@taesoothe My flight to Bruxelles got canceled by airlines and I have not got the money back up to now. The train tickets I have bought instead were significantly more expensive. No more money for the new armybomb.
🗣No one knows BTS the way Bang Si-hyuk does, and there’s nobody else in this world — certainly not ARMY (know your place) — that BTS run to first when they need help.
He was the executive producer of the album. He’s the person BTS thanked at the AMAs. He’s the one who listened to the album with them at JK’s house days before release and celebrated what they had created together.
The level of hatred some people in this fandom have for him is genuinely inexplicable!!!
At the beginning of the tour when you all attacked BTS for not doing full choreography, none of you understood the point at all. We weren’t defending them just because we blindly support everything they do.
We defended them because choreography is exhausting as hell. Every single move, every technique, every second has to be timed, practiced, calculated, repeated until it drains them completely. And for what? So you can sit there entertained by the performance while they’re treated like machines built to satisfy you, running from one choreography to the next until they’re completely burned out?
This tour proved everything. They started genuinely enjoying the stage again. They started expressing themselves freely, acting like actual human beings instead of overworked robots trying to meet impossible expectations.
Now they’re laughing on stage, messing around, randomly throwing in little moves they still remember from old songs, interacting with ARMY, joking with each other..and THAT is BTS. THAT is what the connection between them and ARMY is supposed to feel like.
You know what was happening behind the scenes before? Endless exhaustion from doing multiple intense choreographies every single concert, over and over again through entire tours. So maybe start trusting their choices for once.
I hope they stay this happy and comfortable. If they feel like dancing, then dance. If not, then don’t. Their presence, their smiles, their energy, and the way they interact with us is already more than enough.
A Male ARMY Speaks Up: Let’s Find Out How Many Men Actually Listen to BTS
For years, I’ve called myself an ARMY while contributing to the fandom mostly from the sidelines, through the occasional translation, analysis, and long posts about BTS songs and letters. Teaching, grading, counseling students, translating history books, surviving Korean work culture. Life has a way of swallowing your time whole.
But now our guys are back. Still thriving. Still filling stadiums. Still somehow managing to make millions of people feel understood across languages and borders.
And lately, I’ve been thinking: maybe it’s time for middle-aged male ARMYs like me to stop acting like we have to enjoy BTS quietly and in the shadows.
Men can be oddly performative around masculinity. We’ll scream ourselves hoarse watching twenty-two men chase a ball across a field, but hesitate to admit a song made us emotional. We’ll spend hours debating whiskey, watches, cars, or baseball statistics, yet act as if openly loving music about loneliness, fear, hope, or loving oneself somehow threatens our dignity.
So let me say this clearly as a Korean middle-aged man: BTS has been one of the most meaningful artistic acts of my adult life. And I know I’m far from alone.
After talking to enough male ARMYs over the years, I realized the issue is not absence. It’s hesitation. Many male ARMYs are still reluctant to be visible. Some worry about being judged. Some think they’ll look strange. Some probably spent their whole lives being taught that men should appreciate things from a distance, never too enthusiastically, never too sincerely.
From now on, I want to write more openly about BTS from the perspective of male ARMYs, especially Korean middle-aged male ARMYs. I may be one of the very few voices representing this group in the social media world.
And yes, I fully intend to drag some of my fellow ahjussi ARMY friends to concerts or live theater viewings with me one day.
There’s also one stereotype I really want to dismantle once and for all: the idea that only women listen to BTS.
Take “Spring Day” on Melon, for example. As you can see in the image below, today alone, May 15, 2026, the song had 62,018 listeners on the platform. About 43% of them, roughly 27,000 people, were men.
Now stretch that across nearly a decade. More than 9 million Melon subscribers have listened to “Spring Day.” The male listener ratio for BTS songs generally falls around 35–45%, so we are potentially talking about millions of male listeners for this song alone. Millions.
Korean men. Fathers. Students. Office workers. Soldiers. Taxi drivers. Professors. Men drinking beer after work by the Han River. Men who probably recognize the opening piano notes of “Spring Day” the moment they hear them.
So the next time someone says BTS is “only for women,” show them these statistics.
Anyway, enough sociology for one Friday night.
I’ll also upload a photo of myself opening my favorite IPA to celebrate another exhausting but meaningful week of life and work.
If you’re holding a cold drink tonight too,
whether it’s beer, coffee, tea, or just convenience store chocolate milk after a brutal shift,
cheers, my ARMY friends around the world!
Prayers for BTS, staff, and crew as they close one tour location and move to another. May they all travel safely, rest deeply, and refuel their individual spirits during their free time. May everyone be covered in protection and peace. 💜 @BTS_twt#PrayerForBTS
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joon liking this interview reel on ig gives me so much peace like this is exactly what I'd want them to hear... these armys couldn't have worded everyones thoughts any better than this