NEW YORK: Legions of K-pop fans and TikTok users are taking credit for upending Donald Trump's weekend rally after block-reserving tickets with no intention to attend an event that was beset by an embarrassingly low turnout.
One video urged fans of the South Korean K-pop sensation BTS - one of the world's most popular bands, with more than 21 million Twitter followers - to participate in the plot."Oh no, I signed up for a Trump rally, and I can't go," said one woman who coughed sarcastically in a separate TikTok video. Just in the past month, fans of the globally dominant pop genre - which was born approximately 25 years ago in South Korea - co-opted the hashtag #WhiteLivesMatter by flooding it with K-pop related imagery to drown out racist tweets.
"K-pop fans in general are outward-looking, socially conscious people and K-pop in the United States is very heavily supported by people of color, by people who identify as being LGBTQ," she told AFP. After BTS dropped US$1 million behind the Black Lives Matter movement, a fan collective charity - known as One in An ARMY - raised another million to match.
"Fans are online all the time ... K-pop organisers are primarily on Twitter," said Seiji, who said fans' understanding of internet algorithms makes them a powerful group when it comes to online organising.In this photo released by the United Nations, K-pop band BTS poses for a photo with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim after delivering an address empowering youth to listen to their own convictions in 2018.
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