On an online forum, netizens reacted to the latest example of the so-called ‘BTS phenomenon,’ pointing to the massive increase in followers across official platforms such as Weverse and Spotify. According to one user, BTS gained 900,000 new Weverse subscribers, along with 1,000,000 new listeners on Spotify within just four days following the announcement of their upcoming world tour.
On Spotify in particular, their upcoming 5th full length comeback album ‘ARIRANG’ has already been pre-saved by millions of listeners on Spotify, becoming the fastest release to reach #1 on Spotify’s Countdown chart after recording 1.49 million pre-saves in just two days.
The increase indicated a steady rise in listeners, gaining 236,394 new pre-saves on January 14, followed by 258,526 on January 15, then an additional 398,185 and 185,496 saves over the next two consecutive days.
Meanwhile, this surge in hype and the visible expansion of the fandom is also causing concern among some netizens, many of whom are playfully and seriously worrying about whether they will be able to secure a seat at the upcoming concerts.
Many K-netizens have described the upcoming ticketing situation as a “pih-cketing” scenario, a wordplay using the Korean word for ‘blood’ pronounced as “pih,” suggesting that the race to secure tickets for BTS’s tour will be a “bloody battle.”
Reactions include:
“My seat ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ late fan here, I’m seriously praying that at least one seat shows up.”
“Ah, what am I going to do about ticketing ㅠㅠ”
“900,000??? ㄷㄷㄷ”
“Please, my seat ㅠㅠ”
“ㅠㅠㅠㅠ no, my seat ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ”
“Ticketing is scary.”
“I do want BTS to become even more successful, but please leave a seat for me.”
“Knock knock… my seat, are you there…? I’m scared…”
“I’m giving up ㅠㅠ”
“I want to go to a BTS concert at least once ㅠㅠ”
“Please just give me one ticket ㅠㅜ”
“So that’s why Weverse is crashing..”
“For now, I rejoined the membership too.”
“My seat, please ㅠㅠ I endured all those hard times and waited for them to return as a full group.”
“I haven’t even done it yet;; is there even a concert seat for me?”
“Is the ticketing server going to be okay ㅠㅠㅠ my seat ㅠㅠ I’m seriously bad at this, I want to cry.”
“Please let everyone just enjoy it in their own countries ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ ticketing is terrifying.”
“My confidence in succeeding at ticketing just dropped sharply ㅠㅠ just one seat for me, please.”
“900,000?? I thought I might be able to go… my seat.”
“I really need to go to this concert.”
“This is seriously like a bomb ㄷㄷ”
“I’ve never failed ticketing before, but this one won’t be easy.”
“900,000… I can’t even wrap my head around it lolㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ”
“This is insane.”
Are you also planning to go to a BTS concert?
