Before I was a socialist, I was a fan. Growing up I never really cared much about anything apart from at least having a decent day, not getting scolded at school and pretty much my parents. I was born in Davao City to a middle-class family of a public school teacher and a company man, all I ever wanted was to breeze thru my childhood days without any thought of pain or misery. I remember once watching in 2014 a GMA telenovela, 'More than Words', and getting fired up that the antagonists were assaulting Janine Gutierrez and Elmo Magalona. I just wanted a boring story where there would be no problems, where my life can exist without being persecuted and where my passion is respected.
Around that time as well I was introduced to the concept of Korean popular music, more known as K-pop, at the time Super Junior, 2NE1 and BIGBANG were the major acts you had to know and their songs got played in Davao local contemporary hit radio (CHR). Debutantes like BTS and EXO started knocking on my door around the same time, and I got wind of it thru one of my caretakers, however, that didn't last long as I quickly grew up and my parents thought there was no need for it anymore. So was my phase for K-pop, at the young age of 9 I already had some knowledge about these groups. My mom prohibited me from listening to this stuff until I got back around it in 2017. We meet BTS and EXO again. I decided to take the ARMY route.
I quickly had a friend group in Grade 7 because of my allegiance to K-pop instead of Anime, which for starters I had abandoned as I was basically just relying on terrestrial TV to watch Fairytale, Detective Conan, One Punch Man, My Hero Academia, etc., anyway this was the jumping pad. 2017 was a reintroduction to what I think I was destined for, music, specifically just listening. I love when that beat drops, however corny that may sound. Music was my escape for the harsh battles I was experiencing as I got thrown into campus journalism, science research, and even masculinity. Nothing short of an identity crisis right? One thing was certain, my faith in the auditory landscape. I was so alienated by Western pop music at this point, I felt like the songs coming out of the radio were trendy messes or just minimalist nonsense that felt easy and had to be easy to get the least common denominator audience. 21 Guns is not better than Thinking Out Loud, for crying out loud.
This fandom path was also apparent with my politics, I was such a fan of Rodrigo Duterte, back in 2009 when my aunties from Aklan visited in Davao my mother would turn on the TV and listen to what Mayor had to say at his weekly Sunday morning V-LIVE called 'Gikan sa Masa, Para sa Masa' it aired on ABS-CBN Channel 4. My aunties would be astonished at how brave the Mayor was, little did I even know what mess that would be a decade later. I only got into politics because of my parents' parasocialism to Duterte. I mean how can they dissociate from that when we are settlers living on stolen land? My mom is not indigenous to Davao and so was my dad, what made them come here is the 'promise' of a better future because Mindanao was 'virgin' land. Look at what happened to that in 2026...
I am proud to be born and raised on fandom. I will defend fandom forever, I continue to believe in the potential of the fandom. This conglomeration built upon from the structural disassembly of ostracized minoritized groups (i.e. women, queers, disabled, and indigenous peoples) forever will be a revolutionary thing. The fact that meta-modernity brought about this construct thru the paradox of neoliberalism, in such a peripheral state as the Philippines, is a testament to the reformulation of ontology as we decipher it, projecting from particles, and emanating from the weight it rests upon this perceptive experience of living. It such pains me that in 2026, we have yet to acknowledge the political nature of it at least within the mainstream left. With that and by establishing it as that and by understanding that we are in the meta-modern paradigm, we must grapple and confront how the far-right has been modelling our death within the trappings of our misreadings.
My first Twitter account was made in 2018, it was made in hopes of finding spaces where K-pop discourse is alive and I learn something. I never saw Twitter as a battleground of which I had to participate and get agency until 2019, where I berated an EXO-L for things they said about BTS and their place in the music industry. I was definite in my faith on the bottom-up nature of success BTS had. I mean Big Hit was the David, the Big 5 (SM, YG, JYP, LOEN and CJ E&M) were hegemons. My reality of Duterte and the constant repetition of his remarks on television, echoed by broadcasters on the radio every morning of my 14 year life back then, just mirrored and reinforced the frame I had on K-pop, it clicked in late 2018 that I had to defend BTS to defend the artistic integrity of the industry and abolish the oligopoly in South Korea.
When Martial Law was declared in Mindanao back in 2017, I was quite confused because it didn't seem necessary even if an incursion was happening in Marawi, Freedom Park bombing happened, and NCCC set ablaze. It took quite a few steps for me to realize and verbalize this internal rebellion I had when school had to be cut short due to the Martial Law being in effect meaning there were curfews in Davao and class ended at 2pm sharply. 45 minute classes, DepEd was worse back in Briones' time and we all forgot about that because of Sara Duterte.
“June 10, 2019. I was coming home from a day full of uncertainties in my life. I was scared of doing research and my thesis because of our professor who was so critical and thorough in every step of the way. I was casting doubt upon myself and my abilities. Can I still go through this course that I am about to take? Can I still take it? Can I still graduate? Those words were really scaring, despair was just in my mind. Walking towards the pedestrian and going to the bus stop, I decided to pluck my cheap earphones, listen to some new music from a group I wasn’t sure about with their last comeback, and listened WAVE, first out of all. It was unforgettable, how I met my eventual love for ATEEZ and this song. It was full of doubt and scepticism but I just rushed towards the wave of faith and it worked.” — excerpt from K-Pop Songs of The Summer: ATEEZ – WAVE (deforestedmusic, 2021)
I also had to grapple that SM City Davao was the new 'it' mall which was also a symbolic change for me since I had personal attachments to the 'bazaar' feel of the mall. That of course didn't stop crime from still occuring in Davao but the perception and confidence of being in a middle class family gave me this impression/assurance, that it was safe. I even noticed a lot of social mobility fast since 2018-19 marked a time where people rapidly got an iPhone and a new car, things that I thought were so lucrative you had to have a mansion to afford. Turns out it was just Ponzi schemes — popping up.
Aside from that my obsession with stan culture was taking me everywhere, partly as my medication to crisis. I was pretty much fond of exploring new groups while continuing to display utmost importance to BTS as ever, I found ATEEZ, Stray Kids and OnlyOneOf at a time where my identity crisis took the biggest of my time. My junior high school (elementary—even worse) experience being absolute toxic as waterboarding could ever get, I still got the privilege of being a son of a teacher there. I keep on gaslighting myself the system was fair, but everything materialized out of it just wasn't. Davao teachers are some of the most misanthropic individuals out there, I adjusted so hard to college because I couldn't believe instructors can be humans instead of tyrants.
Fandom saved me. Fandom saved a lot of us. Unfortunately, even that can ostracize us. I got lambasted and red-tagged in late 2020 for speaking up on human rights causes, school administration interventions and supporting community pantries. Fandom is so potent in its incubation of narratives that when a user suddenly gains all clout from the space, they become hegemons that reinforce and perpetuate harmful and sectarian viewpoints. In 2019, I still defended Duterte but my opposition to a certain policy and this sudden backlash ultimately drove them to exile me. Some even confronted me as the News Editor to retract an article, which I did not do and of course they tried to pin it onto me. However, fandom still lingered as I entered the pandemic unsure if I was going to graduate Grade 10 at all with music and now boys' love.
My acceptance of being an aromantic bisexual was because of 2gether the Series, Sarawat and Tine really bought down my guard and I surrendered to 'sin'. Catholic guilt reigned heavily for me, but I learned to finally break the cycle. I soon just went ahead and watched SOTUS, I Told Sunset About You, and Light On Me, thanks to that one gay friend I still had. Soon enough I got into that fandom, the BL television fandom. The shutdown of ABS-CBN, Black Lives Matter, COVID-19 pandemic response and raging authoritarianism, added by the Twitter news (which algorithmically was heavily liberal at the time), finally pushed me to denounce Rodrigo Duterte. Vaush, Hasanabi, PhilosophyTube, hbomberguy, Big Joel, Shaun, a lot of Western philosophy and video essays saved me. Fandom again at work.
Now, how come I say that “the far-right has been modelling our death within the trappings of our misreadings.” Simple. The bots, the paid actors, the decentralized system, the 'horizontal' vibe, the accessibility paid off. The psyop had worked, Epstein in hell laughed as the population constant getting into identity politics, 'feminism', and 'woke'. Distraction and permission. The HYBE that had been formed was simply the logical conclusion of late-stage capitalism, competition has to replace forms, faces, structure, and logic. The oligopoly still exists but so does HYBE. Capital won over the proletariat and we, the fandom, have been used.
Korean pop artists under contractualization in wage-labor face immense structural fealty to serve their fans and the corporation, in the sense that the fans have invested unpaid visibility and marketing, and in addition to paid (while some could be other avenues of fanwork) purchase of their music plus the 'investment' system that the Korean industry fosters to 'produce' talent. In that sense a certain division has risen particularly in political relations. A subset of fans demand visibility to marginalized peoples often conflicting with neoliberal status-quo institutions like corporate social responsibility gimmicks from coporations and the like (i.e. Boycott, Divestment and Sanction calls for the artist), while the other set keeping the neoliberal status-quo to function in order to conserve the accessibility of the artist to the lowest common denominator audience (i.e. forgiving and supporting work for Zionists). This is summing the tyranny to the artist from corporations, which remember still do operate under this service. For some groups that have amassed cultural significance like BTS, they do have agency in terms of saying things on parasocial platforms (i.e. Weverse, YouTube, TikTok) especially under more liberal-minded corporations like HYBE.
This economic agency amassed by performing wage-labor and proper compensation of the industry creates a powerful space wherein revolutionary action can spark in some creative ways. Example of which is an artist calling out fans for stalking or for engaging in untenable behavior. Revolutionary in the context of the proletariat fighting back and asserting space within a highly arboreal containment. Although only BTS and BLACKPINK have received this kind of treatment due to the ubiquitous, larger than life legacy they have inculcated within the system itself, which if given without any compensation to the act, will abolish the credibility of the industry.
Political acts have copied this parasocialism today, however, Duterte really beat them by two decades as ABS-CBN Davao allowed a blocktime lease to occur with the City Information Office. It is indeed in this revisionist, highly traitorous but logical gamble that operators can perpetuate territories of surveillance, harm, and re-education. Narratives coordinated and coming out of neatly contained fandom spaces which are posted by a sizeable chunk of users are the best vessels for this obfuscation that the enemy is within. Divide and conquer.
We must recognize that fandom is not static, it is dynamic. It can be captured and taken. Misread and be repurposed. It cannot be conquered but it can be a part of something beyond its construct. The far-right can capture it, but can never survive the autophagy. We must now move within our own fandoms, transcend that construct, create the stolons, bloom from it and assemble. Opening up to neighbors and being authentic is necessary to fight fascism, to fight statism, to fight obfuscation devices. Use its rhizomatic nature to be the smokescreen deluding the elite. The rich 1% can try to take away humanity, but we the 99% will struggle to conserve it.
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