ARMYsounds like one voice, and on a good day it can roar like one. But it\u2019s really a chorus: millions of fans across countries, languages and time zones. Teenagers and grandmothers, students and surgeons, people who found BTS at their 2013 debut and people who found them last month. <\/p>\n
That chorus is built in layers. There are individual fans posting from their bedrooms, large organised fanbases that translate news and coordinate projects, and regional communities, like Peru\u2019s fan clubs, that know their own city\u2019s streets and stadiums. Each works in its own way, and they don\u2019t always agree. ARMY argues with itself constantly, and in more languages than most parliaments.<\/p>\n
But when something matters to the seven members, those separate voices find each other remarkably fast.<\/p>\n
Five years later, in Lima<\/p>\n
Fast-forward to this week, and the shield is pointing in a slightly different direction.<\/p>\n
BTS has just made its first-ever visit to Peru, with three sold-out nights at Estadio San Marcos on October 7, 9 and 10 as part of the ARIRANG world tour, and there were than more than 50,000 people that night. Peruvian ARMY, who have been dancing their choreography in Lima’s parks for more than a decade, finally got their turn.<\/p>\n
And then, as in Bogot\u00e1 the week before, crowds gathered outside the hotel.<\/p>\n
On the day of the first show, RM posted a message to fans that was polite, plain and a little weary. The members and staff, he said, were exhausted by people stationed in front of their hotel, and the crowds were becoming a real problem for the other guests staying there too.<\/p>\n
He asked fans not to wait outside, not just in Lima but in Chile, Brazil, Argentina and the Asian stops still to come. And he closed with an appeal to the relationship itself: if ARMY really were the most wonderful fans in the world, they would understand, and he trusted it wouldn’t happen again.<\/p>\n
The response from ARMY was swift and fierce.<\/p>\n
Peru’s fan clubs had been asking for exactly this before the plane ever landed: Don’t go to the airport, don’t hunt for the hotel, don’t share locations. When people gathered anyway, local ARMY were quick to say publicly that the hotel crowd was not the organised fandom, and the frustration with those who ignored the guidelines has been loud ever since. <\/p>\n
By fans’ accounts, the message even carried into the stadium, with concertgoers chanting a plea to everyone else: please, don’t go to the hotel.<\/p>\n
The good news hiding in all this<\/p>\n
Squint at this week and you could see a scolding: a tired leader, a let-down fandom, a hotel lobby turned obstacle course. Look again.<\/p>\n
RM had asked plainly and politely, and he said why. ARMY didn’t argue with him; they amplified him. Peru’s fan clubs drew a clear line between themselves and the sidewalk crowd, reminded each other to stay safe, and, by fans’ accounts, carried his request right into the stands. <\/p>\n
RM said he wanted a more grown-up relationship with ARMY. Thirteen years in, this is what one looks like: love that knows when to cheer and when to let someone sleep.<\/p>\n
So here’s the rule of the road for the rest of the tour. The stadium is for screaming and the hotel is for snoring.<\/p>\n
Lakshana is an entertainment and lifestyle journalist with over a decade of experience. She covers a wide range of stories\u2014from community and health to mental health and inspiring people features. <\/p>\n
A passionate K-pop enthusiast, she also enjoys exploring the cultural impact of music and fandoms through her writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARMYsounds like one voice, and on a good day it can roar like one. But it\u2019s really a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":877181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[64673,144383,10535,368993,1801,368989,51333,13362,88,368992,368990,216,345175,368991,1084,368988,4899],"class_list":["post-877180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-besiktas","tag-career-change","tag-champions-league","tag-como-fc","tag-daily-mail","tag-danny-aarons","tag-dele-alli","tag-dubai","tag-entertainment","tag-fan-support","tag-football-career","tag-music","tag-personal-struggles","tag-pfa-young-player","tag-premier-league","tag-streaming-career","tag-tottenham-hotspur"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}