New Jubilee Video Forces K-Pop Fans To Question What It Really Means To Be A Fan

In a recent video posted to Jubilee‘s YouTube channel, six BLACKPINK fans had to identify the single “hater” among them.

Jubilee‘s “Odd Man Out” series has been one of their most popular since they started making them two years ago. Currently, this series is in its fourth season, with previous seasons having featured both BTS‘s ARMY and “super” K-Pop fans.

In each episode, seven people are paired up and, over a series of rounds, try to identify the “mole,” or, in other words, the single person who does not fit the relevant label of ARMY/Blink/etc.

Each group from their K-Pop-focused “Odd Man Out” videos have included people of different ages, gender, and ethnicities. This immediately questions the often-made assumption that K-Pop fans are supposed to fit a “particular image.”

Although throughout the videos there have been multiple comments about other fans’ appearances, for the most part, the players have focused on knowledge about the group or industry as their means of discerning the fake fan from the real ones.

But focusing on having detailed knowledge of a group can still alienate some fans. In the most recent BLACKPINK episode, newer blink Noe questioned his status as a fan of the group when he could not mimic BLACKPINK’s pre-stage cheer.

In the episode that focused on K-Pop stans in general, K-Pop stan Dara predicted she would not make it to the end since she did not know any relevant dates or the names of idol’s dogs.

And in the BTS episode, new ARMY Bryanna even had a tattoo of her bias V but was not trusted by her fellow fans for not knowing specific references and inside jokes.

This shows that even though all the fans have tried to focus less on the physical expectation of “what a K-Pop fan should look like,” they have, so far, still relied on expectations of “what a K-Pop fan should know.” And, of course, there are many different levels to being a fan of a group. New fans, pre-debut fans, voting-focused fans, merch-accumulating fans, and multi-stans all have their place in supporting a group.

Of course, relying on instinct and snap-judgments is how “Odd Man Out” has to be played. Still, because of Jubilee continuing this series, K-Pop fans can see how non-K-Pop fans imagine them and the assumptions and expectations of a fan even within the community.

Can you identify the BLACKPINK “hater”?