Opinion: Being a K-pop stan means putting a price tag on your feelings

By Centerspread Editor Jessica Cao

At the age of twelve, I solemnly vowed that I would never become a K-pop stan. The shallowness and artificiality of the industry repulsed me, and I was even more put-off by what I saw as the irrationally obsessive behavior of its fans. I probably thought, at some point, that never in a hundred years would someone catch me fangirling over an idol. 

Ironically, that vow lasted less than a year. I spent an innocent summer afternoon watching Stray Kids music videos, and quickly fell down the rabbit hole — learning members’ names, watching interviews, and listening to their music on repeat. For the next two-and-a-half years, I was hopelessly captivated by eight Korean boys. 

The visual appeal is what initially draws many people into idol culture: choreography, fashion, polished performances and perfect faces. But what makes people stay is an illusion of intimacy that hypnotizes them and exploits their emotions. Once you become invested in an idol or group, the industry gives you endless reasons to become even more obsessed. You can stream their music, view all their videos, subscribe to receive personal-sounding messages, buy albums and merchandise, attend fan meetings, and watch hours of behind-the-scenes footage. Every new piece of content is specially designed to make fans feel just a little bit closer to idols who have no idea they exist.

And that is no natural thing.

I remember the strange feeling of joining an idol’s social media livestream and instinctively feeling fondness and admiration — as though they were talking directly to me. I knew, rationally, that their words were being played to thousands of fans at once, but the distinction was surprisingly easy to forget. However one-sided the relationship was, it felt far different then. 

K-pop has built an extraordinarily effective business model around parasocial relationships. The industry doesn’t just sell music; it sells false intimacy. It creates an environment where friendship and romantic relationships can be simulated and then repeatedly monetized, destroying real-life interpersonal relationships at the same time, especially in younger fans. Why pursue an awkward, complicated relationship with a person in your life when your favorite idol seems perfect? They are attractive, appealing, funny, endlessly attentive to their fans and, conveniently, incapable of actually disagreeing with you. You can construct an idealized version of them who is “perfect” for you that no real person could possibly compare to.

Yet, every time I screamed over a performance video, the excitement was real. When I felt as if the trajectory of my entire life was changed after going to a concert, that feeling was real. Spending months mourning the end of a concert because nothing could match the high of seeing the “love of my life” in person was real, too. But how much of that emotional attachment would exist without an industry specifically designed to cultivate it? 

What my twelve-year-old self did not understand was that parasocialism was not “fake.” In fact, the system was designed to amplify genuine emotions and see how much fans were willing to pay for their feelings. 

The community surrounding K-pop is perfect evidence that the industry cultivates obsessive fan culture. A fandom can be an incredible place to meet people, but it can also become an exhausting ecosystem of fan wars and an echo-chamber for endless hate. Most of the time, people aren’t just discussing music; a fan who opens TikTok, Twitter or Instagram looking for updates can just as easily end up watching people dissect an idol’s appearance, criticize their personality, compare their talent, or turn the smallest of mistakes into a scandal. Eventually, the videos blend together and start sounding like a series of negative product reviews. 

Capitalism has always been good at finding ways to monetize human desire, but parasocialism takes it a step further: it monetizes our desire to be known, loved, and connected. It takes something fundamentally human — our capacity to form emotional bonds — and turns it into a revenue stream. When you subscribe to parasocialism in any way, you are subscribing to a business model that profits from making you feel close to someone. Your emotions aren’t necessarily fake, but the circumstances that produce and encourage them have been carefully and insidiously manufactured.

This summer, I sold my photocard collection and watched my favorite groups fade from my Spotify playlists, officially closing the chapter of my K-pop obsession. Looking at the stack of cards I had once treasured, the strangeness of it suddenly became apparent — I had poured so much money and emotion into tiny pieces of paper bearing the faces of people I had never met. 

I don’t regret having been a fan. This period of my life has taught me numerous things about myself and brought me incomparable joy, but it did confirm the shallowness and artificiality of K-pop from my initial assessment. So, let me revamp my vow: I will never engage in parasocialism again.