Now that summer pop culture convention season is over, it’s time to reflect as we’re slowly heading to another year.

This year, I really got into K-Pop via 4th-generation girl groups like NewJeans and LE SERRAFIM. KCON LA 2023 happened and while I didn’t go, I read how packed and lively the experience minus the crowding, weather, and a number of attendees getting COVID. The article review of KCON LA that I read mentions something I was thinking about – the fragmentation of fandom.

While K-Pop’s fanbase is very diverse and inclusive, there are problems facing an industry that seems to be pushing out hit performing acts with little to no problems. One of which is fandom being fragmented (according to a business insider). Algorithms have catered K-Pop lovers to super-specific tastes. It’s much harder for new acts to break through compared to years past.

Recently, at San Diego Comic-Con 2023, there was a manga publishers’ roundtable panel that discussed a variety of industry topics – one being what will happen with manga in the next few years. Ed Chavez, of DENPA Books, said that there might be consolidation in the manga industry and competition from publishers for titles will really pick up. It’s possible that things will become fractured and swallowed up.

Doesn’t this sound similar to what’s happening with K-Pop today?

Now one might be wondering – “Isn’t this great? There’s something for everyone no matter what!” There is a problem in that because everyone’s interested in their own thing, they won’t necessarily check out other things that are under the same umbrella (i.e. Star Trek fans not checking out Doctor Who despite both falling under science fiction). This is due to a variety of factors from being shunned by other fan groups to a general lack of interest in anything but their fandom.

I feel that most fan convention organizers want everyone to stand together united under the same umbrella of fandom because at the end of the day, we’re all fans of stuff that has made our lives joyful.

It is hard to reach people when everything is fragmented as hell. I look at the amount of K-Pop groups and manga being put into the eyeballs of U.S. fans and there’s a lot to take in. It makes me wonder how are the record labels and manga publishers able to get attention and make ends meet.

In my experience, I found a K-Pop group I truly liked through a very random YouTube video about 2023 hits in the 1st half of the year. For certain manga, I manage to find out about them through the chaos of Twitter most of the time. It’s really tough to find stuff if you don’t know where to look or have a centralized location for everything related to one topic.

There are database websites that try their best out there, but I don’t know. In some ways, they’re also fragmented as well. A online manga database may unite everyone in the manga sphere and still be ignored by the greater comics scene in general. If a fan of Western comics wants to check out manga for the 1st time, it can get rough to find what you’re looking for because the internet still feels like the Wild West at times due to how specific things have become.

One thing I worry about the most is when diversity, which is sometimes affected by fragmentation, becomes just something to fill in to please people without putting in the effort and resources to promote it. You see this with certain media properties being pushed because they’re very friendly towards women/minorities/etc. And when some of them bomb, the executives pushing those works say statements like “Isn’t this what you wanted? Well, you fans suck. We’re not going to make anymore.” But what if you never put any real investment in ensuring the work is actually diverse? What if the process behind the work was terrible in the first place?

I guess I’m saying that fragmentation can lead to fan-blaming and under-resourcing in a very bad way.

In mental health, fragmentation isn’t seen as a good thing compared to other parts of life. I try to remind myself that I’m still small in the grand scheme of life and I’m not just a fan of so-and-so. It’s also way too easy to get overwhelmed by information we’re “supposed” to keep up with.

I just want everyone to remember that despite how different we are, we’re all fans of something because life is just hard and we do need moments of escape from it. We’ve all been shunned for not being a part of what constitutes normal. Those are universal truths we can all admit. We’re all fragments that can be pieced together into a communal-made gem where the universal aspects of what make fandom great shine.