Pandemic ARMY: Reflecting on BTS’s Parasocial Kinship

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To be ARMY—which yes, actually stands for “Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth”—is to be amongst the millions and millions of loyal and passionate fans of BTS, who debuted in June 2013. Since the first lockdown, the K-pop idol group has garnered even more fans, largely in part to their frequent exchanges of visual content and its many meanings with their global fandom. This so-called fan service has had a generative effect, fostering a massive online communal space ripe with collaboration and collective care. Over a special Korean-inspired cocktail, curator Claudia Mattos, writer, curator and public programmer Rea McNamara and writer and photographer Monica Uszerowicz talk bias, fan cams, and #StayConnected hashtags in order to understand what it means to be “Pandemic ARMY,” and how artists, curators and organizations might learn—from a global pop sensation—about connectivity, solidarity, and responsive hybrid on- and offline social experiences.