Welcome to maybe if you stanned
A weekly newsletter about K-pop and the fan culture surrounding it.
Welcome to maybe if you stanned, a weekly dive into K-pop and its fans. I’m Palmer Haasch, an entertainment and culture writer with a penchant for girl group bangers and the ever-changing K-pop industry. Can’t figure out why ONCEs are trending #JIHYO this week? Trying to keep up with recent debuts? I’ve got you covered.
A bit about me as a fan: like many nowadays, BTS was my true introduction into K-pop fandom. However, my intro happened back in early 2017, during the last vestiges of the Wings era and just a few short months before the group’s first appearance at the 2017 BBMAs (which makes me feel like an old ARMY, even though that’s not really true). Before then, the only K-pop content I had ever consumed was Super Junior’s “Mr. Simple” MV and a smattering of girl group songs during my freshman year of college. It was only after getting in BTS that I truly fell into K-pop as an art form and phenomenon.
Since then, however, I’ve learned (and listened to) a lot. From participating in fan campaigns to writing my whole undergraduate thesis on K-pop fanfiction and fan culture, I’ve experienced K-pop as both a fan and as an observer. As a writer, I primarily cover television, anime, and internet culture. I leap at the chance to cover fandom culture.
None of this really makes me a K-pop authority, and I’m not trying to be. I’m starting this newsletter with the goal of delivering a weekly round up of what’s most interesting in the K-pop space. This could mean recent debuts, things happening on stan Twitter, or trends that I think are worth paying attention to. While I’ll highlight the important stuff, I don’t intend for this to be a place where I strictly aggregate news. I’d rather write about why everyone on TikTok is irrevocably obsessed with TWICE’s “Fancy.”
Past that, I want to hear from you — what (and who) are you interested in? What boggles your mind or gets you excited about K-pop music? What piece of fan culture do you want to learn more about? Who’s on your list to check out but you haven’t really gotten the chance to devote time to? Feel free to DM me on Twitter @haasch_palmer or comment here.
In the meantime, tell your friends!