How trust and communities can be used to make money on social media, and why people target the BTS ARMY.

My thoughts on the GA situation (as a social media researcher) [thread]:

First, some background information: As most people know, making money off social media, branding and selling the self, and monetizing your followers is pretty common, and is done by influencers all over the world on different social media platforms.

What most people don't seem to know is how trust is basically used to make money. I will try my best to explain how.

As a follower you are a consumer. You consume content, text, photos, videos, and also paid content and products. You can be monetized.

People can make money off your views, by having you as a follower or by selling you different products.

On social media, the followers/readers/viewers are often described by the influencers as their friends or family.

Previous research on social media actually shows that describing your followers as friends or family makes you seems more relatable to the followers, and in turn they are more likely to trust you and buy your product(s).

Trust = Money. The relationship is ongoing and has to be constantly negotiated, to keep this sense of equality, closeness and community intact.

In conclusion: Trust and closeness sells, because you’re more likely to buy a product or participate in a GA sold or thrown by a friend, a mutual or even a fellow ARMY.

How this is connected to ARMY tweet and the GAs: What does ARMY mean to you? For many people words like family, friends, community, support and love comes to mind. ARMY already is a well-established online community, and it is HUGE.

The trust and the closeness is already there, and unfortunately some people will try to take advantage of this. The easiest way to break into our community is by using ARMY accounts (or accounts posing as ARMYs) to do so, when they are ‘one of us’ it's easy to blindly trust them

What can you do: Educate yourself about why these GAs can be harmful. Share tweets and threads explaining why with your mutuals. Look twice before you like and rt a GA tweet. Do not blindly trust people because they claim to be ARMYs. Stay safe and stay smart.

The last 1-2 years, ARMY has been receiving a lot more headlines about our fandom power, organization and spending ability. People KNOW there is money here. Good press is good, but it also attracted a lot of bad actors and people who want to take advantage of BTS' fandom.

Please be aware, please be careful.