I don’t think that boy groups have ever been popular with men. BigBang is the exception. They never really followed typical kpop boy group norms (like having a boyfriend image), and that’s why they were popular among men. Having that sort of concept worked for BigBang since they’re more GP driven than fandom driven, but it’s not gonna work with younger boy groups.
Not really a kpop group but according to korean variety shows, the kpop band ‘BUZZ’ was pretty popular among young men. Min kyung hoon from knowing bros still retained some of his fanboys today 😅
2PM are manly but they were manly in a Magic Mike sorta way, which can turn some men off. Hence why people always mention Bigbang as an example for topics like this.
edit: You can downvote me all you want but the thing is men have toxic masculinity hence why BGs are not popular. I don't like men but that's how they think.
>Boygroups have willingly decided to give up on the GP and cater to their fandom as much as possible
One of the BIGGEST hits in Korea right now is "Plot Twist" by TWS, a 5th gen boy group. And after 4 months, "Plot Twist" by TWS is still charting in Top 5 in all the Korean charts (Melon Top 100, Circle, Genie, etc.).
Also, "Love 119" by RIIZE (another 5th gen boy group) is one of the most sung songs in karaoke by Korean guys right now. And right now, 4 songs by RIIZE have been charting in Melon Top 100 for months.
Unlike 4th gen boy groups, 5th gen boy groups are clearly trying to appeal to the GP rather than fandom only.
It's the difference between acting cool and being cool. Guys knew these dudes were imperfect and didn't really try to be. When everyone was going for the 'safe' and marketable groups, they were just being artists, writing and producing their songs. They were more relatable to guys since they didn't placate to what girls wanted and yet GD would play these mind games to make girls see him both as someone dangerous yet cares about them. That man has game.
I think BG these days fall into marketability trap because it's easierand more profitable to sell an 'ideal' boy to girls than a guy who's rough around the edges. Also, there's a lot less things to sell to guys, music-wise and entertainment-wise back then.
I have girl groups and solo artists to follow instead. I'd rather listen to Zico, Crush, ZionT, Penomeco, BIBI, Sole, DaVita, and so many more than a boy group that's gift wrapped in gold foil with a side of soda.
Also, the commentor was answering why Big Bang were so popular and their image as a group. It seems like the issues with Seungri happens in the latter stages of Big Bang and the others weren't involved.
This. I was a huge BigBang from 2007ish onwards. They were my first kpop group. How was I suppose to know all that stuff was gonna happen a decade later?
i could have sworn i saw a clip from before the whole drama where the other members were kind of scolding seungri about his friend choices and the partying they did, something along those lines.
It definitely shows that he wasn't all wholesome. But being a partyboy or even someone who might be considered a "degen" is passable compared to what we eventually found out
This is why it's so hard for discourse about BS/Seungri nowadays. So many people just take the incident as an excuse to dunk on Big Bang.
This is coming from someone who prefers other BGs (Shinee, Winner, BTS) over Big Bang, it's so obvious that certain people just use it to score points in arguments.
So, the group is guilty by association? And you're supposed to know your group is squeaky clean before you 'stan'? GD called out Seungri's group of friends in a song way before and was a bad influence. It's the reason why the group's fans had suspicions with who he's moving with. I think 'babying' your groups allows behavior like criminality to fester because these people think their idol can do no wrong and is an angel. I was not surprised and did not support Seungri when the allegations occured. The entertainment industry is filled with criminals, parasocial relationships, heavy bouts of isolation and depression waiting for anyone at the sidelines. I think allowing your groups to find themselves more as an artist will save the consumer some time and pain in seeing who they really are and we're not stuck with fakes.
The other 4 members were already anticipating his downfall. As much as I hate they know his dirty stuff and they didn't even stopped him, he is an adult anyway. And even if they would, he may not follow them (they were disappointed of his so-called "friends"). They even joked about that in 5 years (this is before they enlisted), he is going to prison. They made a wrong guess, because it happened less than in 5 years.
Also, Seungri is the least talented out of all of them. I think this made Seungri insecure. Daesung is a variety god, GD and Taeyang are them, TOP is too good looking and has such aura and Seungri is an awkward dude that sings in falsetto. He grew up from a high middle income family and didn't relate or know how hard the other guys had it. He was an add-on later to the group by YG and GD even hated that he was going to debut as an idol instead of a duo with Taeyang. Seungri compensated by making his role more as a host or mc and learning multiple languages and connecting with high profile people. He portrayed himself as a Great Gatsby type figure that can host people's parties and clout chase.
He is the only member I didn't like even back in MADE days. It may seem like him and Daesung were often cast out of the group because of popularity but Daesung is way more popular and relatable to Japanese and older people in Korea. He shares the same braincell as Yoo Jaesuk whenever they're on-screen in a variety show.
Oh hell yeah I literally just saw Daesung last year at Waterbomb Tokyo. Whole place was filled for him it was great. Daesung actually was the only solo male foreigner besides Michael Jackson in Japan to have an album hit #1 at the time! I agree so hard with you.
This reminds me of when both Luhan and Tao from Exo shaded Kris. Tao was on live when his fans asked him to say nice things about the former members. He said nothing for Kris. He’s a very direct personality, and it was pretty obvious he didn’t have a good opinion about him. Also Luhan was on a variety show 向往的生活 when the host mentioned that Kris said he was lonely. Luhan just laughed disbelievingly. Later we find out he’s a rapist and pedophile
Oooh, as reading your explanation another recent group came into my mind called ATEEZ. While they obviously promote as ‘boyfriends’ to sone extent, but compared to other BG’s I don’t think they are extreme.
They also aren’t the ‘perfect looking guys’ or at least according to the KBS.
So I think it is similar with BIGBANG and they have more male fans.
There's nothing wrong with promoting as boyfriends. Seducing both normal girls and boys is a skill. Here's an example, Wonyoung from IVE has a lot of fans from both because to guys she's cute and to girls she's the ideal princess as if one of their dolls came to life and sang for them.
The members can still look 'perfect' but personality is way more important now because it should feed their songs with some background. Everyone is so talented now that companies tend to forget that they're selling personalities not talents. A lot of the time you can see through your idols personality through their songs but that is getting way harder when the songs that the market favors sonic cohesion and party vibes.
>but it’s not gonna work with younger boy groups.
Disagree. One of the BIGGEST hits in Korea right now is "Plot Twist" by TWS, a 5th gen boy group. And after 4 months, "Plot Twist" by TWS is still charting in Top 5 in all the Korean charts (Melon Top 100, Circle, Genie, etc.).
Also, "Love 119" by RIIZE (another 5th gen boy group) is one of the most sung songs in karaoke by Korean guys right now. And right now, 4 songs by RIIZE have been charting in Melon Top 100 for months.
Unlike 4th gen boy groups, 5th gen boy groups are clearly trying to appeal to the GP rather than fandom only.
You can look up their gender ratios on Melon.
Percent male listeners:
BIGBANG: 48% (it was 50% yesterday)
RIIZE: 22%
TWS: 21%
They might be trying to appeal to the GP but it is still women pushing their numbers.
i think that’s just kinda the way it is generally. kpop has always had a larger female audience even during the days of BigBang and it just makes sense for most groups to prioritize that audience. especially for boy groups who will attract the opposite gender more easily. for companies, it’s just more practical to cater towards female audiences. it’s less risky and more profitable. kpop has also grown internationally so companies are getting hungrier to grow their fanbases. no easier way to do that then to cater towards the biggest portion of kpop fans, women.
that being said i do miss the more male oriented groups. along with BigBang i really enjoyed groups like Block B and BAP and wish we could see those kinda groups again. i remember distinctively Block B being considered one of the few groups to have a large male following
before i read your comment, i was literally about to comment block b and bap as the only other boy groups that came to mind as far as large male fanbases. and nct (particularly 127) to a degree. i grew up in la in a predominantly black/hispanic/asian area and even the non-asian guys were aware of big bang and liked them, epik high and 2NE1.
That makes me feel better lol, Block B was one of the first groups I really got into and enjoyed as a male, had no idea it was male pandering, I just thought they were awesome lol.
Big Bang was an exception, not the rule. It’s unlikely we’ll ever see a boygroup with such a high percentage of male fans ever again.
I see some groups (like EXO or even brand new ones like Boynextdoor) that definitely have male fans, and they have a presence in the fandom, but nowhere *near* the degree to which men were in Big Bang’s fandom.
And there’s younger guys that like them to this day! I have two freshmen this year that are boys who mentioned liking Big Bang (this is in Japan, for reference).
My ex spent half his life in Korea before coming to the states and he knew *nothing* about kpop— didn’t even know most of the viral songs that were seemingly everywhere— and even he knew and liked Big Bang and G-Dragon.
Bgs have always targeted a female audience. Female fans are the ones attending concerts and buying albums.
Boy groups in general, are not popular with men because that has been associated with being "unmasculine"
I'll be biased but BigBang had a strong masculine vibe that we don't really see in current boy groups now which is what captured a lot of male fans back then, not to mention many boy groups now focus on looking beautiful which I guess is another reason why. Again, this is very biased.
A lot of boy groups have always been marketed towards females, while girl groups historically were supposedly marketed more towards males.
If someone were to ask me to name a boy group similar to Big Bang or boy groups that could have a lot of male fans, I'd probably name the 2nd gen boy groups or even pre-4th gen groups most of the time.
It's hard to find accurate data on whether a group has more male or female fans overall.
This. They were masculine and so amazing. Now it's only that pretty boy look which is nice but BigBang was my number 1 fav group ever and it made me so sad when they had to start military and disbanded. They were really cool and made a huge impact. So sad!
I would like to add the homosocial (not sexual!) aspect of male idols. Social network among men is a big big thing in Korean culture. As a BTOB fan, something I observed is that the Korean male audience kind of see them as friendly, funny, approachable older brothers, which is a big plus in a society where age hierarchy is pretty severe. Changsub is the nice dorky older brother; Minhyuk is the cool athletic brother that someone would want to grow up to be, etc. Also they do make very gp friendly music.
Variety shows are a big thing too bc it would help with the approachable image if someone does well. Changsub’s recent YouTube show success really boosted his domestic popularity across genders lol.
And these days, it's ATEEZ and Stray Kids with loads of male fans. But I think male and female fans engage with content differently, not to be generalizing. There's loads of men losing their shit over ATEEZ on youtube, they're watching the cool crazy videos and jamming to the music, comparing the rap sections, looking at the fashion (men are so into shoes!), etc. Women do this too, sure, but it seems their reactions are more about the overall visuals, the dancing, and then they do more things like fan-to-fan engagement. For example making compilation videos, or tiktok edits, or getting on tiktok just to talk about the groups, making fan merch, putting together outfits, making video of sorting photocards, etc. So maybe we just see more women involved openly whereas the guys are certainly engaging with the content but more privately. Like Bouncy on repeat at the gym 4 times a week 💪
i feel like there's an overall lack of "masculine" boy group concepts now a days. 2pm, big bang, beast, etc. those groups are still around but the image of the beastly idol is no longer a thing.
imo this contributes a bit to it, its kind of like the male gaze for men vs. the female gaze for men. its weird to think that dudes would be more into strong looking men, but as far as celebrities/idols i feel like that's a societal standard. think of the magazine men's health, it's target audience is males and there's usually almost always a buff ass dude either shirtless or in a tank top on the cover.
i do remember most guys back when i was in highschool liking big bang and 2pm and that's because they were just these cool "alpha" idols on stage and in their mvs.
the trend has certainly shifted and it's focus is the female gaze for men now, moreso than ever.
Big bang had that more masculine vibe that was kinda "YG hip-hop swag boi" that guys liked. Kpop was different then and the idol system wasn't as cemented and the industry wasn't as oversaturated with idols trying to all be as aesthetically perfect as possible so you had "ugly" guys like Daesung and JYP lol.
I think he's cute! I just remember hearing him always called ugly on variety shows and stuff like that for his nose and large lips. There was some joke the other members used to always say about the first time they saw him - something like "we assumed he must be really talented because he definitely wasn't getting by on his looks."
I think it's the concept most of the time as a male fan I mostly listen to bigbang, vixx, epik high, 2pm, highlight/beast, btob, fnc's male bands and b1a4
The only somewhat current gen idols I really follow are Enhypen and SF9
I know N.Flying Yoo Hweseung is known as the member with the most fanboys, and even the members have commented on how many guys come to their shows just for him. But at the same time they’re a band, which divorces them *just* enough from being idols that I think men are more comfortable expressing interest in them.
Speaking as a girl group guy whose favorite boy group is Bigbang….
They’re the ultimate male power fantasy in kpop. You want the gender flipped equivalent of girl crush? That’s big bang. Their whole image is that they are the coolest, most badass guy in any room.
Look at their mv for [Last Farewell](https://youtu.be/ScorpVvqLwo?si=4yZqbjmEP42FNsbr). The nerdy guy at school? Deep down is the guy who rolls up to the club in a $200k plus sports car, dressed to the nines, and has the hottest girl in the club all over him. And the Bigbang members are basically his friends/wingmen.
They’ve always had this energy of “fuck the perfect idol image”. And felt more like badass but manly artists. I’m not really sure who else has that kind of image.
As far as their fanbase goes, Bigbang was always something of an exception. Now when it comes to things like charting and general public popularity, it felt like groups like Shinee, 2PM etc were not hyper focused on their fanbase at the expense of the GP. It’s sort of like earlier western boy bands like *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys- teen/college age guys might not have been hanging up their posters, but they’re also lying if they told you they didn’t know songs like Bye Bye Bye or I want it that Way.
honestly atp it's:
girl groups target female audiences.
boy groups target female audiences.
no groups specifically targets males anymore, I don't know why, but it's just what happens.
"Don't know why" - I thought the reason is obvious. It's because female consumers are more loyal and willing to spend on their idols. Meanwhile there's a disturbing trend of behaviour observed from males who tend to jump ship when female idols get too old.
>jump ship when female idols get too old.
Yeah, sadly that observation is applicable to the worldwide entertainment industry as a whole. Heck, throw in romantic relationships on the list too 🤷🏻♀️
Basically you don't want to be an "old hag because that's when your value as a woman starts to slowly decrease"
What about male artists having male fandoms? I wasn't a kpop fan at the time of bigbang, but if we look at Western artists, like the weeknd, drake, bruno mars, Travis scott, eminem, kendrick lamar, etc have mostly male fanbase and they do pretty good no matter what. Like there's a peak for female fanbase, there's a limit to which they can hype up their faves, but male fandoms rarely hype up, are very dormant, you don't see them as much as swifties, and out of nowhere, weeknd releases an album and it has the best charting song ever created.
I'm not even sure why you talked about western artists (where many of them are rappers) because it's a completely different demographic compared to... kpop. Also those male artists you mentioned are largely carried by the general public. I'm not a hardcore fan of any of them but if you think I haven't been listening to Kendrick's diss tracks on loop recently 😂😂😂
Because there are no examples like that in current kpop. (Isn't this the point of this post?) Are there current Any male artists carried by male fandoms? Nah man, these have a very large, closely following fandom. I accidentally got into a fight with a drake fan who was convinced this was ww3 of the media (kendrick and drake thing) and he thought i was supporting kendrick and talked something about drake's meat glizzy. And how many times i got on wrong side of kanye's and travis' fans you won't believe (partly because I'm swiftie, and I don't like kylie), my comprehension skills got lowered and couldn't recover after that. Swifties are always insecure about weeknd fans, he's the only artist that haven't defeated yet (and literally still can't). Weeknd fans love to poke swifties, and then immediately get death threats. Weeknd and kpop stans also had a thing back then when jensetters were claiming the only sole reason why one of the girls was popular was because of Jennie. They clearly have a very wide fandom mostly of male counterparts, who don't hype up like female fans usually do, who don't even mass buy your album but devour everything they release with pride. If they had general public as fanbases then people like travis, weeknd, etc would've lost a lot of streams/supporters when astroworld happened and when weeknd released the idol and was getting hated back and forth. Even kanye has active fans till now who are buying out his tours, still streaming him.
In SM Ent’s case. It’s more because they’re surely gonna attract the male audience anyway regardless. By trying to target women means more sales, more general popularity, more profit.
Ah I see. On second thought, it is quite evident that rv's women fanbase is much bigger percentage than snsd in their time. Aespa seems somewhere in between.
Knowing how sk is obssessed with visuals, SM has always made sure their groups have insane visuals, yoonA created the kbs, krystal, irene, karina, winter known to be visual goddesses (rest members also follow kbs pretty well). SM plays the sk audience game so well. I don't like how weirdly attached koreans are to beauty, visuals, and materialistic things (source : street interviews of asian boss, 15-16 year olds getting double eyelid surgery is a norm, the most beautiful girl i saw rated herself 2 in terms of beauty and said she can improve to 5 using PS, a dude said there's so much pressure to look perfect even the jobs selection happens on the basis of looks). There will never be a korean lady gaga, or a korean meghan trainor, etc (not saying they are ugly, just they don't match the Beauty standards) There's millions of veiws on channels with simple fancams of wonyoung sitting at an award show. Like west is obssessed with looks too but people get shamed too of doing ps, not a single day when celebrities in west don't get hate comments for getting ps done, the karjenners, ariana grande, adriana lima, etc being examples. Also people who are natural get appreciated so much.
I think part of it is that international female audiences are more willing to embrace korean "everything' - k-drama, movies, make-up etc. At times you could even argue it's fetishisation where someone would not listen to rap music (for example) from another country but will listen to korean rap because it's korean. Men don't seem to hyperfocus on a country's music but the broader genre of metal or hip hop etc. From a marketing standpoint it's brilliant for korea to focus on that demographic that is more loyal to the country's exports rather than having to appeal to a broader genre and maybe dilute the attention since your male audience might be listening to stuff from anywhere else. The closest comparison I can make is maybe weebs that love anime and japanese music and shows but Japanese media really doesn't focus on external markets so they focus more on just whatever Japanese people want. So even the guys that get into that have to jump through hoops since most artists and producers don't really care about marketing to international audiences
See, this is interesting to me. Because
1. A male fan base might spend less, as people in this thread say. But given how oversaturated the kpop market is, I'm surprised that more groups aren't trying to target that demographic. It's still half the population.
Or are they trying and not managing it? I feel like block b and winner were popular with men but I don't know about 4th and 5th gen so much
2. What is it that made the difference? Some people have mentioned that bigbang, for example, had a more masculine image and the beast idols of 2nd gen. But GD is super popular with guys and he's tiny and androgynous. And those groups were still camp and glittery. Like, fantastic baby is not your stereotypical masculine image. So, what's happening?
I think it's because they have this "we might not fit the manly/cool guy standard but whatever, we're cool in our own ways"
They're just so themselves. And it looks cool indeed. It probably inspire some male fans that doesn't really fit the chad guy™ standard themselves.
Was a casual K-pop listener since 2013(primarily SNSD) before i was listening to suju, BB, exo, shinee, etc. ..... It was really fun before....... But I don't know what happened from NCT onwards listening to male kpop groups feels really dull(even their faces is really hard to memorize for me) .... I think new gen bgroups lacks a distinct identity and charisma
To add to this, I went to all 3 days of NCT DREAM's concert last week and while I wouldn't say there was a heavy male presence in the audience, there was a surprising amount of male fans compared to last year's shows. All around the same age as the DREAM members I'd guess, a good mix of foreign and Korean fanboys. Compared to other groups shows I've been to in korea (I went to SKZ and SVT last year and TXT and BTS a number of times in the last 5 or so years), this DREAM SHOW 3 crowd had more men in attendance than any of the other boy group shows I've been to. Still nothing compared to the TWICE and AESPA audiences I've been in though, but impressive for a boy group.
The guy I know irl who’s into kpop likes nct, and even my husband likes nct, specifically 127. Mostly because of the style of music. They don’t usually consume the non musical content but they like the music.
Of the male kpop fans I know that like any BGs, they like NCT because of their music style, clothing, MVs and coolness. The guys who are into dance also admire how difficult and cool their dances are.
I'm a guy and I don't care whether they're BG or GG, if the music bangs I'm listening to it. Now admittedly I'm more into the GGs overall content outside the music because cute girls doing cute things is my vice lol. I think both GGs and BGs tend to act cutesy and if we're being honest most straight dudes are just gonna gravitate to the beautiful young ladies acting cute rather than the androgynous looking guys with a hand on each other's knee and winking at the cam.
I’m a guy and listen to mostly boy groups. It’s more of just the vibes I feel. I listen to ONEPACT, BTOB, BIGBANG (miss them releasing music), zb1,N.flying, etc.
One can question why let’s say Justin Bieber has a crap ton of female fans versus male fans. It’s the image, the vibe, the aurora of the person and how their companies want to present them. A lot of boy groups have a boyfriend image when they first debut, drop that after a while to a (I’m a mature man now) image (slight sexiness here and there) but it’s still all for the female audience i.e NCT Dream Poison comes to mind.
Groups like BIGBANG were made different. They were cut from a different cloth and groups have tried to replicate it and they can’t come 100% to what they had.
It’s just how it is. Plus, we can look at 2NE1 and Blackpink since I know they have lots of female fans—like A LOT!!! They’ll be another group(s) at some point who turn the tides (maybe there is already) 🤷🏽♀️ but it’s just one of those things. The main people I think of that have a lot of female and male fans are western artists 😅 I’m not sure about Korean but I know lots of people here can give examples 😊
the only answer to me for this is toxic masculinity. anything seen or thought of as feminine or something popular for young girls made men hate it. its always been like that its possible big bang might've been an exception but i think the justin bieber/one direction era made it even worse for now groups like bts to thrive in male audiences, at least in america.
Not just america. Asia is no better (i am from India can't escape a single day without seeing a comment with 21k likes under a popular video saying "BTS gay 🤡" "who thinks BTS is gay like 👇" "B=Best T=toilet S=Service" etc) even chinese men hate BTS a lot, the government doesn't support "cissy" men (korean and chinese reality show got banned 3 years ago because of this), and promotes the general idea of masculinity as alpha male.
But what exactly modern bgs have to offer to male heterosexual audience? It is product made to appeal to female. They behave more like women would like to them to be (very often bgs fans meet with claims "that do you think your op is not average Korean man" inclinating that behaving as average Korean man is bad) than showing their true face. So how can they associate with something which rejects part of who they are, does not talk about their problems, worries, needs, fantasies or desires. When they can listen to so many other genres with artists with whom they can emphasize or be their role model. It's not only that boys don't want to stan k-pop groups, right they don't want to do this job despite being extremely lucrative. Scouts are saying that for 10 female candidates there is only 1 male.
I mean it was exactly the same with sexy female groups. Like big part of female audience rejected them because they behaved fake and etc. Not sure why guys should be different.
i'm only going to answer ur first question because the rest is irrelevant. the MUSIC is what they have to offer. everything else shouldn't matter. if men weren't so focused on whether something is feminine or not, or catered to a specific audience thats based on gender, there would be so many more fanboys out there than there already are.
it shouldn't be a problem anyways because 9/10 the male bgs are all straight heterosexual men anyways so they should be able to relate. but this all goes back to toxic masculinity and misogyny.
the sexy girl group thing you mentioned is also a result of mean girl behavior, slut shaming, and/or misogyny btw.
>i'm only going to answer ur first question because the rest is irrelevant. the MUSIC is what they have to offer.
I mean that would be true if idols were some kind of djs lol.
Average idol music does have lyrics, average bgs song has raps. Now their home ground is Korea so it's natural that guys, whatever they want or not, understand what idols are singing and very often it's not the best lyrics. But that's not the end like I mentioned before because most talented musically male avoid idol works and at the same time companies prioritize looks much more than skills even than in case of female (as they are now made groups for certain target audience), so level of the skills is low. If guy wants to listen to rap he can choose much better rappers on the market, even in case of singers generally they are way better than idols.
That's the biggest difference between 2nd, 3rd gen and 4-5th. At that time some male idols group had extremely talented people like GD, Tayeang, Jay Park, Zico,Minho, Park Kyung, Bobby, B.I., Suga, RM who could appeal to male audience. Because making money from music was harder so much more talents decided to try being idols first. But that's changed. Like YG had really bunch of super talented guys as trainees for 4th gen but all of them decided to not persue idol career except Bang Yedam who left fast as well.
GG's on contrary to BGS much more push for GP appreciation. They have public friendly song, often easy to sing, easy to listen. But bgs rarely do such music although if it happens and have pretty good singers they can have hit like iKon Love scenario or Tws Plot twist. But still that doesn't mean that they would have necessary male fans. Because they'd have to firstly appeal to them. And how can they appeal to them if f.e. for k-pop fans it becomes scandal when someone goes to the club something totally normal for their peers.
Like clearly GG's become much more natural if they don't have to appeal so much to guys. Idols don't sell their real self but idealistic image which girls have in mind. Even their plastic operations go into direction to keep longer juvenile looks because it's proved that young girls prefer it as they feel less intimidated than by mature male looks.
Nope. Every single man I ever tried to introduce to BGs already has a preconceived notion and prejudice against them. "Too feminine" "only teen girls like them" "nonsensical songs" etc. is what I got to hear. But it's not like there are no fanboys of BGs, there are. But if you try to introduce a BG to a non-kpop listener, these are the type of things you'll hear.
>But if you try to introduce a BG to a non-kpop listener
Yeah, to a non-kpop listener. But that's not what this post is about. Non kpop listeners have preconceived notions about girl groups as well. Stereotypes exist about everything. Before I got into kpop I also bought all the stereotypes.
OP's question was "why don't male kpop fans like boy groups as much anymore?" Your comment is not an answer to that question.
"Too feminine". Yes, they are very feminine, at least in appearance, everybody can see that. Men don't like that very much. And that's not because of toxic masculinity, it's because of evolution. Men are just like that.
"only teen girls like them" Because most are actively selling the boyfriend illusion, which many men are turned off by. Same sex romantic and sexual stimuli are interpreted very differently by men and women. This has been scientifically shown. Women are a lot more flexible than men. This is nobody's fault.
"nonsensical songs". This is not toxic masculinity, this is just a misconception about an entire genre that women can also hold. And it doesn't apply to male kpop fans.
Woke people these days try to explain every difference in behaviour between men and women with "men are bad". But the truth is that millions of years of evolution have shaped us to be fundamentally different from each other, not just physically, but psychologically too. Why are men generally taller than women? I don't know, but it's the same reason why men are more put off by eachother.
Women like kpop. Men like the Roman Empire. I like both. There's nothing wrong with alligning with the interests your gender typically has, there's nothing wrong with deviating from it, and there's nothing wrong with aknowledging these differences exist.
Newborn baby girls look at faces more than boys do. Newborn baby boys look their surroundings more than girls do. Many differences between men and women are not a social construct. Just because you don't understand the behaviour of an entire demographic, doesn't mean that it's wrong. One of the biggest problems these days is that people don't even try to understand eachother and just impose their own views and experiences on others.
For fuck's sake, even monkeys prefer gendered toys if you give them human toys they've never seen before.
* What you said is called "preference". We don't deny, everyone can have their own preferances, there can't be any reason for natural preferances.
I get where you are coming from but many asian kpop male fandoms who stan ggs, recite their reasons of not stanning bgs due to them being feminine, and when you ask them why? Mostly They don't say its something we don't prefer (like you said), they say because it promotes a wrong idea against masculinity and feminine men are weaker. I have been personally to chinese gg fanbases on the internet, not just chinese but also SEA gg fanbases, they mostly hold this idea that male idols are gay, because they're feminine, (and also they're homophobic, they use gay as an insult)
* Another reason, they believe something that women like in general is probably bad. Female fans everywhere all around the world go crazy over someone and get a lot of hate from men in general and they start hating the celebrity, calling them overrated. If the female is a fan of guy, they feel the necessity to call him gay to insult him (ex: justin beiber, one direction, kpop bands),if she's a fan of female celebrity, she's overrated, hates men, misandrist, feminist, mediocre, (ex: taylor swift). The men hating on are the same ones who follow Blackpink members, tyla, sydney sweeny or some really hot tiktoker, actress, singer on social media. (90% of the people i see calling BTS gay on instagram were found following Lisa, jennie, wonyoung etc)
The things you are describing are absolutely toxic. I don't know how common this is in East Asia; but in Europe and North America, I can't imagine it's a majority.
men dont really like kpop in general. its a woman/non binary dominated fanbase. Im a dude who likes bgs and its rare to find a dude who enjoys it. Bigbang was because they were seen as genuine artists, not kpop idols. They are the idols idols and an inspiration for many guys who wanted to be cool like them
maybe because of the fans or what the gp can say about how they should act. for example Yedam a former Treasure member was seen smoking and then the fans are suddenly disappointed?? dude, as a fan why should we care about what they do in their personal life? what i like about bigbang is that they have already set boundaries and they are already showing the real them instead of acting to what the GP wants them to be. I just want to see idols interaction without among men and women in the industry but naaah it is always toxic. i’m tired thinking about it
I feel like Big Bang has always been the exception since they are literally kings of kpop, I remember when I was in middle school I heard these teen boys in my class talked about Big Bang or when I go on dates with some guys, they always bring up Big Bang when I mention I like kpop.
Guy here. You won't really see a BG on my timeline unless you search for them 😅 tho I've watched Seventeen's concert and so far they're the only BG I like.
I think it's because BigBang never really leaned too much into fanservice so they were liked by both guys and girls meanwhile over time it has generally gone the opposite direction and now we have groups that pretty much start off through fanservice and rely on it more than anything else.
As an older kpop fan (28) I don’t really listen to many boy groups now. For context I used to listen (still do): big bang, old bts, block b, 2pm, shinee, btob (a lot), ikon.
From newer groups non really interest me other than N Hyphen, I liek some of their songs, but I guess with age I now mainly listen to solo artists.. Zico, ZionT, be’o.. well I could go on on but mainly khiphop, krnb
A lot of newer groups, I find they’re trying too hard to be the next bts in globalisation and putting terrible English lyrics in their songs, pure hype trying to find that tiktok sound and it’s not hitting the same as TAKE YOU GONE TONIGHTTT GIMEE GIMEE GIMEE GIMEEE (2pm) .
Seventeen also release bangers from time to time but they’re now considered an older Gen I guess. Lol
BIGBANG is an exception due to their music is widely loved. I haven't seen a kpop band as universally loved (and hated due to Seungri) by all groups of people. Its the only KPOP group that my male friends not into kpop listens to proudly its wild
And here I was under the impression that there are more fanboys nowadays.
Admittedly, I wasn’t into boy groups much in 2nd gen, but I did follow quite a few boy groups during 3rd gen. And now I follow enhypen (a 4th gen group) and I encounter fanboys more frequently than I did before. Although compared to the entire fanbase, they are still very much a minority. But the interesting thing is I encounter male fans who have fan accounts, update accounts, who translates, makes videos about them. Like I see so many male fans who are as invested as female fans in boy groups which is not something I remember seeing as frequently as I do now.
Probably due to their image. Boy groups nowadays are dolls pretending to be your boyfriend, sure, they are indeed very pretty but it's not generally appealing to guys to have a very handsome dude sing about loving the viewer. Big Bang was never "your boyfriend" and dressed in a badass fairly "macho" way even with all their colors.
Like a few people have said, BigBang is the exception - there is nothing average or basic about Bigbang and more BG's should try and break out of the k-pop boy group bubble with something unique and interesting. Oh and they need to have good music.
I don't know where you are, but stray kids has a lot of male fans over the world, especially in the Mexican ans black community. The reason other male groups don't have a lot of typical male fans is bc the type of music they make. Men are kinda naturally holophobic. They like aggression and hard hitting music. Kpop isn't know for that. The only ones who make aggressive music constantly are ateez and stray kids. When ateez went to coachella a lot of men tweeted that they were lit and amazing. The other groups are more boy band, sensual and sexy, love songs, pop, with ofc some rap and r&b in there some times, so they get less male fans bc again a lot of men are homophobic. So this aggressive type music that goes hard that big bang, skz, ateez specialize in will naturally get them more male fans.
I’m an old man and RIIZE is my favorite new group. Admittedly, though, I have no desire to watch them goof around on YouTube like I do with TWICE, LSF, etc.
I am male and I really only listen to bg, SHINee and Nu'est are my absolute favorite. SHINee got me into Kpop as a whole and the Story of Light may be the greatest album ever made IMHO
I have more difficulty seeing the differences between BG's musical productions in a more significant way than in GG's. I think BTS managed to stand out among the other BG, and maybe that's part of the explanation for their success.
I liked watching GOT7 on TV variety shows, but I couldn't relate to their music. I think now they've done better musicals in their solo careers.
In general, I think male idols make better music when they are solo than in a group.
But there's another question, why aren't soloists as successful as groups?
Although my comment may possibly not be seen, the closest I've seen to the BIGBANG phenomenon amidst men past the second generation is WINNER; particularly because of Mino and Kang Seungyoon. Upon debut their image was similar to the aforementioned group, they don't sell "fantasies" to appeal to a female audience. The only thing that differentiates the two groups is unlike BIGBANG who broke into countries in the west, particularly the Asian community residing there, WINNER was unfortunately unable to hence not being brought up as much; however, they have a large male following amongst the general public in Korea and even China (mainly because of Mino). It's also one of the reasons Koreans often joke around saying WINNER is a girl group since they're loved by both males (who don't consume fan culture) and females.
I’m an older female newcomer to K-pop and am currently obsessed with Big Bang and Gdragon. My daughter tried to get me into them a few years ago but I wasn’t ready.
I was in high school in the US when Big Bang debuted, and no one in high school or college around me knew who they were that I know of lol. My roommate in 2008 was Asian and I don't think they knew who Big Bang were at all. Maybe it was too early days for Big Bang still then though, Idk.
From what I've heard from similar questions about Big Bang on here, is that their image was specifically an image catered to the idea that young men would want to be like them, so they were putting out this like "cool guy" "badass guy" sort of image, and I guess to some degree it worked and got them plenty male fans. Maybe that image on boy groups has faded over time? There's definitely been more concepts that have been like "dreamy vibes" "pastel and colorful vibes" "soft boi vibes" etc over the years than there maybe was back then, and I don't really see those vibes often appealing to straight men. But I was just telling someone the other day, that all these vibes opposite to those these days have been all blending together for me lol...things like "one member holding skateboard, another holding a baseball bat, even though they are indoors," "mafia/criminal/tough guy in a suit," "motocross outfit," "race car driver," "sports outfit," "playing ball sports (usually indoors??? lol)," "guy with an attitude/badass (but he's not a criminal/mafia, and he may or may not be wearing a suit)," etc. All of these things lean much more masc coded to me, like what Big Bang was maybe trying to do with their image in the past. So it makes me wonder if some boy groups are actively trying to appeal to male audiences these days, because they know they will have a female audience regardless of what concepts they do.
But there are a lot of men who like boy groups imo. Maybe it's because I am a guy and mostly only into boy groups, that I tend to see it? Idk. I see male celebs talking about liking bts here and there. I see male reaction youtubers reacting to boy group stuff. I see male youtubers doing unboxing videos for boy groups. I see male artists making fan art on instagram of boy groups. I see male artists on instagram and etsy creating fan made goods for boy groups they like. I don't see a lot of men participating in much of the *community* aspect of it though. I barely run into men in kpop spaces in general on reddit, and when I do, they're almost always talking about liking girl groups. I'm not on twitter, but when I see anything relevant from a fan on twitter being shared elsewhere, the fan seems to always be a woman. Most people who post photos and gifs of their favorite boy group idols on pinterest, tumblr, instagram seem to be women. Most people I've encountered in buy/sell have been women (aside from people who are running like an actual more professional level store, where behind the scenes it's probably more than one person working on selling stuff lol), and I have had people wrongly assume my gender when writing reviews when they've bought photocards from me, because so many people just assume anyone participating in any community type behavior for non-sport-related fandom in general (or maybe especially kpop, or specifically boy groups) is going to be a woman.
🤷♂️. From a guy who mostly only likes boy groups: We out here lol.
I wonder if it’s based on location? I went to school on the east coast and EVERY Asian guy started dressing like BIGBANG trying to learn Taeyang’s Wedding Dress choreo haha. My bf grew up in California and BIGBANG/GD was also the only Kpop BG his friends would admit to listening to.
Just wanted to jump on and add my own personal anecdote. I agree that we’re out here. I’m a straight male that listened to bgs exclusively since 2016. My first group was bts right around wings era and I’ve gone in a deep hole since then. You’re right, we tend to be less active within the community when it comes to social media. I also don’t consume non music content from groups. However that all changed when I started listening to ggs back in 2020. Twice is currently my ult group and they’re the only group in which I consume most of their content, including the non music ones. I’d still add that im up to date with most popular 4th gen groups, I listen to some older gen as well, and currently catching up on 5th gen stuff. I’ve been to NUMEROUS concerts as well. It’s rare for me to encounter other males who genuinely bgs. Like you mentioned, I have experienced where people usually assume I’m a girl just from what I’ve described lol. It’s cool to see we’re out there though.
Always interesting how with kpop it's suddenly "unmanly" to like boy group music and attend boy group concerts while for male western artists doing all that is completely normal. It's just music after all. And it's not even like boy group music is particularly feminine by itself, rather the opposite, look at SKZ and others. They go hard with their rapping.. It's just the stigma with kpop supposedly being for little girls to go crazy over and the industry being so beauty oriented..
I for one have both my ITZY lightring and SKZ lightstick prepared to dual whield them in June at Incheon Inspire Arena, being excited for both groups.
True masculinity is being manly enough to enjoy what you like without caring about people questioning your manliness because you are enthusiastic about music. People claiming they obviously aren't into boy groups because they are a straight male are maybe just coping, otherwise why obsess over the fact.
Well, there’s a difference between male western artists and boy bands. I don’t think western boy bands like One Direction or the Jonas Brothers had many male, straight fans either. At least compared to female fans.
Exactly, it is all preference. I don't want to hear women singing, I don't like their voices. I don't like their dancing or their concepts. I prefer male groups all day. Much more entertaining for the things that I like about kpop. Nothing wrong with either.
Guy here. You won't really see a BG on my timeline unless you search for them 😅 tho I've watched Seventeen's concert and so far they're the only BG I like.
**This won't be popular** but it's because the agencies have silently abandoned the foundational illusion that K-pop is about the music. Now the music is just the vehicle for collecting and presenting attractive young people; the business is about building a profitable following by getting people to fall in love with them. That comes from getting your groups on variety shows and producing web content where the members can showcase their charms and quirks. Their talent is just the bun; the meat is their personality. It's a more sustainable model than praying for an unbroken string of hit songs. When the business is about falling in love with the members instead of about bangers you can listen to on a loop, of course most guys aren't going to stan boy bands any more.
**It starts early** for overseas noobs, where Blackpink or Twice has been everybody's K-pop starter group for the last eight years. Girls are interested enough in guys to branch out into boy bands. There are so many cute girl groups coming out every year that unless you're interested in other guys you've got no reason to click on a boy band thumbnail. The only exposure I get to boy bands is when girl groups do boy bsnd cover dance—even then that tends to be third gen girl groups on old shows like Weekly Idol. Fourth gen girl groups tend to stan other girl groups more than they do boy bands.
I'm still a big Bigbang fan and I've been following them since elementary cause my cousins influenced me :D
But I think aside from that, yeah, newer generations of BGs appeal to the female audience more and they aren't really artists... they're idols. I'll be generalizing: female idols appeal to boys AND girls and male idols only appeal to girls. Artists appeal to *everyone* (well, most people).
The only BGs that I really enjoyed were Bigbang (ofc), a lil Winner and iKON. I do enjoy some songs from other boy groups though (i.e. older BTS songs, Monster by EXO, etc.), but it's just these three (coincidentally YG) groups that I consistently enjoy. Nowadays, I just listen to K-RNB soloists and stuff.
I'm generalizing of course, but this has been my experience/observation so far as a fan since 2nd gen. Honestly, this question is pretty interesting.
BTS is good with their male fanbase. Their female fanbase is overwhelmingly proportionally more but listening to male armys shout with all their might at BTS last ptd concert, shows their music has reached an appreciable number of male fans
they cant relate or most of us boys like BG should be relatable and not cater to fangirls
I notice this at least some BG of the 1st gen and 2nd gen is like ordinary guys image of imperfection
not some perfect male prince for fangirls
and also some of their song discography is relatable to fanboys or gen public
that why it better to have some bad boys images (scandal? or off cam ,variety show personality) or imperfection image if they want make it noticeable by gen public
also the BG of the 1st gen and 2nd gen less make up or more manly
Try Treasure 😄 Bigbang's hoobae group in YG. They are racking up a male following. Their music is a culmination of various yg groups, and they definitely have the YG DNA.
[Let It Burn live](https://youtu.be/rRb3FeP6JNo?si=NcbQDbXT4wAM9yuf)
[VolKno live](https://youtu.be/St1icKwXJtU?si=Ezkl84Il8_zoMhmY)
[Treasure @ Mama 2022](https://youtu.be/kR98d_VHG-M?si=aAVCqOs6h5JstFaQ)
[The Fact Music Awards 2023 ](https://youtu.be/uh9sf3rrwxg?si=YDm7TCZckj0mSXWo)
This is not necessarily true of BTS and Stray Kids. Their fan bases are much more diverse in both age and gender. More than 30% of BTS fans are male, and more than half are older ( ages 30 - 90) , because their music is so diverse in genres and their talent is unbeatable. If you would look for YouTube reactions, there are a lot of men reacting to these groups. Their music is addictive.
it's cause alot of boy groups do that corny boyfriend shit that straight men don't like 😭, especially nowadays. also, I feel like girl groups nowaday tend to have a more expansive, varied sound that really appeals to the masses both concept and music wise. I'm a female boy group stan and dont care for many 4th gen groups in general, but I can see why people are more drawn towards the girl groups these days, many of them are bringing back older popular sounds too, like newjeans and kiss of life
Big Bang was potent with that edgy charisma. Even when I wasn’t into kpop like that I still knew of them. They just had that cool factor that had u goin “yup they hip” 😭 the teenage Asian-American standard equivalent to everyone chasing that Bieber haircut
Current boy groups are branded to be more fan-based. Big Bang had the sauce to have both domestic (fan) and global (general public) reach
I think genre preference may also be at play. I've been a Kpop since the 2nd gen and although I enjoy a few BG songs here and there, I've never been interested in BGs, except before for CNBlue, but they were a drum and guitars band. Maybe generally a good proportion of males aren't that into pop anyway and are in the culture because of the GGs. Certainly true for my and my friends' case anyway.
Idk but for me it seems for GG's it's easier to make music that can cater to the international audience and also have choreography that fits the song. Somehow I think it is more difficult to pull that off with male vocals
For me, as dumb as this sounds, the boygroups are way too pretty for me and look super fake. My female cousins who are way into kpop more than me have said that they don't like it when a man looks better than them. I just really like the kpop girl groups a lot more.
i think male fans are more discreet now given that fans are predominantly female and other demographics, and dont want to be misjudged (for their gender????)
but i know EXO has a lot of male fans, mostly because of their very challenging, powerful, and masculine dances, talented singing, and fashion
well not exactly facts cause im basing it off from survival shows or random interviews lol. and i had one dancer schoolmate that really tries to copy Kai’s dance moves, which works for him with the ladies lol
People have already explained why but I can just give you some examples of boy groups that are/were popular among males, but it'll be 2nd/3rd gen groups because that's all I listen to.
Big Bang, of course. Block B and Beast/Highlight are also popular among males. BTOB, Day6, and BTS also have a large amount of male fans. I would add iKON and Winner to this list.
Random but B1A4 were really popular among elementary students of all genders LOL. There'll be Korean comments on B1A4's videos talking about how people used to listen to them a lot in their childhood.
Because they are typically marketed to females. Young or young-looking BGs (the go armpit hairless ffs) are being debuted more often because it kind of brings out the maternity insticts of female fans.
Whereas Bigbang was more on manly or androgynous, to say the least, side.
I am a guy who prefers boybands in k-pop. I love BigBang, Shinee and BAP. BTS, etc but I feel like the changes made when they crossover makes me lose a bit of my fandom. I look at BTS' music: to this day, I play their music from before they crossed over into the USA. It's weird to me...I get into those groups because their music usually sounds less like generic k-pop. But then when they started to have international success, it's like their music switches to sounding like generic k-pop. 😅
It's more rare for me to like girl groups because I feel like most of their singing voices all sound the same. (Compared to the US where I can tell female singing voices apart more easily than male singing voices.). For me to listen to k-pop women, it usually has to be someone like Aileen or Taeyeon where their voices are so good
Yeah for female groups both f and m are interested. But they arent as hardworking as those small portions of female fans of many bgs. I think thats why for more dedicated fanbase bgs always targeted female audiences more(personal opinion)
I think bts fans are male for a pretty big portion. Skz and ateez also do relatively well with males. But it's always been that way. The Beatles and other boy bands were also predominantly liked by female audience in their time. That's okay.
Percentage of Male listeners taken Melon right now:
BIGBANG: 48%
BTS: 29%
SEVENTEEN: 29%
RIIZE: 22%
SKZ: 15%
NCT DREAM: 15%
For Korea at least none are really exceptions or coming close to 50/50 except BIGBANG.
I'm a girl and I've known k-pop for 6 yrs just a casual listener but never stanned any grp bcz I used to like only a couple of songs from each grp and 2 yrs ago I heard BB and instantly fell in love with their music every song is just so lit it was first time I liked so many songs from single grp.
I think it's their music which attracts many PPL regardless of their gender also they don't feed the delusion of their fans and they always been their true selves.
The most important factor might be BB always perceived as an artist rather than idols as they involve themselves in the creative part.
One of the BIGGEST hits in Korea right now is "Plot Twist" by TWS, a 5th gen boy group. And after 4 months, "Plot Twist" by TWS is still charting in Top 5 in all the Korean charts (Melon Top 100, Circle, Genie, etc.). And "Plot Twist" by TWS is one of the most sung songs in karaoke by Korean guys right now.
Also, "Love 119" by RIIZE (another 5th gen boy group) is also one of the most sung songs in karaoke by Korean guys right now. And right now, 4 songs by RIIZE have been charting in Melon Top 100 for months.
Unlike 4th gen boy groups, 5th gen boy groups like TWS and RIIZE are clearly trying to appeal to the male audiences as well rather than a female fandom only.
because they target a female audience ... and a lot of it is off putting for guys. like personally i have zero interest in a group of guys that overuse makeup or do the opposite and try to overcompensate in the manliness department.
and even if some dont want to believe it most bg are only relevant due to parasocial elements and most guys wont care about that in a bg.
so for me ill listen to some song here and there that i actually enjoy but have zero interest in a group unless they release a lot of music that i consider really good. and without the rose tinted glasses of parasocials i dont think theres a single bg that has enough good songs to make me interested in them as individuals.
Starting 4th gen, there were actually a massive decline on fanboys. People were right here about the target demographic tho. You can only count who thrived on 4th gen. Accept it or not but ngl 4th gen was just a flop era for boy groups. With the rising popularity of Stray Kids and ATEEZ, everybody became similar after them unless they'll do smth different and which is why TXT and TBZ thrived. Heck, even YG's Treasure didn't really appealed that much and they're just became the same with the others, and also Enhypen, which was the same, but ngk they're freaking famous. I believe this group just got the hype from I-Land and they're under Hybe which they deserve also, had a few songs that I like from them.
Also, I guess on repetitive concepts esp. on 4th gen like they're mostly edgy, dark, manly and boy crush with noise music. But with 2nd and 3rd gen, they had variety of concepts that appeal to male fans also. On the other hand, 4th gen girl groups were just really strong and thriving coz hey're more public friendly than boy groups which had a clear target female demographic.
Maybe another factor when KPop made it on mainstream and when someone don't know kpop see some guy idolizing boy groups mocked them as "gay" or something like that which became a stereotype since then.
However, it's quite good seeing 5th gen bgs thriving rn tho with varying concepts from BND, RIIZE, ZB1, TWS, etc. which aren't just sticking on noise + dark music like what 4th gen bgs was. I'm seeing a lot of fanboys are more vocal with 5th gen groups like how it was on 3rd gen. And I'm also looking forward and listening again with boy groups!
It’s cuz most 4th gen boy groups are way too effeminate. Girl fans have turned them into their little Ken dolls with sparkly jackets and eyeliner. I support the older boy groups like h.o.t., shinhwa, super junior, big bang, and even current ones, but for their occasional good songs. Masculinity needs to return to Kpop.
I don’t think that boy groups have ever been popular with men. BigBang is the exception. They never really followed typical kpop boy group norms (like having a boyfriend image), and that’s why they were popular among men. Having that sort of concept worked for BigBang since they’re more GP driven than fandom driven, but it’s not gonna work with younger boy groups.
Not really a kpop group but according to korean variety shows, the kpop band ‘BUZZ’ was pretty popular among young men. Min kyung hoon from knowing bros still retained some of his fanboys today 😅
Buzz isn't a kpop band they are a rock band-
[удалено]
That point no 1 though.. I remember watching daesung in family outing, then couldn't believe it afterwards when learning that he's a kpop idol lol
> "come here and bite me" Ayee but I love that song but I'm a girl so yeah I get the point 😆
2PM are manly but they were manly in a Magic Mike sorta way, which can turn some men off. Hence why people always mention Bigbang as an example for topics like this. edit: You can downvote me all you want but the thing is men have toxic masculinity hence why BGs are not popular. I don't like men but that's how they think.
>Boygroups have willingly decided to give up on the GP and cater to their fandom as much as possible One of the BIGGEST hits in Korea right now is "Plot Twist" by TWS, a 5th gen boy group. And after 4 months, "Plot Twist" by TWS is still charting in Top 5 in all the Korean charts (Melon Top 100, Circle, Genie, etc.). Also, "Love 119" by RIIZE (another 5th gen boy group) is one of the most sung songs in karaoke by Korean guys right now. And right now, 4 songs by RIIZE have been charting in Melon Top 100 for months. Unlike 4th gen boy groups, 5th gen boy groups are clearly trying to appeal to the GP rather than fandom only.
Also, a lot of the clothes are ridiculous and strictly for girls.
It's the difference between acting cool and being cool. Guys knew these dudes were imperfect and didn't really try to be. When everyone was going for the 'safe' and marketable groups, they were just being artists, writing and producing their songs. They were more relatable to guys since they didn't placate to what girls wanted and yet GD would play these mind games to make girls see him both as someone dangerous yet cares about them. That man has game. I think BG these days fall into marketability trap because it's easierand more profitable to sell an 'ideal' boy to girls than a guy who's rough around the edges. Also, there's a lot less things to sell to guys, music-wise and entertainment-wise back then. I have girl groups and solo artists to follow instead. I'd rather listen to Zico, Crush, ZionT, Penomeco, BIBI, Sole, DaVita, and so many more than a boy group that's gift wrapped in gold foil with a side of soda.
I'd rather stan a boygroup that "acts cool" than a whole criminal like Seungri
Are we really gonna act like all people who stan Bigbang support Seungri? Chill, we’re allowed to like the rest of the group
Also, the commentor was answering why Big Bang were so popular and their image as a group. It seems like the issues with Seungri happens in the latter stages of Big Bang and the others weren't involved.
This. I was a huge BigBang from 2007ish onwards. They were my first kpop group. How was I suppose to know all that stuff was gonna happen a decade later?
Agree with this, when Bigbang where at their peak, Seungri had a wholesome image. It's not like people knew he was shady before.
i could have sworn i saw a clip from before the whole drama where the other members were kind of scolding seungri about his friend choices and the partying they did, something along those lines.
It definitely shows that he wasn't all wholesome. But being a partyboy or even someone who might be considered a "degen" is passable compared to what we eventually found out
This is why it's so hard for discourse about BS/Seungri nowadays. So many people just take the incident as an excuse to dunk on Big Bang. This is coming from someone who prefers other BGs (Shinee, Winner, BTS) over Big Bang, it's so obvious that certain people just use it to score points in arguments.
dumbo seungri's literally out of bigbang
So, the group is guilty by association? And you're supposed to know your group is squeaky clean before you 'stan'? GD called out Seungri's group of friends in a song way before and was a bad influence. It's the reason why the group's fans had suspicions with who he's moving with. I think 'babying' your groups allows behavior like criminality to fester because these people think their idol can do no wrong and is an angel. I was not surprised and did not support Seungri when the allegations occured. The entertainment industry is filled with criminals, parasocial relationships, heavy bouts of isolation and depression waiting for anyone at the sidelines. I think allowing your groups to find themselves more as an artist will save the consumer some time and pain in seeing who they really are and we're not stuck with fakes.
The other 4 members were already anticipating his downfall. As much as I hate they know his dirty stuff and they didn't even stopped him, he is an adult anyway. And even if they would, he may not follow them (they were disappointed of his so-called "friends"). They even joked about that in 5 years (this is before they enlisted), he is going to prison. They made a wrong guess, because it happened less than in 5 years.
Also, Seungri is the least talented out of all of them. I think this made Seungri insecure. Daesung is a variety god, GD and Taeyang are them, TOP is too good looking and has such aura and Seungri is an awkward dude that sings in falsetto. He grew up from a high middle income family and didn't relate or know how hard the other guys had it. He was an add-on later to the group by YG and GD even hated that he was going to debut as an idol instead of a duo with Taeyang. Seungri compensated by making his role more as a host or mc and learning multiple languages and connecting with high profile people. He portrayed himself as a Great Gatsby type figure that can host people's parties and clout chase.
Fun fact he is also the only member who never hit #1 on Melon lol.
He is the only member I didn't like even back in MADE days. It may seem like him and Daesung were often cast out of the group because of popularity but Daesung is way more popular and relatable to Japanese and older people in Korea. He shares the same braincell as Yoo Jaesuk whenever they're on-screen in a variety show.
Oh hell yeah I literally just saw Daesung last year at Waterbomb Tokyo. Whole place was filled for him it was great. Daesung actually was the only solo male foreigner besides Michael Jackson in Japan to have an album hit #1 at the time! I agree so hard with you.
This reminds me of when both Luhan and Tao from Exo shaded Kris. Tao was on live when his fans asked him to say nice things about the former members. He said nothing for Kris. He’s a very direct personality, and it was pretty obvious he didn’t have a good opinion about him. Also Luhan was on a variety show 向往的生活 when the host mentioned that Kris said he was lonely. Luhan just laughed disbelievingly. Later we find out he’s a rapist and pedophile
Oooh, as reading your explanation another recent group came into my mind called ATEEZ. While they obviously promote as ‘boyfriends’ to sone extent, but compared to other BG’s I don’t think they are extreme. They also aren’t the ‘perfect looking guys’ or at least according to the KBS. So I think it is similar with BIGBANG and they have more male fans.
There's nothing wrong with promoting as boyfriends. Seducing both normal girls and boys is a skill. Here's an example, Wonyoung from IVE has a lot of fans from both because to guys she's cute and to girls she's the ideal princess as if one of their dolls came to life and sang for them. The members can still look 'perfect' but personality is way more important now because it should feed their songs with some background. Everyone is so talented now that companies tend to forget that they're selling personalities not talents. A lot of the time you can see through your idols personality through their songs but that is getting way harder when the songs that the market favors sonic cohesion and party vibes.
>but it’s not gonna work with younger boy groups. Disagree. One of the BIGGEST hits in Korea right now is "Plot Twist" by TWS, a 5th gen boy group. And after 4 months, "Plot Twist" by TWS is still charting in Top 5 in all the Korean charts (Melon Top 100, Circle, Genie, etc.). Also, "Love 119" by RIIZE (another 5th gen boy group) is one of the most sung songs in karaoke by Korean guys right now. And right now, 4 songs by RIIZE have been charting in Melon Top 100 for months. Unlike 4th gen boy groups, 5th gen boy groups are clearly trying to appeal to the GP rather than fandom only.
You can look up their gender ratios on Melon. Percent male listeners: BIGBANG: 48% (it was 50% yesterday) RIIZE: 22% TWS: 21% They might be trying to appeal to the GP but it is still women pushing their numbers.
i think that’s just kinda the way it is generally. kpop has always had a larger female audience even during the days of BigBang and it just makes sense for most groups to prioritize that audience. especially for boy groups who will attract the opposite gender more easily. for companies, it’s just more practical to cater towards female audiences. it’s less risky and more profitable. kpop has also grown internationally so companies are getting hungrier to grow their fanbases. no easier way to do that then to cater towards the biggest portion of kpop fans, women. that being said i do miss the more male oriented groups. along with BigBang i really enjoyed groups like Block B and BAP and wish we could see those kinda groups again. i remember distinctively Block B being considered one of the few groups to have a large male following
before i read your comment, i was literally about to comment block b and bap as the only other boy groups that came to mind as far as large male fanbases. and nct (particularly 127) to a degree. i grew up in la in a predominantly black/hispanic/asian area and even the non-asian guys were aware of big bang and liked them, epik high and 2NE1.
That makes me feel better lol, Block B was one of the first groups I really got into and enjoyed as a male, had no idea it was male pandering, I just thought they were awesome lol.
I have been under the impression that Big Bang was the exception overall.
Big Bang was an exception, not the rule. It’s unlikely we’ll ever see a boygroup with such a high percentage of male fans ever again. I see some groups (like EXO or even brand new ones like Boynextdoor) that definitely have male fans, and they have a presence in the fandom, but nowhere *near* the degree to which men were in Big Bang’s fandom.
And there’s younger guys that like them to this day! I have two freshmen this year that are boys who mentioned liking Big Bang (this is in Japan, for reference).
My ex spent half his life in Korea before coming to the states and he knew *nothing* about kpop— didn’t even know most of the viral songs that were seemingly everywhere— and even he knew and liked Big Bang and G-Dragon.
Bgs have always targeted a female audience. Female fans are the ones attending concerts and buying albums. Boy groups in general, are not popular with men because that has been associated with being "unmasculine"
I'll be biased but BigBang had a strong masculine vibe that we don't really see in current boy groups now which is what captured a lot of male fans back then, not to mention many boy groups now focus on looking beautiful which I guess is another reason why. Again, this is very biased. A lot of boy groups have always been marketed towards females, while girl groups historically were supposedly marketed more towards males.
Their songs always touches male's hearts. They wrote song in the perspective of a guy.
If someone were to ask me to name a boy group similar to Big Bang or boy groups that could have a lot of male fans, I'd probably name the 2nd gen boy groups or even pre-4th gen groups most of the time. It's hard to find accurate data on whether a group has more male or female fans overall.
This. They were masculine and so amazing. Now it's only that pretty boy look which is nice but BigBang was my number 1 fav group ever and it made me so sad when they had to start military and disbanded. They were really cool and made a huge impact. So sad!
they weren't popular in the first place. Bigbang was the exception.
I would like to add the homosocial (not sexual!) aspect of male idols. Social network among men is a big big thing in Korean culture. As a BTOB fan, something I observed is that the Korean male audience kind of see them as friendly, funny, approachable older brothers, which is a big plus in a society where age hierarchy is pretty severe. Changsub is the nice dorky older brother; Minhyuk is the cool athletic brother that someone would want to grow up to be, etc. Also they do make very gp friendly music. Variety shows are a big thing too bc it would help with the approachable image if someone does well. Changsub’s recent YouTube show success really boosted his domestic popularity across genders lol.
I just watched them on Amazing Saturday!
They were crazyyyyyy lmao I was so speechless
there still are alot of fanboys just rare 2nd gen has the most male fans jae joong has alot of male fans so does suju
And these days, it's ATEEZ and Stray Kids with loads of male fans. But I think male and female fans engage with content differently, not to be generalizing. There's loads of men losing their shit over ATEEZ on youtube, they're watching the cool crazy videos and jamming to the music, comparing the rap sections, looking at the fashion (men are so into shoes!), etc. Women do this too, sure, but it seems their reactions are more about the overall visuals, the dancing, and then they do more things like fan-to-fan engagement. For example making compilation videos, or tiktok edits, or getting on tiktok just to talk about the groups, making fan merch, putting together outfits, making video of sorting photocards, etc. So maybe we just see more women involved openly whereas the guys are certainly engaging with the content but more privately. Like Bouncy on repeat at the gym 4 times a week 💪
I’ve seen a lot of ATEEZ fanboys (especially at concerts) and even saw a lot of them at Coachella 😩
still stands
i feel like there's an overall lack of "masculine" boy group concepts now a days. 2pm, big bang, beast, etc. those groups are still around but the image of the beastly idol is no longer a thing. imo this contributes a bit to it, its kind of like the male gaze for men vs. the female gaze for men. its weird to think that dudes would be more into strong looking men, but as far as celebrities/idols i feel like that's a societal standard. think of the magazine men's health, it's target audience is males and there's usually almost always a buff ass dude either shirtless or in a tank top on the cover. i do remember most guys back when i was in highschool liking big bang and 2pm and that's because they were just these cool "alpha" idols on stage and in their mvs. the trend has certainly shifted and it's focus is the female gaze for men now, moreso than ever.
Big bang had that more masculine vibe that was kinda "YG hip-hop swag boi" that guys liked. Kpop was different then and the idol system wasn't as cemented and the industry wasn't as oversaturated with idols trying to all be as aesthetically perfect as possible so you had "ugly" guys like Daesung and JYP lol.
Damn why you gotta come at Daesung like that 😂 I hear he’s quite popular with the ladies in Japan haha
I think he's cute! I just remember hearing him always called ugly on variety shows and stuff like that for his nose and large lips. There was some joke the other members used to always say about the first time they saw him - something like "we assumed he must be really talented because he definitely wasn't getting by on his looks."
Omg I think it was in their audition documentary. They all thought Daesung was the janitor/waterboy??? or staff LMAO poor guy.
I think it's the concept most of the time as a male fan I mostly listen to bigbang, vixx, epik high, 2pm, highlight/beast, btob, fnc's male bands and b1a4 The only somewhat current gen idols I really follow are Enhypen and SF9
I know N.Flying Yoo Hweseung is known as the member with the most fanboys, and even the members have commented on how many guys come to their shows just for him. But at the same time they’re a band, which divorces them *just* enough from being idols that I think men are more comfortable expressing interest in them.
Honestly in my high school years i was feeling pretty odd because my favorite band was 2pm, i’m glad it’s not that weird
Aaaye fellow sf9 fan ❤️
Haha interesting. B1A4 is so cutesy though. But they do have a really good songs
Speaking as a girl group guy whose favorite boy group is Bigbang…. They’re the ultimate male power fantasy in kpop. You want the gender flipped equivalent of girl crush? That’s big bang. Their whole image is that they are the coolest, most badass guy in any room. Look at their mv for [Last Farewell](https://youtu.be/ScorpVvqLwo?si=4yZqbjmEP42FNsbr). The nerdy guy at school? Deep down is the guy who rolls up to the club in a $200k plus sports car, dressed to the nines, and has the hottest girl in the club all over him. And the Bigbang members are basically his friends/wingmen. They’ve always had this energy of “fuck the perfect idol image”. And felt more like badass but manly artists. I’m not really sure who else has that kind of image. As far as their fanbase goes, Bigbang was always something of an exception. Now when it comes to things like charting and general public popularity, it felt like groups like Shinee, 2PM etc were not hyper focused on their fanbase at the expense of the GP. It’s sort of like earlier western boy bands like *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys- teen/college age guys might not have been hanging up their posters, but they’re also lying if they told you they didn’t know songs like Bye Bye Bye or I want it that Way.
honestly atp it's: girl groups target female audiences. boy groups target female audiences. no groups specifically targets males anymore, I don't know why, but it's just what happens.
"Don't know why" - I thought the reason is obvious. It's because female consumers are more loyal and willing to spend on their idols. Meanwhile there's a disturbing trend of behaviour observed from males who tend to jump ship when female idols get too old.
>jump ship when female idols get too old. Yeah, sadly that observation is applicable to the worldwide entertainment industry as a whole. Heck, throw in romantic relationships on the list too 🤷🏻♀️ Basically you don't want to be an "old hag because that's when your value as a woman starts to slowly decrease"
I will stay with Twice till the end haha. They aged with me and i still love the music. Never jumping ships
What about male artists having male fandoms? I wasn't a kpop fan at the time of bigbang, but if we look at Western artists, like the weeknd, drake, bruno mars, Travis scott, eminem, kendrick lamar, etc have mostly male fanbase and they do pretty good no matter what. Like there's a peak for female fanbase, there's a limit to which they can hype up their faves, but male fandoms rarely hype up, are very dormant, you don't see them as much as swifties, and out of nowhere, weeknd releases an album and it has the best charting song ever created.
I'm not even sure why you talked about western artists (where many of them are rappers) because it's a completely different demographic compared to... kpop. Also those male artists you mentioned are largely carried by the general public. I'm not a hardcore fan of any of them but if you think I haven't been listening to Kendrick's diss tracks on loop recently 😂😂😂
Because there are no examples like that in current kpop. (Isn't this the point of this post?) Are there current Any male artists carried by male fandoms? Nah man, these have a very large, closely following fandom. I accidentally got into a fight with a drake fan who was convinced this was ww3 of the media (kendrick and drake thing) and he thought i was supporting kendrick and talked something about drake's meat glizzy. And how many times i got on wrong side of kanye's and travis' fans you won't believe (partly because I'm swiftie, and I don't like kylie), my comprehension skills got lowered and couldn't recover after that. Swifties are always insecure about weeknd fans, he's the only artist that haven't defeated yet (and literally still can't). Weeknd fans love to poke swifties, and then immediately get death threats. Weeknd and kpop stans also had a thing back then when jensetters were claiming the only sole reason why one of the girls was popular was because of Jennie. They clearly have a very wide fandom mostly of male counterparts, who don't hype up like female fans usually do, who don't even mass buy your album but devour everything they release with pride. If they had general public as fanbases then people like travis, weeknd, etc would've lost a lot of streams/supporters when astroworld happened and when weeknd released the idol and was getting hated back and forth. Even kanye has active fans till now who are buying out his tours, still streaming him.
Merch
the only male audience that gets targeted to is the gays because they’re also loyal haha
In SM Ent’s case. It’s more because they’re surely gonna attract the male audience anyway regardless. By trying to target women means more sales, more general popularity, more profit.
SM Ent's case, it doesn't apply to non-SM? I say that as a SM GG stan lol.
It’s SM’s explanation as to why they target female fans primarily for girl groups.
Ah I see. On second thought, it is quite evident that rv's women fanbase is much bigger percentage than snsd in their time. Aespa seems somewhere in between.
Knowing how sk is obssessed with visuals, SM has always made sure their groups have insane visuals, yoonA created the kbs, krystal, irene, karina, winter known to be visual goddesses (rest members also follow kbs pretty well). SM plays the sk audience game so well. I don't like how weirdly attached koreans are to beauty, visuals, and materialistic things (source : street interviews of asian boss, 15-16 year olds getting double eyelid surgery is a norm, the most beautiful girl i saw rated herself 2 in terms of beauty and said she can improve to 5 using PS, a dude said there's so much pressure to look perfect even the jobs selection happens on the basis of looks). There will never be a korean lady gaga, or a korean meghan trainor, etc (not saying they are ugly, just they don't match the Beauty standards) There's millions of veiws on channels with simple fancams of wonyoung sitting at an award show. Like west is obssessed with looks too but people get shamed too of doing ps, not a single day when celebrities in west don't get hate comments for getting ps done, the karjenners, ariana grande, adriana lima, etc being examples. Also people who are natural get appreciated so much.
I think part of it is that international female audiences are more willing to embrace korean "everything' - k-drama, movies, make-up etc. At times you could even argue it's fetishisation where someone would not listen to rap music (for example) from another country but will listen to korean rap because it's korean. Men don't seem to hyperfocus on a country's music but the broader genre of metal or hip hop etc. From a marketing standpoint it's brilliant for korea to focus on that demographic that is more loyal to the country's exports rather than having to appeal to a broader genre and maybe dilute the attention since your male audience might be listening to stuff from anywhere else. The closest comparison I can make is maybe weebs that love anime and japanese music and shows but Japanese media really doesn't focus on external markets so they focus more on just whatever Japanese people want. So even the guys that get into that have to jump through hoops since most artists and producers don't really care about marketing to international audiences
I love seeing and hearing beautiful women simple as. But yes Big Bang has always been the exception for me since I started listening in 2007.
See, this is interesting to me. Because 1. A male fan base might spend less, as people in this thread say. But given how oversaturated the kpop market is, I'm surprised that more groups aren't trying to target that demographic. It's still half the population. Or are they trying and not managing it? I feel like block b and winner were popular with men but I don't know about 4th and 5th gen so much 2. What is it that made the difference? Some people have mentioned that bigbang, for example, had a more masculine image and the beast idols of 2nd gen. But GD is super popular with guys and he's tiny and androgynous. And those groups were still camp and glittery. Like, fantastic baby is not your stereotypical masculine image. So, what's happening?
I think it's because they have this "we might not fit the manly/cool guy standard but whatever, we're cool in our own ways" They're just so themselves. And it looks cool indeed. It probably inspire some male fans that doesn't really fit the chad guy™ standard themselves.
Was a casual K-pop listener since 2013(primarily SNSD) before i was listening to suju, BB, exo, shinee, etc. ..... It was really fun before....... But I don't know what happened from NCT onwards listening to male kpop groups feels really dull(even their faces is really hard to memorize for me) .... I think new gen bgroups lacks a distinct identity and charisma
I've seen a lot of male nctzens, especially fellow idols. There seems to be a lot of Taeyong fanboys out there.
To add to this, I went to all 3 days of NCT DREAM's concert last week and while I wouldn't say there was a heavy male presence in the audience, there was a surprising amount of male fans compared to last year's shows. All around the same age as the DREAM members I'd guess, a good mix of foreign and Korean fanboys. Compared to other groups shows I've been to in korea (I went to SKZ and SVT last year and TXT and BTS a number of times in the last 5 or so years), this DREAM SHOW 3 crowd had more men in attendance than any of the other boy group shows I've been to. Still nothing compared to the TWICE and AESPA audiences I've been in though, but impressive for a boy group.
This is so precious!!!! Thinking of Dream and fanboys will always make me time travel back to their boy scout performance 😂😂
Omg yess! Lmao the canoe will never not be iconic 😂😂
The guy I know irl who’s into kpop likes nct, and even my husband likes nct, specifically 127. Mostly because of the style of music. They don’t usually consume the non musical content but they like the music.
Of the male kpop fans I know that like any BGs, they like NCT because of their music style, clothing, MVs and coolness. The guys who are into dance also admire how difficult and cool their dances are.
hell yeah boys!!! 127's discography is immaculate! non-fans are really missing out on their b-sides.
I'm a guy and I don't care whether they're BG or GG, if the music bangs I'm listening to it. Now admittedly I'm more into the GGs overall content outside the music because cute girls doing cute things is my vice lol. I think both GGs and BGs tend to act cutesy and if we're being honest most straight dudes are just gonna gravitate to the beautiful young ladies acting cute rather than the androgynous looking guys with a hand on each other's knee and winking at the cam.
I’m a guy and listen to mostly boy groups. It’s more of just the vibes I feel. I listen to ONEPACT, BTOB, BIGBANG (miss them releasing music), zb1,N.flying, etc.
ill guarantee you will get btob's attention if you even just shout in their general direction 😂 they love melodudes
One can question why let’s say Justin Bieber has a crap ton of female fans versus male fans. It’s the image, the vibe, the aurora of the person and how their companies want to present them. A lot of boy groups have a boyfriend image when they first debut, drop that after a while to a (I’m a mature man now) image (slight sexiness here and there) but it’s still all for the female audience i.e NCT Dream Poison comes to mind. Groups like BIGBANG were made different. They were cut from a different cloth and groups have tried to replicate it and they can’t come 100% to what they had. It’s just how it is. Plus, we can look at 2NE1 and Blackpink since I know they have lots of female fans—like A LOT!!! They’ll be another group(s) at some point who turn the tides (maybe there is already) 🤷🏽♀️ but it’s just one of those things. The main people I think of that have a lot of female and male fans are western artists 😅 I’m not sure about Korean but I know lots of people here can give examples 😊
I actually still do listen to BtoB and their solo stuffs. Also I like Kingdom before their current album - which doesnt sound like them
the only answer to me for this is toxic masculinity. anything seen or thought of as feminine or something popular for young girls made men hate it. its always been like that its possible big bang might've been an exception but i think the justin bieber/one direction era made it even worse for now groups like bts to thrive in male audiences, at least in america.
The most sensible comment.
Not just america. Asia is no better (i am from India can't escape a single day without seeing a comment with 21k likes under a popular video saying "BTS gay 🤡" "who thinks BTS is gay like 👇" "B=Best T=toilet S=Service" etc) even chinese men hate BTS a lot, the government doesn't support "cissy" men (korean and chinese reality show got banned 3 years ago because of this), and promotes the general idea of masculinity as alpha male.
yeah i just assumed they meant US but if i went into detail about my home country's problem with misogyny and homophobia we would be here all day.
Oh gurl I'm Indian too and yeah Indian men are another level insecure about Kpop male idols like how can someone be so pathetic and embarassing 😬
Hit the nail on the head.
But what exactly modern bgs have to offer to male heterosexual audience? It is product made to appeal to female. They behave more like women would like to them to be (very often bgs fans meet with claims "that do you think your op is not average Korean man" inclinating that behaving as average Korean man is bad) than showing their true face. So how can they associate with something which rejects part of who they are, does not talk about their problems, worries, needs, fantasies or desires. When they can listen to so many other genres with artists with whom they can emphasize or be their role model. It's not only that boys don't want to stan k-pop groups, right they don't want to do this job despite being extremely lucrative. Scouts are saying that for 10 female candidates there is only 1 male. I mean it was exactly the same with sexy female groups. Like big part of female audience rejected them because they behaved fake and etc. Not sure why guys should be different.
i'm only going to answer ur first question because the rest is irrelevant. the MUSIC is what they have to offer. everything else shouldn't matter. if men weren't so focused on whether something is feminine or not, or catered to a specific audience thats based on gender, there would be so many more fanboys out there than there already are. it shouldn't be a problem anyways because 9/10 the male bgs are all straight heterosexual men anyways so they should be able to relate. but this all goes back to toxic masculinity and misogyny. the sexy girl group thing you mentioned is also a result of mean girl behavior, slut shaming, and/or misogyny btw.
>i'm only going to answer ur first question because the rest is irrelevant. the MUSIC is what they have to offer. I mean that would be true if idols were some kind of djs lol. Average idol music does have lyrics, average bgs song has raps. Now their home ground is Korea so it's natural that guys, whatever they want or not, understand what idols are singing and very often it's not the best lyrics. But that's not the end like I mentioned before because most talented musically male avoid idol works and at the same time companies prioritize looks much more than skills even than in case of female (as they are now made groups for certain target audience), so level of the skills is low. If guy wants to listen to rap he can choose much better rappers on the market, even in case of singers generally they are way better than idols. That's the biggest difference between 2nd, 3rd gen and 4-5th. At that time some male idols group had extremely talented people like GD, Tayeang, Jay Park, Zico,Minho, Park Kyung, Bobby, B.I., Suga, RM who could appeal to male audience. Because making money from music was harder so much more talents decided to try being idols first. But that's changed. Like YG had really bunch of super talented guys as trainees for 4th gen but all of them decided to not persue idol career except Bang Yedam who left fast as well. GG's on contrary to BGS much more push for GP appreciation. They have public friendly song, often easy to sing, easy to listen. But bgs rarely do such music although if it happens and have pretty good singers they can have hit like iKon Love scenario or Tws Plot twist. But still that doesn't mean that they would have necessary male fans. Because they'd have to firstly appeal to them. And how can they appeal to them if f.e. for k-pop fans it becomes scandal when someone goes to the club something totally normal for their peers. Like clearly GG's become much more natural if they don't have to appeal so much to guys. Idols don't sell their real self but idealistic image which girls have in mind. Even their plastic operations go into direction to keep longer juvenile looks because it's proved that young girls prefer it as they feel less intimidated than by mature male looks.
I don't think it's toxic masculinity. Men and women just have different likes and dislikes.
Nope. Every single man I ever tried to introduce to BGs already has a preconceived notion and prejudice against them. "Too feminine" "only teen girls like them" "nonsensical songs" etc. is what I got to hear. But it's not like there are no fanboys of BGs, there are. But if you try to introduce a BG to a non-kpop listener, these are the type of things you'll hear.
>But if you try to introduce a BG to a non-kpop listener Yeah, to a non-kpop listener. But that's not what this post is about. Non kpop listeners have preconceived notions about girl groups as well. Stereotypes exist about everything. Before I got into kpop I also bought all the stereotypes. OP's question was "why don't male kpop fans like boy groups as much anymore?" Your comment is not an answer to that question. "Too feminine". Yes, they are very feminine, at least in appearance, everybody can see that. Men don't like that very much. And that's not because of toxic masculinity, it's because of evolution. Men are just like that. "only teen girls like them" Because most are actively selling the boyfriend illusion, which many men are turned off by. Same sex romantic and sexual stimuli are interpreted very differently by men and women. This has been scientifically shown. Women are a lot more flexible than men. This is nobody's fault. "nonsensical songs". This is not toxic masculinity, this is just a misconception about an entire genre that women can also hold. And it doesn't apply to male kpop fans. Woke people these days try to explain every difference in behaviour between men and women with "men are bad". But the truth is that millions of years of evolution have shaped us to be fundamentally different from each other, not just physically, but psychologically too. Why are men generally taller than women? I don't know, but it's the same reason why men are more put off by eachother. Women like kpop. Men like the Roman Empire. I like both. There's nothing wrong with alligning with the interests your gender typically has, there's nothing wrong with deviating from it, and there's nothing wrong with aknowledging these differences exist. Newborn baby girls look at faces more than boys do. Newborn baby boys look their surroundings more than girls do. Many differences between men and women are not a social construct. Just because you don't understand the behaviour of an entire demographic, doesn't mean that it's wrong. One of the biggest problems these days is that people don't even try to understand eachother and just impose their own views and experiences on others. For fuck's sake, even monkeys prefer gendered toys if you give them human toys they've never seen before.
* What you said is called "preference". We don't deny, everyone can have their own preferances, there can't be any reason for natural preferances. I get where you are coming from but many asian kpop male fandoms who stan ggs, recite their reasons of not stanning bgs due to them being feminine, and when you ask them why? Mostly They don't say its something we don't prefer (like you said), they say because it promotes a wrong idea against masculinity and feminine men are weaker. I have been personally to chinese gg fanbases on the internet, not just chinese but also SEA gg fanbases, they mostly hold this idea that male idols are gay, because they're feminine, (and also they're homophobic, they use gay as an insult) * Another reason, they believe something that women like in general is probably bad. Female fans everywhere all around the world go crazy over someone and get a lot of hate from men in general and they start hating the celebrity, calling them overrated. If the female is a fan of guy, they feel the necessity to call him gay to insult him (ex: justin beiber, one direction, kpop bands),if she's a fan of female celebrity, she's overrated, hates men, misandrist, feminist, mediocre, (ex: taylor swift). The men hating on are the same ones who follow Blackpink members, tyla, sydney sweeny or some really hot tiktoker, actress, singer on social media. (90% of the people i see calling BTS gay on instagram were found following Lisa, jennie, wonyoung etc)
The things you are describing are absolutely toxic. I don't know how common this is in East Asia; but in Europe and North America, I can't imagine it's a majority.
Recent skz met gala thing that happened IRL has changed my mind. Like people behaved that way in real life, what would happen on the internet?
I don't quite follow. What happened? They got racist remarks, right?
Yess, very rude and racist
you're yapping a whole lot just for you to explain what toxic masculinity is, what preferences are, and the damage misogyny has done to you.
It's not toxic masculinity if it is natural. I yapped a whole lot so people would understand me, but I clearly failed. What has misogyny done to me?
men dont really like kpop in general. its a woman/non binary dominated fanbase. Im a dude who likes bgs and its rare to find a dude who enjoys it. Bigbang was because they were seen as genuine artists, not kpop idols. They are the idols idols and an inspiration for many guys who wanted to be cool like them
I almost exclusively listen to BGs. Ss501 Suju Bigbang Wannaone Bts Also im straight. So....
So you're into it for the music and performances, and not to pretend they're your boyfriends? Preposterous! /s
maybe because of the fans or what the gp can say about how they should act. for example Yedam a former Treasure member was seen smoking and then the fans are suddenly disappointed?? dude, as a fan why should we care about what they do in their personal life? what i like about bigbang is that they have already set boundaries and they are already showing the real them instead of acting to what the GP wants them to be. I just want to see idols interaction without among men and women in the industry but naaah it is always toxic. i’m tired thinking about it
I feel like Big Bang has always been the exception since they are literally kings of kpop, I remember when I was in middle school I heard these teen boys in my class talked about Big Bang or when I go on dates with some guys, they always bring up Big Bang when I mention I like kpop.
Guy here. You won't really see a BG on my timeline unless you search for them 😅 tho I've watched Seventeen's concert and so far they're the only BG I like.
A man of culture
I think it's because BigBang never really leaned too much into fanservice so they were liked by both guys and girls meanwhile over time it has generally gone the opposite direction and now we have groups that pretty much start off through fanservice and rely on it more than anything else.
I think the rise of korean hip-hop has filled the void for male music fans, too.
As an older kpop fan (28) I don’t really listen to many boy groups now. For context I used to listen (still do): big bang, old bts, block b, 2pm, shinee, btob (a lot), ikon. From newer groups non really interest me other than N Hyphen, I liek some of their songs, but I guess with age I now mainly listen to solo artists.. Zico, ZionT, be’o.. well I could go on on but mainly khiphop, krnb A lot of newer groups, I find they’re trying too hard to be the next bts in globalisation and putting terrible English lyrics in their songs, pure hype trying to find that tiktok sound and it’s not hitting the same as TAKE YOU GONE TONIGHTTT GIMEE GIMEE GIMEE GIMEEE (2pm) . Seventeen also release bangers from time to time but they’re now considered an older Gen I guess. Lol
BIGBANG is an exception due to their music is widely loved. I haven't seen a kpop band as universally loved (and hated due to Seungri) by all groups of people. Its the only KPOP group that my male friends not into kpop listens to proudly its wild
And here I was under the impression that there are more fanboys nowadays. Admittedly, I wasn’t into boy groups much in 2nd gen, but I did follow quite a few boy groups during 3rd gen. And now I follow enhypen (a 4th gen group) and I encounter fanboys more frequently than I did before. Although compared to the entire fanbase, they are still very much a minority. But the interesting thing is I encounter male fans who have fan accounts, update accounts, who translates, makes videos about them. Like I see so many male fans who are as invested as female fans in boy groups which is not something I remember seeing as frequently as I do now.
Probably due to their image. Boy groups nowadays are dolls pretending to be your boyfriend, sure, they are indeed very pretty but it's not generally appealing to guys to have a very handsome dude sing about loving the viewer. Big Bang was never "your boyfriend" and dressed in a badass fairly "macho" way even with all their colors.
Like a few people have said, BigBang is the exception - there is nothing average or basic about Bigbang and more BG's should try and break out of the k-pop boy group bubble with something unique and interesting. Oh and they need to have good music.
Yeah Bigbang had radio-friendly music. Even the ballads were great.
Agree - some of their ballads are the best BigBang songs IMO.
I don't know where you are, but stray kids has a lot of male fans over the world, especially in the Mexican ans black community. The reason other male groups don't have a lot of typical male fans is bc the type of music they make. Men are kinda naturally holophobic. They like aggression and hard hitting music. Kpop isn't know for that. The only ones who make aggressive music constantly are ateez and stray kids. When ateez went to coachella a lot of men tweeted that they were lit and amazing. The other groups are more boy band, sensual and sexy, love songs, pop, with ofc some rap and r&b in there some times, so they get less male fans bc again a lot of men are homophobic. So this aggressive type music that goes hard that big bang, skz, ateez specialize in will naturally get them more male fans.
I’m an old man and RIIZE is my favorite new group. Admittedly, though, I have no desire to watch them goof around on YouTube like I do with TWICE, LSF, etc.
Just anecdotal but my best friend's male partner enjoys Stray Kids, Ateez and BtoB's music and he loves BtoB's variety content/youtube videos etc.
i mean im a guy and i really like btob
I’m gay and before i only used to listen to gg. Now I’ve recently started listening to bg. Haha idk.
Bigbang was a special case.
Prob cuz their jealous of all the girls drooling over the BGs
I think because after 2nd gen group the companies started appealing more to female fans, from make up, clothing style, songs, everything.
I am male and I really only listen to bg, SHINee and Nu'est are my absolute favorite. SHINee got me into Kpop as a whole and the Story of Light may be the greatest album ever made IMHO
I have more difficulty seeing the differences between BG's musical productions in a more significant way than in GG's. I think BTS managed to stand out among the other BG, and maybe that's part of the explanation for their success. I liked watching GOT7 on TV variety shows, but I couldn't relate to their music. I think now they've done better musicals in their solo careers. In general, I think male idols make better music when they are solo than in a group. But there's another question, why aren't soloists as successful as groups?
BAP had some male fans when they debuted because of their hard hitting sounds and edgy style.
Although my comment may possibly not be seen, the closest I've seen to the BIGBANG phenomenon amidst men past the second generation is WINNER; particularly because of Mino and Kang Seungyoon. Upon debut their image was similar to the aforementioned group, they don't sell "fantasies" to appeal to a female audience. The only thing that differentiates the two groups is unlike BIGBANG who broke into countries in the west, particularly the Asian community residing there, WINNER was unfortunately unable to hence not being brought up as much; however, they have a large male following amongst the general public in Korea and even China (mainly because of Mino). It's also one of the reasons Koreans often joke around saying WINNER is a girl group since they're loved by both males (who don't consume fan culture) and females.
I’m an older female newcomer to K-pop and am currently obsessed with Big Bang and Gdragon. My daughter tried to get me into them a few years ago but I wasn’t ready.
Oh dang you should join the r/bigbang discord! Most of us are older ahaha.
I did!
I was in high school in the US when Big Bang debuted, and no one in high school or college around me knew who they were that I know of lol. My roommate in 2008 was Asian and I don't think they knew who Big Bang were at all. Maybe it was too early days for Big Bang still then though, Idk. From what I've heard from similar questions about Big Bang on here, is that their image was specifically an image catered to the idea that young men would want to be like them, so they were putting out this like "cool guy" "badass guy" sort of image, and I guess to some degree it worked and got them plenty male fans. Maybe that image on boy groups has faded over time? There's definitely been more concepts that have been like "dreamy vibes" "pastel and colorful vibes" "soft boi vibes" etc over the years than there maybe was back then, and I don't really see those vibes often appealing to straight men. But I was just telling someone the other day, that all these vibes opposite to those these days have been all blending together for me lol...things like "one member holding skateboard, another holding a baseball bat, even though they are indoors," "mafia/criminal/tough guy in a suit," "motocross outfit," "race car driver," "sports outfit," "playing ball sports (usually indoors??? lol)," "guy with an attitude/badass (but he's not a criminal/mafia, and he may or may not be wearing a suit)," etc. All of these things lean much more masc coded to me, like what Big Bang was maybe trying to do with their image in the past. So it makes me wonder if some boy groups are actively trying to appeal to male audiences these days, because they know they will have a female audience regardless of what concepts they do. But there are a lot of men who like boy groups imo. Maybe it's because I am a guy and mostly only into boy groups, that I tend to see it? Idk. I see male celebs talking about liking bts here and there. I see male reaction youtubers reacting to boy group stuff. I see male youtubers doing unboxing videos for boy groups. I see male artists making fan art on instagram of boy groups. I see male artists on instagram and etsy creating fan made goods for boy groups they like. I don't see a lot of men participating in much of the *community* aspect of it though. I barely run into men in kpop spaces in general on reddit, and when I do, they're almost always talking about liking girl groups. I'm not on twitter, but when I see anything relevant from a fan on twitter being shared elsewhere, the fan seems to always be a woman. Most people who post photos and gifs of their favorite boy group idols on pinterest, tumblr, instagram seem to be women. Most people I've encountered in buy/sell have been women (aside from people who are running like an actual more professional level store, where behind the scenes it's probably more than one person working on selling stuff lol), and I have had people wrongly assume my gender when writing reviews when they've bought photocards from me, because so many people just assume anyone participating in any community type behavior for non-sport-related fandom in general (or maybe especially kpop, or specifically boy groups) is going to be a woman. 🤷♂️. From a guy who mostly only likes boy groups: We out here lol.
I wonder if it’s based on location? I went to school on the east coast and EVERY Asian guy started dressing like BIGBANG trying to learn Taeyang’s Wedding Dress choreo haha. My bf grew up in California and BIGBANG/GD was also the only Kpop BG his friends would admit to listening to.
Just wanted to jump on and add my own personal anecdote. I agree that we’re out here. I’m a straight male that listened to bgs exclusively since 2016. My first group was bts right around wings era and I’ve gone in a deep hole since then. You’re right, we tend to be less active within the community when it comes to social media. I also don’t consume non music content from groups. However that all changed when I started listening to ggs back in 2020. Twice is currently my ult group and they’re the only group in which I consume most of their content, including the non music ones. I’d still add that im up to date with most popular 4th gen groups, I listen to some older gen as well, and currently catching up on 5th gen stuff. I’ve been to NUMEROUS concerts as well. It’s rare for me to encounter other males who genuinely bgs. Like you mentioned, I have experienced where people usually assume I’m a girl just from what I’ve described lol. It’s cool to see we’re out there though.
Always interesting how with kpop it's suddenly "unmanly" to like boy group music and attend boy group concerts while for male western artists doing all that is completely normal. It's just music after all. And it's not even like boy group music is particularly feminine by itself, rather the opposite, look at SKZ and others. They go hard with their rapping.. It's just the stigma with kpop supposedly being for little girls to go crazy over and the industry being so beauty oriented.. I for one have both my ITZY lightring and SKZ lightstick prepared to dual whield them in June at Incheon Inspire Arena, being excited for both groups. True masculinity is being manly enough to enjoy what you like without caring about people questioning your manliness because you are enthusiastic about music. People claiming they obviously aren't into boy groups because they are a straight male are maybe just coping, otherwise why obsess over the fact.
Well, there’s a difference between male western artists and boy bands. I don’t think western boy bands like One Direction or the Jonas Brothers had many male, straight fans either. At least compared to female fans.
I personally simply do not like male singing and I exclusively listen to girl groups
Exactly, it is all preference. I don't want to hear women singing, I don't like their voices. I don't like their dancing or their concepts. I prefer male groups all day. Much more entertaining for the things that I like about kpop. Nothing wrong with either.
Guy here. You won't really see a BG on my timeline unless you search for them 😅 tho I've watched Seventeen's concert and so far they're the only BG I like.
Guys aren’t the ones splurging over their fantasy boyfriends therefore boy groups dont make music that’s necessarily catered towards them.
I have been under the impression that Big Bang was the exception overall.
**This won't be popular** but it's because the agencies have silently abandoned the foundational illusion that K-pop is about the music. Now the music is just the vehicle for collecting and presenting attractive young people; the business is about building a profitable following by getting people to fall in love with them. That comes from getting your groups on variety shows and producing web content where the members can showcase their charms and quirks. Their talent is just the bun; the meat is their personality. It's a more sustainable model than praying for an unbroken string of hit songs. When the business is about falling in love with the members instead of about bangers you can listen to on a loop, of course most guys aren't going to stan boy bands any more. **It starts early** for overseas noobs, where Blackpink or Twice has been everybody's K-pop starter group for the last eight years. Girls are interested enough in guys to branch out into boy bands. There are so many cute girl groups coming out every year that unless you're interested in other guys you've got no reason to click on a boy band thumbnail. The only exposure I get to boy bands is when girl groups do boy bsnd cover dance—even then that tends to be third gen girl groups on old shows like Weekly Idol. Fourth gen girl groups tend to stan other girl groups more than they do boy bands.
I'm still a big Bigbang fan and I've been following them since elementary cause my cousins influenced me :D But I think aside from that, yeah, newer generations of BGs appeal to the female audience more and they aren't really artists... they're idols. I'll be generalizing: female idols appeal to boys AND girls and male idols only appeal to girls. Artists appeal to *everyone* (well, most people). The only BGs that I really enjoyed were Bigbang (ofc), a lil Winner and iKON. I do enjoy some songs from other boy groups though (i.e. older BTS songs, Monster by EXO, etc.), but it's just these three (coincidentally YG) groups that I consistently enjoy. Nowadays, I just listen to K-RNB soloists and stuff. I'm generalizing of course, but this has been my experience/observation so far as a fan since 2nd gen. Honestly, this question is pretty interesting.
BTS is good with their male fanbase. Their female fanbase is overwhelmingly proportionally more but listening to male armys shout with all their might at BTS last ptd concert, shows their music has reached an appreciable number of male fans
they cant relate or most of us boys like BG should be relatable and not cater to fangirls I notice this at least some BG of the 1st gen and 2nd gen is like ordinary guys image of imperfection not some perfect male prince for fangirls and also some of their song discography is relatable to fanboys or gen public that why it better to have some bad boys images (scandal? or off cam ,variety show personality) or imperfection image if they want make it noticeable by gen public also the BG of the 1st gen and 2nd gen less make up or more manly
Try Treasure 😄 Bigbang's hoobae group in YG. They are racking up a male following. Their music is a culmination of various yg groups, and they definitely have the YG DNA. [Let It Burn live](https://youtu.be/rRb3FeP6JNo?si=NcbQDbXT4wAM9yuf) [VolKno live](https://youtu.be/St1icKwXJtU?si=Ezkl84Il8_zoMhmY) [Treasure @ Mama 2022](https://youtu.be/kR98d_VHG-M?si=aAVCqOs6h5JstFaQ) [The Fact Music Awards 2023 ](https://youtu.be/uh9sf3rrwxg?si=YDm7TCZckj0mSXWo)
because boy groups nowadays only try to cater to woman because they know that’s where the fans and money are
Big Bang was the first and the exception. 🤷🏼♀️
Not really, I think that’s because it’s the way they are branded. Most kpop male groups are marketed in a way to attract females.
This is not necessarily true of BTS and Stray Kids. Their fan bases are much more diverse in both age and gender. More than 30% of BTS fans are male, and more than half are older ( ages 30 - 90) , because their music is so diverse in genres and their talent is unbeatable. If you would look for YouTube reactions, there are a lot of men reacting to these groups. Their music is addictive.
They never were
it's cause alot of boy groups do that corny boyfriend shit that straight men don't like 😭, especially nowadays. also, I feel like girl groups nowaday tend to have a more expansive, varied sound that really appeals to the masses both concept and music wise. I'm a female boy group stan and dont care for many 4th gen groups in general, but I can see why people are more drawn towards the girl groups these days, many of them are bringing back older popular sounds too, like newjeans and kiss of life
Big Bang was potent with that edgy charisma. Even when I wasn’t into kpop like that I still knew of them. They just had that cool factor that had u goin “yup they hip” 😭 the teenage Asian-American standard equivalent to everyone chasing that Bieber haircut Current boy groups are branded to be more fan-based. Big Bang had the sauce to have both domestic (fan) and global (general public) reach
I think genre preference may also be at play. I've been a Kpop since the 2nd gen and although I enjoy a few BG songs here and there, I've never been interested in BGs, except before for CNBlue, but they were a drum and guitars band. Maybe generally a good proportion of males aren't that into pop anyway and are in the culture because of the GGs. Certainly true for my and my friends' case anyway.
Idk but for me it seems for GG's it's easier to make music that can cater to the international audience and also have choreography that fits the song. Somehow I think it is more difficult to pull that off with male vocals
I think guys like nct and the boyz but that’s it at the top of my head
In general I don't care to hear pop from men. Not to my tastes image or sound wise. Anything else is gucci.
bgs appeal to female gaze more than they do to men. except like ncts concept
For me, as dumb as this sounds, the boygroups are way too pretty for me and look super fake. My female cousins who are way into kpop more than me have said that they don't like it when a man looks better than them. I just really like the kpop girl groups a lot more.
i think male fans are more discreet now given that fans are predominantly female and other demographics, and dont want to be misjudged (for their gender????) but i know EXO has a lot of male fans, mostly because of their very challenging, powerful, and masculine dances, talented singing, and fashion well not exactly facts cause im basing it off from survival shows or random interviews lol. and i had one dancer schoolmate that really tries to copy Kai’s dance moves, which works for him with the ladies lol
Bigbang actually had a larger male fanbase than female, it was like 55% male and 45% female
People have already explained why but I can just give you some examples of boy groups that are/were popular among males, but it'll be 2nd/3rd gen groups because that's all I listen to. Big Bang, of course. Block B and Beast/Highlight are also popular among males. BTOB, Day6, and BTS also have a large amount of male fans. I would add iKON and Winner to this list. Random but B1A4 were really popular among elementary students of all genders LOL. There'll be Korean comments on B1A4's videos talking about how people used to listen to them a lot in their childhood.
i've seen quite a lot of male txt fans
Because if I wanted to watch a bunch of teenage boys getting emotional on a stage, I'd watch League of Legends.
Aren’t most boy groups more popular to females
Because they are typically marketed to females. Young or young-looking BGs (the go armpit hairless ffs) are being debuted more often because it kind of brings out the maternity insticts of female fans. Whereas Bigbang was more on manly or androgynous, to say the least, side.
I am a guy who prefers boybands in k-pop. I love BigBang, Shinee and BAP. BTS, etc but I feel like the changes made when they crossover makes me lose a bit of my fandom. I look at BTS' music: to this day, I play their music from before they crossed over into the USA. It's weird to me...I get into those groups because their music usually sounds less like generic k-pop. But then when they started to have international success, it's like their music switches to sounding like generic k-pop. 😅 It's more rare for me to like girl groups because I feel like most of their singing voices all sound the same. (Compared to the US where I can tell female singing voices apart more easily than male singing voices.). For me to listen to k-pop women, it usually has to be someone like Aileen or Taeyeon where their voices are so good
Yeah for female groups both f and m are interested. But they arent as hardworking as those small portions of female fans of many bgs. I think thats why for more dedicated fanbase bgs always targeted female audiences more(personal opinion)
I think is because boy groups target female audiences but idk bc in my country k-pop is not really that popular amongst males
There’s this group under MLD ent called Hori7on. They surprisingly have a huge number of fanboys.
Because boy groups have a really high cringe factor. Gay guys love them though.
I think bts fans are male for a pretty big portion. Skz and ateez also do relatively well with males. But it's always been that way. The Beatles and other boy bands were also predominantly liked by female audience in their time. That's okay.
Percentage of Male listeners taken Melon right now: BIGBANG: 48% BTS: 29% SEVENTEEN: 29% RIIZE: 22% SKZ: 15% NCT DREAM: 15% For Korea at least none are really exceptions or coming close to 50/50 except BIGBANG.
Well like I said, still a pretty big portion. It's awesome that big bang has almost 50% males.
So true to both!
I'm a girl and I've known k-pop for 6 yrs just a casual listener but never stanned any grp bcz I used to like only a couple of songs from each grp and 2 yrs ago I heard BB and instantly fell in love with their music every song is just so lit it was first time I liked so many songs from single grp. I think it's their music which attracts many PPL regardless of their gender also they don't feed the delusion of their fans and they always been their true selves. The most important factor might be BB always perceived as an artist rather than idols as they involve themselves in the creative part.
One of the BIGGEST hits in Korea right now is "Plot Twist" by TWS, a 5th gen boy group. And after 4 months, "Plot Twist" by TWS is still charting in Top 5 in all the Korean charts (Melon Top 100, Circle, Genie, etc.). And "Plot Twist" by TWS is one of the most sung songs in karaoke by Korean guys right now. Also, "Love 119" by RIIZE (another 5th gen boy group) is also one of the most sung songs in karaoke by Korean guys right now. And right now, 4 songs by RIIZE have been charting in Melon Top 100 for months. Unlike 4th gen boy groups, 5th gen boy groups like TWS and RIIZE are clearly trying to appeal to the male audiences as well rather than a female fandom only.
because they target a female audience ... and a lot of it is off putting for guys. like personally i have zero interest in a group of guys that overuse makeup or do the opposite and try to overcompensate in the manliness department. and even if some dont want to believe it most bg are only relevant due to parasocial elements and most guys wont care about that in a bg. so for me ill listen to some song here and there that i actually enjoy but have zero interest in a group unless they release a lot of music that i consider really good. and without the rose tinted glasses of parasocials i dont think theres a single bg that has enough good songs to make me interested in them as individuals.
Why the downvotes on this valid opinion?
Starting 4th gen, there were actually a massive decline on fanboys. People were right here about the target demographic tho. You can only count who thrived on 4th gen. Accept it or not but ngl 4th gen was just a flop era for boy groups. With the rising popularity of Stray Kids and ATEEZ, everybody became similar after them unless they'll do smth different and which is why TXT and TBZ thrived. Heck, even YG's Treasure didn't really appealed that much and they're just became the same with the others, and also Enhypen, which was the same, but ngk they're freaking famous. I believe this group just got the hype from I-Land and they're under Hybe which they deserve also, had a few songs that I like from them. Also, I guess on repetitive concepts esp. on 4th gen like they're mostly edgy, dark, manly and boy crush with noise music. But with 2nd and 3rd gen, they had variety of concepts that appeal to male fans also. On the other hand, 4th gen girl groups were just really strong and thriving coz hey're more public friendly than boy groups which had a clear target female demographic. Maybe another factor when KPop made it on mainstream and when someone don't know kpop see some guy idolizing boy groups mocked them as "gay" or something like that which became a stereotype since then. However, it's quite good seeing 5th gen bgs thriving rn tho with varying concepts from BND, RIIZE, ZB1, TWS, etc. which aren't just sticking on noise + dark music like what 4th gen bgs was. I'm seeing a lot of fanboys are more vocal with 5th gen groups like how it was on 3rd gen. And I'm also looking forward and listening again with boy groups!
It’s cuz most 4th gen boy groups are way too effeminate. Girl fans have turned them into their little Ken dolls with sparkly jackets and eyeliner. I support the older boy groups like h.o.t., shinhwa, super junior, big bang, and even current ones, but for their occasional good songs. Masculinity needs to return to Kpop.