I’ve been thinking about this because there are songs I probably would’ve heard once and forgotten about if they weren’t K-pop songs.

You hear the teaser first, see the concept photos, watch the MV, learn the choreography, see the first music show stage, then hear the song again in edits and random clips. By the end of the week you haven’t just “listened to a song.” You’ve basically experienced it in ten different contexts.

And I think that changes how we judge music more than we realize.

There are songs where a specific choreography made a part click for me. There are songs where the MV completely changed the mood I associated with them. Sometimes even seeing a really good live performance makes me suddenly understand a song I was indifferent to.

It makes me wonder how differently I’d rank some of my favorite K-pop songs if I had discovered them as anonymous audio files with no group, visuals, choreography or fandom attached.

I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing either. Maybe all of that context is part of what K-pop actually is.

Saw two completely normal colors next to each other today and immediately thought of a fandom.

That’s it. That’s the problem.

Certain colors, numbers, animals, random objects, even fonts have been permanently assigned to K-pop in my head at this point.

Someone will be wearing a completely normal combination of colors and my brain is like “oh that’s very [fandom]” as if that means anything to a normal person.

I’ve been into K-pop for too long. The associations are irreversible.

Dear Bunnies: This is what happens.

I genuinely cannot remember what I ate three days ago but somehow my brain has unlimited storage for the most irrelevant K-pop information imaginable.

Old fandom jokes. Random things idols mentioned once on a livestream. Comeback dates from groups I don’t even follow anymore. Inside jokes that haven’t been relevant in years.

And the worst part is I’ll randomly remember this stuff at the most unnecessary times.

I haven’t thought about some of these groups in YEARS. Why do I still know this.

K-pop has permanently occupied a very specific and completely useless section of my brain and apparently it’s never leaving.

After spending way too much time experimenting, frogging stitches, and trying to figure out how to make this little bomb look exactly how I imagined, I finally finished writing my first crochet pattern!

So, I present to you the result: an Army Bomb Keyring, but crocheted.💜Honestly, I wanted to make it as accurate to the original as possible while still keeping it soft and handmade. But hey, it's handmade! 😂

Honestly, because I'm usually a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to the things I make and create, this took what felt like an eternity to finish. I genuinely think this is the 2.0 version of my first attempt, which, believe me, you definitely don't want to see hahaha.

I can say that my patience definitely kept swimming through the whole process, but here we are! I'm truly happy with the result!!🌊🌊

It's so FYA, I'd genuinely love to hear what you think!🔥🔥🔥

**P.S.- Please don't treat me with no.29🥹**

P.P.S.-If you're interested in the pattern, feel free to DM me! 💜

Before I actually got into K-pop, I thought comebacks meant a group had been gone for years and was finally returning.

I remember seeing people say stuff like “their comeback is next month” and thinking damn, how long were they gone? Then I found out their last album came out like six months ago.

There were so many little things like that. I also had no idea photocards were such a huge thing or why people cared which version of an album they bought. It all seemed ridiculously complicated from the outside, and then somehow a few months later I understood all of it.

I’m curious what everyone else completely misunderstood before becoming a K-pop fan. Especially something that seems painfully obvious to you now.

I feel like people always talk about getting into a group because of a song or performance, but half the time that’s not even how it happens.

Sometimes you see a 20 second clip of an idol saying something stupid, a random variety show moment, an interview, or even a meme you don’t understand and suddenly you’re searching their name at 2am.

The funniest part is when the thing that got you interested has basically nothing to do with their music. You just wanted context for one clip and somehow ended up learning everyone’s names.

What’s the most random thing that has ever sent you down the rabbit hole with a group?

They're taking interpretations of random pictures showing a comeback date when they're actually are no signs that she's coming back from YG. It's strange how people will take any bit of information and interpret their own way and then fans seem to follow blindly

Where is Rami? What is happening?

Does anyone remember the "We're A Culture, Not A Costume" campaign?

Every once in a while I’ll go back to an older K-pop song and think there’s no way this wouldn’t blow up if it was released right now.

Sometimes it’s the sound, sometimes it’s the styling or concept, and sometimes it just feels like the group released it before people were ready for it. Then five years later everyone is doing something similar.

Obviously nostalgia probably plays a part in this, and I don’t mean songs that were already massive when they came out. I’m thinking more about releases that got a pretty average response at the time but aged ridiculously well.

What’s the first song or concept that comes to mind for you? And what about today’s K-pop landscape do you think would make people receive it differently?

Mine is assuming every idol who looks quiet or uncomfortable on camera secretly hates their group 😭

I swear an idol can stare into space for 3 seconds during an interview and suddenly there’s a whole analysis about how they’re miserable, being excluded, hate another member, want to leave the company, etc.

And then people start repeating it enough that eventually everyone forgets there was never any actual evidence in the first place lol.

I feel like K-pop fandom has a LOT of these things where somebody made an assumption years ago and it somehow became accepted lore.

What’s one you keep seeing people repeat like it’s 100% confirmed?

You know when you’re watching a group for ONE specific member and somehow another member slowly starts taking over your entire attention 😭

Not even in a bias wrecker way necessarily. Sometimes it’s just that they keep doing little things that make you laugh, or you start noticing their voice in every song, and then one day you realize you’ve watched like 15 clips of them for absolutely no reason.

I swear some idols don’t even give you a choice lol. You weren’t looking for a new bias. They just showed up.

Who did this to you and what was the moment you realized “oh no… I actually really like this person”?

Maybe I’m just old fashioned but sometimes I feel like I’ve already experienced half the comeback before the actual comeback 😭

You get the concept photos, tracklist, highlight medley, MV teasers, dance challenge snippet, and sometimes what feels like the entire chorus floating around TikTok before release day.

I understand WHY companies do it and obviously I can just avoid the teasers, but I kinda miss pressing play and genuinely having no idea what the song is about to sound like.

The worst is when the part everyone heard in the teaser ends up being the best part of the song lol. Like damn I wish I got to hear that for the first time IN the song.

Do you guys actually like having this much preview content or would you rather companies keep more of the comeback a surprise?

#NugusNeedLoveToo

Mine is “they don’t even look like an idol.”

I know people usually mean it as a compliment, like the idol is so unique/cool/attractive that they somehow transcend being an idol, but it always feels a little backhanded to me 😭 Like why does being talented or having an interesting personality suddenly mean they’re “not like other idols”?

Same with “they’re too good to be in K-pop” when someone can sing really well. That one drives me insane lol. You can praise someone without putting down the entire industry they chose to work in.

There are SO many phrases K-pop fans use as compliments that sound completely different when you actually think about them for more than five seconds.

What’s one that annoys you every time you see it?

For me it’s line distribution.

I used to actually look up those color coded line distribution videos after every comeback and get annoyed when someone got like 8 seconds 😭 now unless a member is basically nonexistent in the song I genuinely do not care.

Same with stuff like center time, who got the “best” outfit, teaser views, individual fancam numbers etc. At some point I realized keeping track of all that was making this hobby feel like homework.

I feel like everyone who’s been into kpop for a while has at least one thing they used to take VERY seriously and eventually stopped giving a shit about lol. What was yours?

Alright. This is something.

To give some context, I got into k-pop earlier this year and I started diving deeper into NewJeans after hearing “Supernatural” from a TikTok. I’d heard some of their songs back when they were active, but I didn’t know anything about the group until then because I decided that I liked the song. Naturally, I soon found out about their legal battle with HYBE/Ador and the fanwars between Bunnies as Glitts as I was also learning more about ILLIT. And, though I still don’t know anywhere near enough to make an informed judgement, what I know based on my current understanding of the situation has definitely soured my view of the group. I’ve come to love the creative direction of the group, I enjoy most of their discography I’ve heard so far (though I’m still yet to listen to some b-sides) and honestly maybe this is a bit more superficial but I even really appreciate how generous they are with album inclusions - like this group has genuinely made me interested in collecting k-pop albums. But when I found out that the girls said nothing about the hate train and intense fan wars affecting other HYBE girl groups, I was disappointed, and a quite frustrated.

But what has frustrated me even more has been their infamous fanbase, with their infantilisation of the group’s members, misinformation campaigns against other groups and companies, and the sheer vitriol I’ve seen them express against ILLIT and LE SSERAFIM. The worst part about this all is the lack of accountability for this behaviour; from what I’ve seen bunnies will just parrot “Hate the company, not the group” or “What about all the hate NewJeans got?”, or my least favourite, “HYBE stan” in these conversations and it’s so irritating to witness as someone who’s becoming interested in ILLIT.

Now I do not support any companies, and I in fact condone criticism of them, but it appears that the k-pop fanbase has used this as a justification for blatant lies and other bad-faith takes, all in the name of challenging k-pop companies. But what use is there in hating on companies under false premises? I understand that HYBE has its problems, but how are we going to address them if we’re instead attacking them based on false premises? My point is, not everyone who is calling out misinformation about HYBE is doing so for the purpose of defending them. Perhaps some of them are, but some of the people these bunnies are slurring out as “HYBE stans” probably just want to engage in good faith which can be impossible in these k-pop spaces because no one else seems to care about nuance and fact-checking. And I can’t blame them. Because I suspect that these bad faith discussions are how criticisms of HYBE derail into unwarranted attacks on their workers.

With the plagiarism discourse, for instance, I believe that a lot of people (understandably) jumped on the bandwagon to challenge what they perceived as yet another instance of big corporations stealing other people’s work, but the members of ILLIT were also thrust into the crossfire due to their association with this company, and I’ve heard that one has now developed anxiety from how intense that hate train got. And I don’t think that was any coincidence, because the plagiarism accusations were so disingenuous and of course that bullshit about Be:Lift was going to bring more bullshit about the ILLIT members.

From my understanding, the court didn’t agree with the plagiarism, just ruled that Min Heejin was entitled to her opinion, but the damage was already done. I still see tokkis constantly analysing every piece of ILLIT content, practically foaming at the mouth to scream “ILLIT copied NewJeans!” for the nth time. Of course, many will go “ILLIT didn’t copy, Be:Lift did” but it’s weird because not even Be:Lift did, but you can’t tell them that because their understanding of holding companies accountable doesn’t seem to go any deeper than just whatever insults they can hurl at them, no matter how true they are. Is it really a surprise that you’re seeing hate towards the ILLIT members when you just stitched together a 5-second clip or random photograph with a vaguely similar one from NewJeans and cried “plagiarism!” Like of course others aren’t going to engage in good faith when you aren’t either. And these people have the audacity to pretend that they and the NewJeans members didn’t hate the girls. Sure, maybe these people don’t hold any ill will towards any other groups. But mind you the NewJeans members didn’t say anything about the hate ILLIT was receiving until the damage had already done, even though they somehow had time to hang out with an ILLIT-anti and like/reply to comments on their insta. I see bunnies constantly using the clip of Hanni saying “we don’t want to involve the members” as proof that NewJeans doesn’t hate the ILLIT members but what good are words when their actions don’t align with it?

I don’t hate the NewJeans girls, no matter how angry and critical I was at them upon learning about their actions, but I would really appreciate a public apology, and I expect them to learn from this and further hold their fanbase accountable. But whether or not the members apologise, I also want the fanbase to improve. So my feelings about NewJeans have just been going back and forth, from loving the group’s concept to feeling annoyed at the actions of the members and their fanbase. I’ve found it really hard to just sit with these conflicting feelings so I just wanted to write this post to get it off my chest. Sorry for how lengthy this turned out to be!

I know it's Jisoo's official trailer for Click and what not, but it just looks and feels like AI. It could be the editing and filters used, idrk, but it's odd.

Could it be part of the comeback aesthetic? Yes. But it just looks SO FAKE-

I genuinely don’t understand how some people keep up with everything 😭

Between variety content, behind the scenes videos, lives, interviews, TikToks, fancams, etc. I feel like I’m permanently three weeks behind.

At some point I just stopped trying to watch everything and now I only click on whatever looks interesting. Weirdly enough I think I enjoy being a fan more this way.

Curious if most people actually try to keep up or if everyone is secretly as behind as I am lol

I was thinking about how many K-pop songs I’ve completely changed my mind on over time. Sometimes I’ll hear a song for the first time and think “yeah this is definitely not for me,” then two weeks later I’m playing it on repeat lol.

I feel like this happens especially often with songs that are a little weird or overwhelming on the first listen.

What’s your biggest example of this? Like a song you genuinely didn’t get at first, but now you’d defend with your life?