The Bts ‘Craze’: Exploring Fandom Among Young Girls on Urban Margins

With the growing availability of internet on their handsets, young people, across categories in India access study material, connect with peers and friends on social media, follow current affairs, trends, influencers, music, and cinema. They also actively create content often featuring themselves and different aspects of their lives including aspirations, friendships, travel adventures. In an exploratory study on social media engagement (classed/gendered) and navigations of youth in a low-income, resettlement colony in Delhi, we met a vibrant group of young, female BTS fans bonding over their love for a South Korean pop music band (also known as Bangtan Boys). From fancying the band members as romantic partners to celebrating BTS’ anniversary to enrolling in Korean language lessons on Duolingo, these girls display a deep fascination for this content. Their fascination or 'craze' often invites policing from male members of their family as well as ridicule from male counterparts in their neighbourhood.

This paper explores how these girls were introduced to BTS and the ways in which they engage with, consume, celebrate and popularize this content as a group? What aspects of BTS do they find appealing? What conversations, activities and internet socialities and female companionship emerge from this fandom? What does it mean for these girls, marginalized by class, caste, gender and religious lines, to be a part of BTS army? Finally, the paper will also seek to explore if/how this content shapes their imagination of a 'good' life. These aspects will be situated and analysed within the larger context of urban marginalities and aspirations of the urban poor. The paper is based primarily on focused group discussions with a group 8-10 girls who self-identified as staunch BTS fans. Additionally, the researchers will also follow and analyse content on their social media accounts (with their permission).