The Politicization of K-pop Stans & TicTokkers Duping the Trump Rally
The politicization of K-Pop stans has a really interesting recent historical antecedent: Anonymous.
By Cory Doctorow / Pluralistic
The politicization of online fandoms is always weird. Most fandoms
(usually) have no intrinsic political valence, and indeed, a common
strong affinity for an apolitical genre can make strange allies,
bringing together people of very different politics.
I remember going to Dungeons and Dragons club in Toronto in the 1980s
and bailing early to go to anti-nuclear proliferation protests, to the
absolutely shock and dismay of the far-right types who found their way
into the hobby through wargaming.
This makes for some bitter splits when a majority (or large minority) of
a fandom decides to politicize. The closest I came to quitting SFWA was
when the board unwisely promulgated a loyalty oath stating "respect for
intellectual property" was a condition of membership.
(Don't worry, that's no longer the case and the people behind it are not
active in the org anymore. You can still be an sf writer even if you
hate patent trolls, copyfraudsters, or the toxic business-model of Elsevier)
As the fight for racial justice in America has heated up and moved back
onto the streets in the highest-possible-stakes way, an unlikely fandom
has thrown its support behind the cause: K-Pop Stans (AKA megafans of
South Korean pop music).
Earlier this month, there was a massive flood of K-Pop "fancams" (short
video clips of musical performances) in far-right hashtags, and to the
snitch-line set up by Dallas police to rat out protesters.
At the time, some people were skeptical of K-Pop stans' commitment to
justice; I heard from several people who'd been targeted by K-Pop
harasser mobs that flooded queer and racialized online spaces in
precisely the same way.
At the time, I thought K-Pop fandom was probably undergoing a
politicization comparable to other fandoms - like the purging of Nazi
elements from the punk scene and the emergence of an explicitly
anti-authoritarian, queer, leftist character to a genre of music and fandom.
I think I was right. Yesterday, Trump held a rally in Tulsa, OK. In
advance of that rally, his campaign manager boasted of over 1,000,000
RSVPs and the campaign planned for massive outdoor overspill areas with
jumbotrons.
But when the doors opened, only 6,000 people were there, enough to leave
the 19,000 person hall - a true Emptysburg Address.
The Trump campaign (predictably) blamed it on fear of antifa
supersoldiers who'd scared off his million+ throng.
But what *actually* happened is that Gen-Z K-Pop stans and Tiktokkers
had sent a million fake signups to the RSVP system, flooding it. That's
why they were expecting a million people.
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1274499021625794565?s=20
(As to why only 6,000 showed: Trump isn't that popular, and his base
skews old and unwell and understand that going to a rally during a
coronavirus pandemic could kill them)
The politicization of K-Pop stans has a really interesting recent
historical antecedent: Anonymous. The movement had its origins in
4chan's /b/ forum, a notorious source of online harassment and anarchic
"fun."
But during Occupy and the Arab Spring, a large plurality of Anonymous
participants became explicitly politicized and declared the movement to
have an explicit political character.
The path to that political character is complicated, with detours
through a Scientology lawsuit and other odd alleyways, but that's where
they ended up.
The very best person to read on this is the cyber-anthropologist Biella
Coleman. Here's my review of her 2014 must-read on Anonymous, "Hacker,
Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy".
But after Biella's book came out, 4chan kept going. The rump of 4chan/b
people who didn't want to follow Anonymous's new politics
became...Donald Trump's authoritarian online footsoldiers.
And there *were* homophobic and racist K-Pop stan raids in the past.
Progressive politics were not a condition of K-Pop fandom membership
(until now). So there's probably a rump of bitter, vicious racist trolls
who have mastered the same tactics we're celebrating today.
That said: as Yim Hyun-su documents in a fantastic Korea Herald piece on
K-Pop fandom in Korea and abroad, the US K-Pop scene is pretty queer and
pretty racially diverse.
And K-Pop's fringe status in US culture has welded together the fandom
in a movement that cut its teeth flooding I Heart Radio request lines.
He quotes Michelle Cho, a University of Toronto media scholar, who
describes how the controversy over K-Pop's appropriation of Black and
hiphop culture has turned into a solidarity movement.
It's a really complicated and nuanced cultural story, and it's only
getting started. If Anonymous is any guide, then the backlash with the
fandom is gonna be ugly. Buckle up.