement) to migrate to a Twitter alternative even though we're on like the 4th or 5th "Twitter exodus" in the discourse cycle, I wanted to talk a bit about Stan Twitter activism.
My opinion on social media activism in general (boycotts, cancellations, etc.) are that they're almost always noble if not sometimes a little immature, so even if people are shouting from the rooftops that people who eat Big Macs are cretins or something, it's best to just let them do it. Whataboutism is about as useless here as elsewhere, and you can just turn the internet off.
Generally speaking, I think we need more of letting people "pick and choose." We have billions of people on the planet. It's fine if the 50k people that liked that tweet only care about boycotting one thing (unlikely, but let's say that's the case). That's how society works - different people contribute different things. We need Starbucks boycotters and we need Galen Weston boycotters, we need artists and we need politicians, we need reformers and we need radicals. This is not to shut down discourse on how best to do practical political efforts, but to point out that those efforts are never the result of a handful of people becoming ubermen who stand for literally every good cause and somehow all contribute to all of the everything they stand for.
All that being said though, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that Kpop Twitter is showing its ass by seemingly not even 1% of them migrating to a Twitter alternative. I won't conclude you're a bad person for still liking to use Twitter (or being addicted to Twitter and not liking it), I used it excessively for a looong time after Elon Musk bought it - but when you see the depths of depravity Kpop stans will go through to harass, demean, and just generally make up stuff about idols over a Starbucks cup (they tracked down Yunjin's sister and contacted her about it! Like, who raised you??) it stands pretty starkly in comparison to the absolute crickets regarding the Nazi app.
It's hard not to think that an obsession with clout and influence, no doubt thanks to the way these apps are designed, leads to this. A new drama is great for numbers - moving to a new, smaller platform is terrible for numbers.
Now, I want to be completely clear. A common place that people retreat to when they, understandably, become angry at this behaviour is thinking that these boycotters, clout chasers, nuisances, they don't actually care about these issues. If they did, they'd be a serious and dour and scornful guy like me, who isn't doing anything at all about the issue because I'd never stoop to such unserious attempts at helping (did I lay it on a little too thick?).
Needless to say, I don't actually think the average person is so maniacally cynical to do all this without "caring." The issue is not a lack of emotional response, far from it, but a lack of emotional maturity to understand how to channel their feelings into practical help, and to understand the consequences of their actions online. In my experience observing stan Twitter we're talking about a typical age range of like, 16 to 21.
The cynicism probably happens occasionally, among the more trolly and anti-social of us, but this is deviant and not usually what's happening in people's heads in these scenarios. Usually I find I can just tell too, when someone isn't just indignant and is actually just pursuing hurt for the sake of hurt. The vibe is just horrendous!
I find myself with the urge to build something on Bluesky to help the growth of a new Kpop community, then I think about how old I am, then I wonder if that matters.
I deactivated my Twitter yesterday and have settled back into using Discord for Kpop updates after doing some notification setup on a few servers I used to have muted, so I'm only getting notifications/unreads for updates I care about and not getting bombarded.
Honestly, if any young fans happen to read this and are looking for community in an uncertain time in this digital space, I kinda gotta recommend Discord. You can actually talk to people and not worry about likes and retweets. Twitter and Twitter alternatives (Bluesky) aren't really built for community - they're built for scrolling through content and for soapboxing. Not that I don't love a soapbox.