Why K-pop Fans Are No Longer Posting About K-pop
Updated at 8:48 p.m. ET on June 7, 2020.
On early Sunday morning, when the Dallas Police Department tweeted asking people to submit videos of “illegal activity” at protests to its iWatch Dallas app, K-pop fans were ready.
“I wanted to do something to stop or slow [the police] down,” a 16-year-old Houston girl who goes by @YGSHIT on Twitter told me. She was one of many South Korean–pop fans who quickly realized that their lightning-fast coordination and prodigious spamming abilities could be repurposed for what she considers a righteous cause. Concerned that video clips submitted to the police app might be used to identify and possibly arrest peaceful protesters, K-pop fans improvised. They submitted, over and over, their collections of “fancams”—short clips of concerts or promotional footage, usually zoomed in to focus on a favorite performer.
@YGSHIT, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the police, selected a clip from a recent by , which she submitted four or five times. Then she did the
