During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people found themselves in unexpected isolation together with the uncertainty of the virus, political tensions on various fronts, and a shift to the world conducting social affairs online. To combat loneliness and stress, many found themselves turning to social media platforms more than ever before. For some, these platforms are sites to stay connected to their existing social ties, like friends and family, for example. For others, these online spaces are venues to find new communities of support and belonging. In this article, we take a deep dive into the online community ARMY (Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth), which is the fandom for South Korean musicians BTS who are the best-selling artists in South Korean history. Since their debut in 2013, this seven-member group has been hugely influential in music and activism. We turn to ARMY as an example of a playful online community. That is, a community that centers around ludic or playful interactions that take place across a digital ecosystem, which includes and spans several different platforms and media forms.

  Online Communities

Online communities have been around since the inception of the internet—or, depending on how you're measuring long-distance communication—much longer than the internet. Many of those communities centered around play. During the proliferation of early access to the World Wide Web in the 1980s and 1990s, text-based play communities called multi-user dungeons (MUDs) were one-way groups of people came together to socialize and play [1]. Early social computing researchers traced how people were finding fellowship online across several platforms—uncovering how people were finding, forging, and maintaining social connections across digital and physical spaces. This has laid the groundwork for a robust and lively scholarly body of work into online communities and their importance in social life.

As social media grew along with the widespread adoption of smartphones, online communities became ubiquitous. Soon, lines between the physical world and the digital world blurred. Some still refer to the physical world as the "real world," but this is a misnomer. The friendships and relationships we make, and sometimes break, online and in digital games are as real as our in-person relationships (see, for example, works by Boellstorff et al. [2] and Ringland [3]). Still, there are debates of more traditional play communities that use social media and social games, which have historically been the topic of social debate (such as the potential for addiction and the purported antisocial effects of screen time). However, as we show in this article, playful communities are a valuable source of solace and support for many, especially those weathering difficult times in their lives. Additionally, they continue to be valuable in their own right for providing people an outlet for their creativity, fun, and leisure, which are important aspects of the human experience.

  Online in a Pandemic: Finding the BTS Army Community

The internet can be a great source of sociality, one that has been essential over the past year and a half as we navigate the heightened emotional valence of current events. From isolation to racial violence, many turned to online communities, such as ARMY, for solace and support. As a community, ARMY is global and its members range in the millions. ARMY is extremely diverse and the members of this community come from all walks of life. In a 2020 census conducted on approximately 400,000 individuals associated with ARMY, 49% were more than 18 years old, and 20% held some form of a college degree [4].

ARMY and BTS piqued the interest of both mass media and academia for some of their altruistic engagements, like supporting their community, artists, music, and social causes [4, 5], as well as BTS's positive impact on mental health [6]. The members personally donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter, which inspired ARMY to collectively match that donation in a 24-hour period [5]. BTS has also been outspoken about other injustices, such as violence against children and Asians as well as environmental issues. Recently, they gave their third speech at the United Nations, addressing the youth of the world about the United Nations General Assembly's Sustainability Goals to improve equity around the globe.

There is a quote that circulates among BTS's fandom: "It's okay if you didn't discover them in 2013 [when BTS debuted], because you find them in the times you need us the most." BTS's lyrics and messages help give meaning back to ARMY who have felt they were at a low point in their lives. BTS has a campaign¹ in collaboration with UNICEF dedicated to encouraging people around the world to "Love Yourself." During the pandemic specifically, BTS expressed and created an outlet for the emotions and trauma that were being felt globally. During a June 2020 speech on YouTube, BTS member Jimin said, "I am worried for everyone. I think about your health and whether you're doing OK, whether you are holding on tight when nothing seems to go as planned, whether your body and mind are all safe and sound…Remember there is a person here in Korea, in the city of Seoul, who understands you. We are all in different parts of the world, in different environments and circumstances, but at this moment I hope we can all give each other a warm pat on the back and say, 'It's okay'" [7]. As this speech occurred during the height of the first wave of lockdowns, it drew many to join ARMY as a way of coping with the trauma of the pandemic, and all the resulting problems and uncertainty that came with it. The video and quotes from this speech are still remixed and shared with fellow ARMYs who are having a difficult time. Even for people who may have never interacted otherwise, sharing quotes from Jimin's speech forges a common bond among all ARMYs.

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The friendships and relationships we make, and sometimes break, online and in digital games are as real as our in-person relationships.

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BTS have put careful consideration into the content and music they released throughout the pandemic. They released an album, "BE," in November 2020 that dealt with many of the emotions people were feeling. The music video for the song "Life Goes On" includes imagery such as wiping dust off the seat of a bicycle because people were not allowed outside and going around with masks on their faces to prevent spreading illness. This has been followed by the release of the song "Permission to Dance"' and an accompanying music video where people can be seen removing their masks and throwing them away in the future where the pandemic has ended. This optimistic song includes the lyrics, "we don't need permission to dance" as a way to envision a better future.

  Leveraging Social Media to Create Online Communities

In addition to their music and related content, BTS has leveraged a variety of social media platforms to communicate and create community with their fans. These include Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and other social media platforms, but also Korean platforms such as VLIVE² and Weverse,³ the latter owned by BTS's management and dedicated to musicians and their fandoms. The platform also hosts some paid content such as BTS concerts, free videos, and their own variety show, "Run! BTS." The members of BTS also use the platform as their primary livestreaming service, where audiences can watch and leave comments in a chat window in real-time. BTS releases content across all these different platforms including "formal" content, such as promotions and announcements, but also "informal" content, such as personal messages, pictures, and videos from the band members.

BTS members often push narratives about self-care, working hard, caring for one's community, and their love for ARMY. BTS thanks ARMY for every award they win or record they break. For example, Jimin always uses the hashtag that translates to "Our ARMY received an award" whenever he posts about the band's accolades. Band members also show more personal care in their messages to fans, by asking if fans are well and if they have eaten. In 2016, BTS member RM posted a message on Twitter⁴ to ARMY saying, "Thank you for being my fan. I am your fan as well. I diligently cheer on your life and your fight with loneliness that you must bear on your own. From behind the stage and in my studio, I write a long fan letter written in musical notes." ARMY often engages with these thoughtful messages from BTS members by writing similarly themed replies to the member who posted.

ARMY often cite BTS members as their inspiration and motivation for how they behave in these online spaces, including collective philanthropic initiatives like their large donations to charities. But ARMY also engages in caring for its own community members, which more often goes unnoticed by outside media. In their online spaces, one might find specialized or themed social media accounts (e.g., accounts focused on health, charity activities, music chart tracking), parody and joke accounts, ARMY sharing resources with each other, giving each other motivation and encouragement, and special community-related events (such as ARMY selfie day). ARMY, as a transnational community, uses playful interactions (for example, the creation of memes and the interactions with BTS on various social media) to cut across cultural barriers. Playfulness comes not only in these cross-cultural acts of play but in the education and teaching about different cultural values and languages. This includes when ARMY should not play, when there are solemn cultural moments that have to be explained to non-Koreans, such as the deep bow as a sign of respect.

  Using Play to Build Relationships

BTS and ARMY build and maintain their relationship with each other through a playful reciprocity where there is a tacit acknowledgment of the other's behavior. Within ARMY, friendships between fans form over their shared love for BTS. Much like other fandoms, ARMY has a remix culture where they are often editing and creating new content related to their shared passion [8]. This means playfully creating GIF animations; editing photos, videos, and memes; and sharing those with one another. If someone is having a hard day, their friends online will share happy or uplifting edits and content to make them feel better. Sharing remixed and edited content also connects ARMY together as they appreciate BTS's music again (or for the first time). For example, BTS filmed a silly music video filmed in front of a blue screen, allowing ARMY to play with BTS by placing them in playful locations. These small playful interactions are meaningful for the fanbase to feel like they are in a partnership.

This playful sharing of content with one another also occurs directly between BTS and ARMY. For example, when fans create memes of band members, BTS can be found using those same memes in their own content. BTS member J-Hope recently posted a blurry photo of himself asking ARMY to remind him what content he had posted last year for another member's birthday. Within minutes, he received a response and then went to post new photos for this year's birthday. J-Hope had initiated a sort of gift giving, where he "gave" ARMY the gift of a blurry photo in exchange for the labor of going through his old posts for him. In this way, ARMY and BTS are crafting a playful community together based on relationships of trust and care.

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Playful communities are a valuable source of solace and support for many, especially those weathering difficult times in their lives.

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It is also worth noting these playful interactions are happening within the fandom community, but both BTS and ARMY are quite serious when sharing the music and message, as well as staunchly defending each other outside the community. When interviewers ask disparaging questions about ARMY (often insinuating negative stereotypes about the fandom), BTS members will staunchly defend their fans as being intelligent and diverse. BTS member Suga said during a behind-the-scenes about their preparation for the UN General Assembly,⁵ "Although we always talk about [making a positive impact on the world], we, personally, don't think it can be a lot of help if we are the only ones doing it. The fact that people like us and support us and that they're [making an impact on the world], I think is an amazing thing. [ARMY] get belittled a lot just because they are fans of idols. To do the things they do just because they like [BTS] is really not an easy task." Even playful moments between ARMY and BTS can have serious notes to them. When Suga was livestreaming in May 2020,⁶ an ARMY jokingly said in the chat "Who is behind you?" in an attempt to scare him (as viewers could see into his room behind him). He then replied, "There's ARMY behind me. It's so reassuring."

  The Promise of Play

In this article, we shared a deep dive into the world of ARMY, the fandom around the hit band BTS. The magnitude of this online community is hard to grasp—it includes millions of people, with 40 million following BTS on Twitter alone, and this community's activity spans across an entire ecosystem of platforms. We have drawn out the important role that play has in this community—the fun, creative, leisurely, sometimes humorous, interactions that help build relationships between community members in online spaces.

Staying connected can sometimes be a dreadful task. Especially in the early days of the pandemic, when each day brought new, grisly statistics and harrowing accounts of the virus' toll on the world and the bitter political divisions that rippled in its wake. Logging on felt frightful, each new push notification bringing in the latest dire news. Even now, more than 20 months on, as we settle into our "forever" pandemic, the exhaustion of our collective stress waxes on. Therefore the idea of play is so powerful in the liberatory promise it holds for the future of social computing. Play creates spaces where we are free to laugh, to joke, to tease, to try something out, to do something different, and most importantly, where we can share that freedom with others. Let's look for more ways to cherish in joy, leisure, and play with each other, as BTS reminds us that: "we don't need permission to dance."

  References

[1] Dourish, P. Introduction: The state of play. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 7, 1 (1998), 1–7.

[2] Boellstorff, T. For whom the ontology turns: Theorizing the digital real. Current Anthropology 57, 4 (2016), 387–407; http://doi.org/10.1086/687362

[3] Ringland, K. E. 2018. Toward ludic-mediated sociality: an ethnography of a Minecraft virtual world for children with autism. Doctoral dissertation. ProQuest, University of California Irvine. 2018.

[4] Grover, C., Ciocirlea, R., and Santero, N. BTS ARMY CENSUS; https://www.btsarmycensus.com

[5] Park, S. Y., Santero, N., Kaneshiro, B., and Lee, J. H. Armed in ARMY: A Case Study of How BTS Fans Successfully Collaborated to #MatchAMillion for Black Lives Matter. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, New York, 2021, 1–14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445353

[6] Lee, J. H., Bhattacharya, A., Antony, R., Santero, N., and Le, A. "Finding Home": Understanding how music supports listeners' mental health through a case study of BTS. In Proc. of the 22^nd Int. Society for Music Information Retrieval Conf., 8. 2021.

[7] BANGTANTV. BTS Commencement Speech | Dear Class Of 2020. Video. YouTube. June 7, 2020; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU6uF5sFtwA

[8] Booth, P. Playing Fans: Negotiating Fandom and Media in the Digital Age. University Of Iowa Press, Iowa City, 2015.

  Authors

Kathryn E. Ringland is an assistant professor at the University of California Santa Cruz. Her research straddles human computer interaction, online communities, games studies, and critical disability studies. She is interested in understanding how disabled individuals leverage social media and game spaces to create access in their online and offline interactions.

Christine T. Wolf is an artist and attorney, turned social computing researcher. Her interests center around questions of equity and inclusion in collaborative experience and the interplay between everyday practices and the design and use of information systems.

  Footnotes

1. https://www.love-myself.org/

2. https://www.vlive.tv/

3. https://weverse.io/

4. https://twitter.com/BTS_twt/status/686588745252917248

5. https://youtu.be/YqYlBeZEQak

6. https://www.vlive.tv/post/1-18241335

 

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