Is Kpop nerd culture in Europe and America? Are you a nerd?

[Solfa]

I live in Michigan, yes, it’s nerd culture here. But nerd is not necessarily a bad term, or at least not as bad as it used to be. Star Wars and Game of Thrones are also nerd culture, but they are/were also mainstream juggernauts. 

However, Kpop is not mainstream, it just doesn’t have mainstream appeal the way Anime doesn’t. Majority of American ignore a movie or a TV series because it’s animated regardless how good it can be simply because they don’t like animation, and that’s why Anime cannot become mainstream. Likewise, majority of Americans really dislike groups in music, remember how much One Direction was mocked for existing? Yeah, it happens every boy band cycle, no matter how popular, likable or successful they are, majority shuns them for being groups, especially boy groups. Now add that to the music being foreign, the members being Asian (ahem) and you have a perfect recipe to never find mainstream success. 

Edited July 19, 2020 by Solfa

[Solfa]

16 minutes ago, yoodle said:

I don’t think the group thing is a turn off for people— you have girl groups like little mix, fifth harmony, in the past destiny’s child, spice girls. Don’t know a whole lot of boy groups unfortunately. For 1D, people “hated” on them the same way they hate on any famous guys with a large female following (see Justin Bieber), it wasn’t because they were a group. 
 

I agree that the turn off has a lot to do with the culture shock of Korea— how blatantly engineered groups are to be not only talented but attractive, different concepts (e.g aegyo) that are foreign, and the language barrier (I have talked to SO many people who say they don’t like to listen to kpop because they can’t understand the lyrics). Americans don’t like when music is so clearly being sold to them as a commodity. Not to say the same thing isn’t done here, but it’s more “taboo” and kept on the down-low, and a lot of emphasis is placed on “homegrown” groups that formed themselves.

From your examples, I’m gonna say Spice Girls was the last mainstream girl group, they were literally everywhere at their peak. Little Mix or Fifth Harmony were popular with pop fans, but the general public didn’t know them at all. It’s very difficult to become mainstream, it’s not simply being extraordinarily popular. 

Agree with the rest of what you said, but I’ll add something else because you reminded me something a video essay from Lindsay Ellis: the general populations hates what’s popular with teenage girls. Pick anything that teen girls like. It’s not about the quality of the work, it’s because teen girls like it.

Example: Ok, Twilight sucked. You know what else sucked equally as much but did not receive nearly as much condemnation, scathing blog posts, or mocking memes because it wasn’t for teenage girls? Ready, Player One. Instead, it was just forgotten, people read it, saw the movie, moved on. A normal reaction to something shitty. Incredible difference, isn’t it?