Broadway’s Okay-pop musical confirmed how exhausting it’s to create web fame

F8 (pronounced like “destiny”) is an eight-member, all-male Okay-pop band signed to RBY Leisure. A have a look at their official Instagram web page reveals the group performing in live shows, posing for shoots, and smiling on rooftops in eclectic however color-coordinated outfits. The group advertises an upcoming present and profusely thanks its followers, which it refers to as “F8 Nation.” It seems very very similar to the Instagram web page of many different Okay-pop teams {that a} scrolling fan may stumble throughout.

Besides: F8 isn’t actual. It’s a fictional band from KPOP, a musical that opened on Broadway on November twenty seventh and is now, following combined opinions and low ticket gross sales, set to shut after simply two weeks. Within the month main as much as its opening and within the weeks since, KPOP has marketed its characters over social media, leveraging among the similar instruments and techniques that introduced Okay-pop’s largest names to widespread fame. Sadly, KPOP’s fictional teams haven’t but reached the identical success. Creating web fandom, it seems, is difficult to do.

KPOP — a musical centered round a fictional South Korean boy group referred to as F8, a woman group referred to as RTMIS, a solo artist named MwE, and the assorted drama that ensues as they put together for a efficiency in New York — was distinctive and groundbreaking in numerous methods. It was the primary Broadway present with a feminine Asian composer and noticed 18 API artists make Broadway debuts. It additionally took a very fascinating method to its social media advertising and marketing. The workforce tried to create fandom, not solely of the present but in addition of the characters within the present. It created social media presences for the teams it portrayed and promoted them the way in which a label may market actual artists.

Previous to KPOP’s opening night time, official Instagram profiles for F8, RTMIS, and MwE appeared. The workforce behind them utilized picture collages (the place a number of posts create one giant image on an account’s feed), a method that actual teams typically make use of. The pictures seemed remarkably like pictures you’d see on the pages of actual artists, from the surroundings and styling to the bilingual captions.

Elsewhere, the teams did TikTok dance challenges to one another’s songs (that’s, numbers they carried out within the present) and challenged viewers to observe alongside. They named their followers — F8’s have been the “F8 Nation” and RTMIS’s the “Demis” — as actual teams do. “You’re at all times are by our facet cheering us on. You give us power each time we carry out,” F8 captioned a latest Instagram publish. “Thanks on your infinite love and assist, my very particular followers,” MwE wrote in one other. The second F8 first appeared onstage was an enormous one within the present I noticed, preceded by dramatic music and adopted by a pause for cheers and applause. Although the viewers had by no means seen this fictional group earlier than, we have been anticipated to know them already.

As a Okay-pop fan, I’ll admit that I used to be impressed with the authenticity of the social profiles and the way effectively their creators clearly understood as we speak’s on-line Okay-pop scene. Whereas I can solely guess on the KPOP workforce’s mindset when laying out their social media technique, I think about that constructing a fandom for his or her fictional teams may’ve appeared like a good solution to introduce a particularly on-line viewers to the present. And why not? It’s labored effectively for dozens of actual teams — why couldn’t it work with fictional ones?

I at the moment have a playlist stuffed with BTS content material from the previous few weeks alone that I have to compensate for, together with V’s latest idea movie, the Instagram pictures from RM’s album launch, RM’s tiny desk live performance, J-Hope’s new dance follow movies, and the assorted TikToks from the #RunBTS dance problem. For a lot of of as we speak’s most recognizable Okay-pop acts, social media is a central aspect of brand name. To be a Okay-pop fan is to maintain tabs on a relentless stream of on-line content material.

And whereas that avalanche of media might be plenty of work for artists to provide, the payoff may be big. BTS was accountable for essentially the most retweeted and second most-liked tweets on all of Twitter final yr, the latter of which was actually a selfie. BTS member V’s Instagram, which he created final yr, shattered a laundry record of information and have become the quickest profile to ever attain 10 million followers. And BTS is hardly the one group following this playbook. Many trendy bands are much more energetic on social media, significantly on TikTok. There are definitely Okay-pop followers who uncover their favourite artists by way of their music, however I do know simply as many who’ve been roped in by way of social media content material — TikTok dance challenges, behind-the-scenes interviews, and viral selection present moments — and found the music after the very fact.

I’ve been a part of all types of fandoms which have used know-how to attach with followers. (Bear in mind One Course’s Twitcam livestreams?) Over time, as instruments like Instagram and TikTok have change into greater and larger drivers of fame, I’ve heard many conversations in regards to the formulaic nature such on-line environs impose. Do the youngsters today even care about music or artists, I’ve heard members of my technology lament — or are their musicians merely those with one of the best Instagram recreation?

By leveraging the tried and true Okay-pop formulation, KPOP could have unintentionally slated its fictional artists because the management group of this experiment. May the Okay-pop machine, identified for churning out fame — or somewhat, a Broadway musical trying to emulate that Okay-pop machine — create a fandom for artists who, actually, didn’t exist?

The reply is not any, or not within the quick window that KPOP was given. As of this writing, MwE has 284 followers on Instagram, RTMIS has 374, and F8 has 661. That’s not zero, but it surely’s eclipsed by the followings of lots of the solid members who play these fictional artists — the extremely proficient Luna, who performs MwE and is an actual Okay-pop idol, has 1.5 million followers.

On the one hand, these are very new Instagram profiles. Alternatively, they’d entry to a a lot bigger viewers than most new Instagram profiles do. KPOP’s solid included each Broadway and Okay-pop veterans, with a mixed following of hundreds of thousands throughout Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok who have been broadly selling its content material. I’ve little question that these profiles reached Okay-pop circles and Okay-pop followers — however they didn’t discover a footing there.

As each a longtime Okay-pop listener and avid theatergoer, I’m as squarely on this musical’s audience as an individual can get. I noticed KPOP throughout previews. It had some very catchy songs. I wasn’t ready for the way in which it will really feel to see a solid stuffed with Asian and Asian American performers take their bows on Broadway. Opposite to what some opinions have claimed, one doesn’t want to know Korean in an effort to observe or respect the present. I had points with KPOP’s pacing and character growth, however these have been by no means the fault of the implausible performers.

However to me, components of the social media push didn’t ring true. A few of them, I feel, could also be inherent to KPOP’s standing as a Broadway manufacturing.

For one, it was complicated. It was by no means clear to me whether or not the TikToks and Instagram posts have been meant to painting the fictional bands or the actors taking part in them — whether or not I used to be being addressed as an actual fan or whether or not I used to be witnessing characters deal with fictional followers. The truth that lots of the actors are visibly older than actual early profession idols, who generally debut throughout their teenagers, most likely put extra cracks within the phantasm. (Once more, not a criticism of these actors, who did an ideal job.) And there was the truth that among the performers (presumably, those that weren’t native Korean audio system) principally had English traces within the songs and present — which, whereas a very comprehensible artistic alternative from the KPOP workforce, just isn’t one thing you usually see with actual teams.

These are all very affordable decisions that, in an clearly fictional Broadway musical, an viewers will probably droop their disbelief for. When a manufacturing tries to switch a fictional story to an actual fandom, and to courtroom diehard followers who’re intimately conversant in each conference of the style that manufacturing is portraying, it’s maybe a tougher promote.

However I additionally discovered — and I can not converse for all Okay-pop followers right here; this was simply my expertise as one — a component of character lacking from F8’s, RTMIS’s, and MwE’s social media personas. It’s not only a preponderance of TikToks and Instagram posts that creates celeb, even when that content material could be very effectively produced. One want solely look to Luna’s personal profile, rather more in style than that of her fictional character, which incorporates pictures with buddies, pictures with pets, pictures in mattress, and proclamations of affection for her co-stars alongside posed shoots and promotions for the present.

That is the place I imagine that Instagram’s and TikTok’s skeptics can take consolation. It could seem that social media has remodeled the idea of stardom for the reason that days of the Jonas Brothers and Twitcams. However for me, KPOP has change into a reminder of how a lot stays the identical.

What offers prime Okay-pop artists such mastery of the web isn’t simply the deluge of on-line content material — it’s the human that exists inside that content material and the way in which that humanity connects with that of others on-line. That’s what shines within the on-line content material of teams like BTS, even in a simple selfie with a kissing face because the caption. That form of quirk and humor and vulnerability could be tough for any fictional character to duplicate — it’s probably a part of what units as we speak’s extra viral social media stars aside from the remainder. On the finish of the day, know-how alone just isn’t sufficient. The artist nonetheless wants to attach.

I encourage you all to hearken to KPOP’s upcoming solid album and seize tickets to no matter initiatives its wonderful performers do subsequent.