Have a friend who is into K-Pop and want to learn more or just understand? This is for you from a former hardcore fan.

Usually when beginning a draft for an article such as this and slowly beginning to draft up different topics to talk/write about (with a separate goal of improving my own writing skills and typing abilities), I also tend to enjoy ‘researching’ and reading through different articles by K-Pop fans and press sites about the topic while enjoying some music. This time though, I couldn’t help but struggle to find an article or paper directed to those individuals who are just trying to understand their friend more, or just wanting to know more about a topic their friend loves so much. While it was easy to find those articles and guides surrounding K-Pop, including but not limited to: ‘guide to K-Pop’, ‘everything to know about K-Pop’, ‘a beginners guide to K-Pop’, ‘‘friendships and K-Pop’, top groups in K-Pop’, ‘friend groups inside of K-Pop’, ‘groups in K-Pop to know’, ‘K-Pop slang and meme terminology to know’. 

If you are either trying to understand how someone you love is getting into K-Pop, why someone would even bother their time with K-Pop, or trying to understand your friend who may be, slowly but surely becoming a ‘hardcore’, ‘strict’ or ‘only K-Pop’ ‘fan’, I think its a really healthy idea to set boundaries with your friends (even online friends) and discuss what you personally are okay with talking about or supporting as things can often get overwhelming when discussing the joys and dark side’s of K-Pop and heavy topics maybe involved. 

Short history of how I got into K-Pop, and why your friend might be getting into the hobby. 

When beginning my early highschool years way back in 2017 and 2018, it would be the first times I would be introduced to different social media platforms, but at the same time it was some of the hardest years of my life. Going through numerous changes alone, moving from city to city, struggling to find a friend group, bullying and more underlying mental health issues and social anxieties. Although it may not be the case for everyone, for me at the time and all the way up until 2020, K-Pop offered that form of escape. Pretty music with pretty backgrounds and attractive people that I just wanted to be friends with. I would come across artists who would mean a lot to me during these periods of my life, VIXX, B.A.P, EXO, BigBang, iKON, Winner, BlockB, NU’EST, MONSTA X, Seventeen and BTS to name a few.

Later on in my career as a fan would I slowly evolve from a newbie fan to a loyal fan, including watching my first form of Korean content and tv shows: [ Boys Over Flowers ], [ Moorim HighSchool ] and the competition variety like show that would go on to debut the 9 (now 8 member) boy group ‘StrayKids’. I to would slowly become obsessed with the idea of going to Korea to be a trainee and doing everything in my power to practice and try to go to Korea. Looking back and after years of therapy, I would realize the struggles in my own life, gender issues and despising my own sexual identity of liking other girls. 

I would become obsessed with the idea of pretending to be someone I wasn’t to make friends online, for the small ounce of attention that I couldn’t get in school. Not realizing at the time how much my mental health was truly taking and the negative affects of my obsession. This eventually leading me to create an account on the popular app Twitter, having five accounts up to a certain point, even watching my online friend slowly turn into a ‘SaeSang‘.  She would send me idols personal information, including where they lived, pictures of idols sleeping on the plane that she would buy from others, and even send me two photos, one of BTS’s Fake Love set before the official release, and the other of the set of their Japanese song, ‘Airplane Part 2’. If it wasn’t for my dream of my then bias RM (Kim Namjoon of BTS) scolding me with a camera in hand (that I was using to take pictures of the group in my dream), I don’t think I would have changed the way I have. 

Q&A with a former hardcore K-Pop fan and common questions. 

Why do you think people get obsessed with K-Pop?

Personally as I have also said previously, I was at some of the worst points in my life and just didn’t wanna be myself, let alone was I proud of who I was and my heritage. I was embarrassed and wanted to be anything but me, K-Pop was that ‘escape’ that people always talk about. Either not doing well in school or just wanting to run away to a life that you think might be better, its still real for many people. I saw the negative sides of it more then normal people will, I supported various artists throughout the years that faced abuse and harsh treatments from their own companies and would later disband. This sadly happened more then I would care to admit, I would always ‘move on’ to the next artist without properly going through my emotions and trying to realize maybe why that was the case. 

Do you think there is any benefits of being a K-Pop fan?

Personally I think like anything in life there is always positives and negatives to every situation, to every hobby to every person. No matter what though, I do think there is lots of positives of enjoying any hobby, its just how far you take it and not making it your whole personality is the key. 

Thanks to K-Pop, and thanks to BlockB and B.A.P I became more interested in rock music (or anything with a good guitar to be honest), and would come across bands like The Rose and N.Flying. Thus picking up a new hobby in enjoying guitar and trying out different fashion that wasn’t just a hoodie or black in my wardrobe. 

How do I tell my friend its to much without hurting their feelings?

With the more I learn about relationships and setting up healthy boundaries, I think they are important for any relationship, even if you and your friend are strictly online friends. I think having a healthy and good foundation of what’s okay to talk about and how much you want to talk about something is a good conversation even if its difficult. Being honest with your friend about why you are concerned about their hobby and or possibly their health because of a certain hobby, you should feel like you can speak out but still be respectful. If you don’t want to bring the topic up to your friend directly, try (if you can) to bring it up to another individual. 

Going through something were you feel like you are alone isn’t healthy and you should have someone to tell your worries to, even if you think its silly or embarrassing. People are more understanding then we think, its good to have that around us. 

A lot of us in K-Pop are lonely in some way even if we do have friends around us, it could feel like a dark hole that is endless. Although its not the case for everyone, K-Pop is a genre of content that makes us feel ‘loved bomb’ and parasocial relationships are there. 

Why do fans think idols are their ‘husbands’, ‘wives’, etc?

For me I think I used to have the same thoughts for a very very long time, K-Pop is often marketed to a very young audience. Within this audience, K-Pop can thrive off the idea of creating and curating a ideal role model, either male or female artist puts out a certain image to appeal a certain audience and is often ‘manufactured’ to create certain content, and often creates parasocial relationships between the ‘fan’ and ‘idol’. One of K-Pop’s ‘genius’ marketing tactics is creating relationships between these two individuals, a lot of people in the hobby due have loneliness tendencies or suffer from things that might make it harder to understand that being an idol is a job, and what they say could be faked. There’s a lot of clips out there of idols saying something that a boy would say to a girl he likes, or sometimes even be cringed out by certain outfits provided by fans or for having to say a certain thing you would say to your partner. 

It’s often not your friends fault that they think this way, as K-Pop marketing is the fault for many kids who think this way. It’s seemingly on the ‘normal’ way of fans ask their artist to provide for them, or make the ‘marriage’ comments for their ‘husbands’. 

How can I get my friend to talk about other things beside K-Pop content and K-Pop in general?

I think when it comes to wanting your friend to change or just wanting to talk about other topics in general, that friend would want to have to change, or find other hobbies and new interests. Personally for me, I decided to step down from K-Pop social media apps, K-Pop content and delete Twitter. Within the last month, I decided to do what I originally did during the first time I wanted to quit K-Pop and that was completely unsubscribe from my artists on music platforms and YouTube. 

On YouTube, it curates content to you like other apps do, the more you click and watch something the more you get it recommended to you. After deleting this, I ended up not allowing myself K-Pop and going on small bans to help what I referred to as my ‘addiction’ and go on small 5 – 10 day bans. Liking K-Pop isn’t a bad thing and your friend isn’t wrong for doing liking it, its perfectly curated content to keep us wanting more with back to back music releases that offer numerous content for us to enjoy. Its hard to step out of it and find something new to enjoy.

K-Pop is honestly just music but it goes a lot deeper for some people to a point that it can be to much.