After Blackpink's Jennie, Red Velvet's Yeri bullied by toxic ARMYs on Instagram
The aftermath of a harmless mistake has been amplified into something way more than what it was supposed to be and it is courtesy of toxic fans of the boy band BTS. Less than three days since the seven members of BTS got their personal Instagram handles, eight years after their debut in the industry, it has been absolutely chaotic on the social media platform. While there have been some ecstatic highs following the news, especially after the members posted pictures, there have been some terrible lows too.
One 'high' is that most members have surpassed the 22 million follower counts with V (Taehyung) in the lead followed by Jungkook and Jimin with 20 million followers each while the rest of the hyung-line of BTS, consisting of members Jin, Suga, J-Hope and RM (Namjoon) having around 19 million followers each.
Fans were excited about many things over the past few days. ARMYs were overjoyed that all the members had made their accounts on the photo-sharing platform and were following only the other six members of the group. Fans then cooed over how most members of the group were active on the app, posting several never-seen-before snaps as well. Sadly, things went downhill shortly after.
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Jennie blamed for V's Instagram mistake
V (Taehyung) of BTS revealed on Weverse, the official fancafe of BTS, why the singer had accidentally followed Jennie of Blackpink but soon unfollowed the Calvin Klein ambassador. He revealed in his Weverse comment how he thinks Instagram is a "scary app" as the “Suggested for You” feature on the app led him to make the mistake.
This accidental following and then the unfollowing fiasco was all taken in good fun by most ARMYs until toxic fans of BTS on Instagram started directing vicious comments at Jennie, even though none of it was her fault at all. The comments on Jennie’s posts have exploded with toxic ARMYs blaming the singer for appearing on V’s suggestions. Jennie's page was bombarded by juvenile hate posts made by BTS fans that slut-shamed the Blackpink member for posing in Calvin Klein lingerie, a brand that she endorses globally.
Yeri gets dragged too by toxic BTS stans
As if that was not enough, things have taken a much worse turn, revealing the dark side of K-pop’s fanculture among global users of social media. On December 8, it was brought to the attention of Redveluvs (the fans of the K-pop group Red Velvet) that Red Velvet member Yeri was being attacked on Instagram by toxic ARMYs, again for no fault of hers.
On December 6, Jungkook of BTS made his second official post on Instagram with a picture of himself from the ‘PTD on Stage’ concert and he captioned his photo with the “🥰” emoji. As BTS members have disabled comments from anyone else but members of BTS only, fans were not able to interact with the members. On December 7, Yeri of Red Velvet, who has been on the app for a long time posted an Instagram photo of herself with the same emoji as her caption.
When toxic fans noticed how both idols had the same lone “🥰” emoji as their caption, Yeri was accused of "copying Jungkook," and toxic stans started dragging the idol in her post's comments section.
What do ARMYs, Blinks and Redveluvs think?
Fans of all three groups are in a state of unrest on Twitter as the issue has led toxic ARMYs to speak negatively about Jennie and Yeri while Blinks drag BTS' V aka Kim Taehyung on Twitter. ARMYs, who understand why the toxic stans of BTS are in the wrong, are apologizing to the other two fandoms while fans of the two girl groups have banded together in support of one another.
It should be noted that BTS members had their personal Instagram made to communicate with fans and show the members their daily lives while they went on a short break. They wouldn't have imagined that toxic stans would take over their new venture and sour their experience on the social media platform meant for a bit of self-indulgent fun.