Wrong Assumptions about BTS, part 2

 

Who are the BTS ARMY?

 

One of the most persistent of false assumptions that surfaces several times a year, is the misconception of the age and gender of the BTS ARMY (BTS fans). As far back as I can remember, it has been assumed, perhaps especially in Western media, that BTS fans are screaming teenage girls. Well, they are not. Far from.

When BTS debuted in 2013 they were between 15 to 20 years old and their songs were mostly about the injustice and hardships that the youth must endure, so of course they mainly appealed to a younger audience. This also shows in the fan name ARMY, which stands for Adorable Representative MCs of Youth, but it didn’t take long before BTS caught the attention of older age groups as well.

BTS have always made music and lyrics that appeal to an older audience. They have tried their hands at not only hip-hop, but also soul, funk, jazz, rock, and other kinds of music that were popular in the twentieth century. There lyrics are deep and intricate and often it comes in handy to have a Ph.D. in Literature as well as one in Cultural Studies to understand the full meaning of a song. This appeals to an audience much older than the band itself, so when I became an ARMY in 2016, the fandom was already full of older fans, although you hardly ever noticed them. Why, you ask? Because they were bullied and ridiculed.

I became an ARMY just a few months before my 54^th birthday, so I’ve had my fair share of being bullied online and ridiculed offline. It was mostly my family and so-called friends who made fun of me liking such a young band, but the bullying online was by other ARMYs, young ARMYs, or so they call themselves, and to this day they come after ARMYs who are 20+.

I guess that a lot of these so-called ARMYs are only into BTS because they like the way that the band members look, because they clearly have no clue as to what the band stands for. BTS is probably the most including band in the world who truly appreciate their older fans as much as their younger and their lyrics and references to literature, art, psychology etc. more often than not demand a broader inside into the world than what your ordinary teenager would normally have.

 Still, online we older ARMYs are often told by pestering kids that we should take care of our children instead of listening to BTS, as if one excludes the other! Besides, my daughter is an adult who doesn’t need that much taking care of, but how come that the young fans of BTS think they have the right to bully the older? I guess it is because they are told again and again that the ordinary BTS fan is a teenage girl, so people who are not, are weird.

The ones who do the telling is of course the press. You’ll find the misconception everywhere in reviews of BTS concerts and albums, in feature articles about them, in talk-shows and shows like Saturday Night Live etc. etc. Everywhere it says, that ARMYs are a bunch of teenage girls who want to marry the members – which in itself is pretty weird as some of the members are close to 30 years old.

 

Anyway, in the western world, this misconception originated from BTS trying to seriously crack the western music market in 2017. BTS was originally a hip hop-idol group, but as we don’t have such a group label in the west, they were launched by their company Big Hit Entertainment as a boy band. As soon as I read it, I knew that we were doomed, because boy bands are never taken seriously, and in the West, they are made to cater to young teenage girls. Often, they don’t write their own songs but are put together solely based on their looks and then trained to sing and dance a bit. Some don’t even sing themselves, but mime to playback. The multitalented BTS - who write (and often produce) the vast majority of their own material as well as sing and dance to perfection - was now lumped together with these groups, despite them being closer to acts like the Beatles, David Bowie and even Simon and Garfunkel!

The annual ARMY Census seems to back up the misled teenage ARMYs. ARMY Census is a global demographic study of ARMY made by ARMYs to show their diversity and although I appreciate the attempt, the problem is, that their results don’t reflect real life. Thus, the recent ARMY Census showed that 50% of ARMYs are over 18 and 50% are under and that only 3% are male. These percentages are of course ridiculous, so how come that ARMY Census gets it so wrong?

ARMY Census makes one of the worst mistakes when it comes to statistics. It is not so much the very small number of ARMYs they ask, approximately 500,000 out of 40 million which is not even one percent. That would have been okay if these 500,000 were representative but they are not. ARMY Census only advertises after ARMYs on social media, so all the fans who don’t use social media are excluded. Even a lot of fans who use social media are excluded too, as they exclude themselves, because they are older and would never ever participate in an online survey. Why? Because they are used to being bullied online! This way, it is mainly the younger fans who take part in ARMY Census, and the true identity of ARMY remains hidden.

If it is hidden, how do I know that ARMY Census got it wrong, then? Partly of course, because I am ARMY myself and talk online to hundreds of 40+ ARMYs, men, women, and other gender identities, partly because other, more thorough surveys have been made.

In my time as an ARMY, I have seen at least three big surveys, conducted by respectively a Korean university, Big Hit itself and an American university, the latest I think in 2021. Put together, these surveys showed, that 55% of ARMYs are 30+ and that 25% are male. In fact, less than 10% are teenagers, as the percentages were distributed like this:

0-10 years: 5%
11-19 years: 10%
20-29 years: 30%
30-39 years: 25%
40-49 years: 11%
50-59 years: 4%
60-69 years: 8%
70+ years: 7%

These statistics were based on not only social media, but also on who buys BTS albums, concert tickets and merchandise, and a lot more people have been asked, generally between 5 and 10 percent. Of course, there is still a large hidden number of mostly elderly and male fans who are too afraid to admit in public that they are BTS fans, but even without them, the majority is 30+ years old.

When you see what kinds of products that ARMY has outsold throughout the years, because BTS have been seen using them or endorsing them, you shouldn’t be surprised to find that ARMY are adults. We are talking about as diverse things as wine, fabric softener and cars, products that teenage girls would hardly buy!

 So if you are looking for a typical ARMY, it won’t be easy as the fan base is extremely diverse. Based on my personally experience, a likely representative of ARMY could be a person of colour in their late thirties, probably something other than heterosexual and working as a teacher, a lawyer, or a nurse. That seems to be where the majority is at, whereas I who am white, in my early sixties, straight and a professional writer with two Ph.D. degrees am still a minority, but a minority within the majority!

© BTS ARMA, 2022