Although BTS members have entered a long-term vacation, their popularity is getting hotter with their recently-opened personal accounts on social networking services (SNS) Instagram.
BTS continues to heat up its popularity after its first face-to-face concert in two years“BTS Permission to Dance on Stage – LA,” which ended in LA, USA, on December 2nd, by running their personal SNS accounts. After the concert, BTS participated in the 2021 Jingle Ball Tour and then announced that its members would recharge their engery through a long-term vacation before its concert in Seoul next March. Long-term vacation is by no means an easy decision in the music industry these days, when groups have to make a comeback every three to four months. However, each photo and every word made by the members on their personal SNS accounts, which were opened eight years after their debut on December 6th, have been on the search list every day, overshadowing the fact that they are on a hiatus.
The members attracted more than 15 million followers a day after opening their accounts. V set a milestone of exceeding 20 million followers in 28 hours of opening Instagram, breaking the record set by Hollywood stars Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston, who exceeded 7 million followers in two days.
With the opening of his new account, V became the topic of real-time news for his ”follow-unfollow incident.” It became an issue after V followed the personal Instagram account of BLACKPINK’s Jennie. Shortly afterward, V canceled (unfollowed) Jennie‘s account and asked the fan community, “Is there any way to get rid of SNS recommendations? Such a scary application,” suggesting that it was all an accident.
A photo uploaded by j-hope has also become a heated debate. On Dec 8th, j-hope uploaded a photo onto his Instagram. In the photo, the shirt he was wearing was printed with a condom pattern. Many then rushed to criticize him, saying “Does he even know those are condoms?” and “This is embarrassing.” However, after it was pointed out that he was wearing a merch from a campaign to encourage the use of contraceptives, many turned to praise him to be the “good sex education influence” and “woke idol”.
Their SNS account ID alone also became an issue. Jungkook showed off his witty ID, “abcdefghi__lmnopqrstuvwxyz,” which lists alphabets a to z excluding his English initials jk. As a result, famous companies such as McDonald’s and Lyft also changed their official SNS IDs in the form which the brand name initials is the underbar excluding from the alphabets, following Jungkook. Local media in the U.S. and the U.K. reported articles such as “Jungkook’s SNS ID that even McDonald’s want to follow,” which made us realize how influential his ID is.
Meanwhile, Jin continues activities with his self-composed song “Super Tuna,” which was released on his birthday on Dec 4th. “Super Tuna” is a song about his love of fishing and his desire for fullness, and he even blew the challenge craze with the addictive exciting rhythm and choreography. The video exceeded 20 million views in just five days of release, and topped the world’s popular YouTube videos for five consecutive days. Jin posted a photo of himself producing the costumes in the video on his personal SNS, and the conversation he exchanged with member RM in the post proved his influence by receiving more than 700,000 likes.
