The history of fancams; Stan Twitter’s bizarre melting pot
A brief history in Twitter's strange "stanning culture"
The concept of “fancams” — the modern concept of it anyway — has existed under several aliases throughout the years. What we today know of as a fancam is a video montage made of several clips of a person or character, more often than not set to a song. Despite fancams being the most recent alias, the most common— and still used alias is “fan edit”. But if your internet usage dates back to the early 2000s, you might be more familiar with the term “FMV” (fan made video), especially if you were into shipping.
The term fancam itself is a combination of the two english words ‘fan’ and ‘camera’ and was first coined by Korean netizens. A fancam is a fan filmed video tailored to the fans of a specific idol (within a group), by only focusing on said specific idol. Today however, fancams are also professionally shot by broadcasting companies and garner millions of views on YouTube with ease.
The term fancam hasn’t necessarily lost its meaning, but it has gained a new one. Exactly how did this happen?
Fuck Blue Lives
The year is 2017, and we are 16 days into Black History Month when the American Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren tweets in support of “Blue Lives Matter”. Twitter user @terryono420 makes an innocuous tweet consisting of 6 words and a picture that would later redefine stan (die hard fan) Twitter language: “Mariah is skinny. Fuck blue lives”
The tweet immediately picked up steam and several iterations followed. Till this day, there are new iterations of this tweet made on a daily basis. This tweet might have not been the first “viral tweet” nor will it be the last, but its impact on stan culture is undeniable. The tweet can be altered to fit and cater to your taste so easily, it was bound to become a hit.
A new iteration; Stan LOONA
The phrase “Stan LOONA” is either immediately recognizable to you or you’re one of the lucky few that don’t fall under the term “chronically online.” Although the phrase’s origin is completely innocent, with twitter user @lgbtluda tweeting “I’m ready to stan loona” in late 2016 under a post announcing the first LOONA member. The phrase picked up steam approximately a year later and has become infamous with fans spamming the phrase in completely unrelated situations. This caused frustration and confusion to people who had previously no knowledge of the Kpop group, but to some it became an introduction to the unique (possibly defunct) Kpop project.
The spamming associated with the phrase “Stan LOONA” might have been the first of its kind, but it certainly wasn’t the last. The manner in which Loona fans (and various Twitter trolls) approached completely unrelated situations with “stan loona” comments has been co-opted by fans of all different types of media. Now you needn’t look any further than the replies under tweets by Twitter accounts like @PopCrave or @PopBase to find stans promoting their “faves” (favorites) under unrelated tweets.
The importance of the phrase “stan loona” in the fancam conversation can’t be overstated. The phrase innovated a new and unique way to promote ones “faves”.
Maybe the first viral fancam on Twitter?
It’s August, 2018, and K-pop group DIA is set to return with their much anticipated title track “WooWoo.” But just a weeks away from their comeback, the group and their company have given their fans very little to work with. That is until a low budget, black and white teaser that has absolutely 0 correlations to the music video is shown on the Korean broadcasting network MNET’s music show, “M! Countdown.”
DIA’s fanbase at the time consisted of many trolls. For some reason, they collectively decided to spam this teaser video under unrelated tweets. The video garnered over a million views until the dumbfounded “op” (original poster) deleted it. At this point, view counts on videos on Twitter hadn’t been around for a full year. Be it because the concept was new or because there’s no way to monetize videos on Twitter like its video-focused social media counterparts, this was a feat but also… didn’t really matter.
Now however, the attitude towards views on Twitter videos has completely changed. Stans spam videos they’ve posted in hopes of it reaching a satiable number. The easiest way to do this is to set a notification alarm when big accounts like @FilmUpdates post a tweet, so you can then reply with your video. Another way to promote your video is by using several (oftentimes uncorrelated) words so that your video can terrorize innocent people genuinely trying to use the Twitter search engine.
Fancam fancams
Let’s dial it back to when the word fancam hadn’t lost its original meaning. The first ever fancam can be traced back to 2010 when Girl's Generation performed "Oh!" at Namyangju Central Stadium. The video focuses on the member Kwon Yuri, instead of focusing on the entire group. Up until this point, the concept was completely unheard of.
But the first ever viral fancam didn’t come until 4 years later, when in 2014 the YouTuber @pharkil — who focuses on capturing fancams of sexy female idols — changed the trajectory of not only a K-pop group; but also the entire K-pop industry. The K-pop group EXID was on the brink of disbanding when a fancam of their member Hani went viral.
Although the video focused on the member Junghwa for the first few seconds, the YouTuber turned his attention to Hani after witnessing her charismatic performance. This video blew up in South Korea and has today garnered over 37 million views. The song “Up & Down” had failed to chart upon its release, but after the video went viral, the song became a commercial hit and EXID became a household name in Korea.
Nowadays, broadcasting networks in South Korea have almost completely monopolized the “fancam industry”. Idols are expected to promote their newest comebacks at the very least for 2 weeks (or more if you’re not popular) and out of 6 days of the week, you’re expected to visit a different broadcasting network to compete in their music program. These music programs film individual fancams for each member of the group, as well as a group fancam and a performance video to be broadcasted. These videos garner anywhere between ten- to hundred-thousands of views, sometimes even millions.
You're probably wondering how we ended up in this situation…
K-pop fans brought these fancams from YouTube to Twitter, spamming them in the same fashion LOONA stans and trolls alike spammed the phrase “stan loona” and the way stans and trolls of any kind used the “fuck blue lives” template to promote their faves.
Somewhere along the way, fancams of K-pop idols and fan edits of famous people and/or characters started being promoted similarly by their respective fans. To an unsuspecting onlooker, these videos don’t look too different from one another, especially in a context where neither of these videos logically belong under the comment section where you’d find them. Soon enough, people started using fancam as an umbrella term.
Nowadays, fancams are fancams of a specific idol as much as they are montages of a specific person or character. The distinction is oftentimes emphasized by K-pop fans who feel as if the term fancam got bastardized.
At the end of the day, we can all agree upon on thing; the best fancam — K-pop or no K-pop — is Twitter user @mattsfranks fancam Rowley and Greg from "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” set to Olivia Rodrigo’s hit song “Driver’s License.
