The MTV Video Music Awards happened yesterday on Monday night and for many it was just another night, however, for BTS fans ARMYs it meant the launch of their own parody online award show. 

Now, one might wonder how can an award show as big as the MTV VMAs get any kind of competition from a random fan-base but the South Korean band’s fans are not the ordinary kind. 

BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan/Beyond The Scene) has been one of the most explosive groups of this year, breaking records and slowly establishing themselves in the global music industry. 

Currently after an exhaustive all sold out stadium world tour, the 7 membered band comprising of RM (Kim Namjoon), Suga (Min Yoongi), J-Hope (Jung Hoseok), Jin (Kim Seokjin), Jimin (Park Jimin), V (Kim Taehyung) and Jungkook (Jeon Jungkook) are on an official break. 

In the time being there has been no shortage of content with their company Big Hit recently posting a 40+ minute briefing video where they introduced a new girl group, a new BTS game, a drama based on the early years of BTS and much more. 

In the midst of this all, the MTV VMAs has been there being both a cause of victory and displeasure to the fans. The fans handled it in a very creative fashion, though. 

What Was The Parody BTS Music Video Awards?

BTS fans decided after the whole debacle with the VMA nominations to hold their own parody awards. 

But the thing is that it wasn’t just some small internal affair, instead it was carried out like a full fledged award show with people voting for different categories, creating memes and photoshopped pictures of famous people like Beyonce, Dionysus, actors, etc. attending the red carpet called ‘Purple Carpet’ (another node to a BTS reference) and generally having a good time. 

It had already been decided when the nominations of BTS in the ‘Best K-Pop’ category was announced that the fans would be boycotting the show. The ARMYs saw it as outright disrespect for all the achievements that the group has collected this year and thought they deserved to be nominated in some of the ‘MAIN’ categories. 

However, the anger and frustration from this was soon turned to a more creative pursuit where the fans opted to host their own award show in which they would be showing appreciation to the music that the band has given till now. 

The Twitter account @Highlight_Army was the one bringing the whole thing together, posting regular updates about nominations, reminders for voting, posting the red carpet images and finally announcing the winners. 

August 1st the first official announcement for the boycott and the BTSMVAs was posted:

 

On August 19th this trailer was released:

So the twist here wasn’t that it was just a mere boycotting of the show, but the fact that the entire energy of BTS fans would be geared towards something they liked much more. 

The way the project was carried out in such an efficient and professional manner is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the fandom sector. 

There was even a site created for this where people can go and vote for the 9 categories. Not only that but a trophy was also designed that combined the ARMY Bomb (BTS official lightstick) and BT21 character of Van who acts as mascot for ARMY. 

The site even had a section for streaming party where fans could stream and increase views of various BTS music videos and a place for ARMYs to share positive messages with each other. 

Right at the time of the MTV VMAs, the BTS Music Video Awards also started online. 

BTS ARMY created parody images of various people attending the red carpet from the members’ pets to movie stars like Tom Holland and many more. 

https://twitter.com/saraddaeng/status/1166121964093759489

It surely seemed that the fans had a lot of fun creating all this along with even mocking the usual after award show drama where fans often get into fights if their artist does not win some award. 

https://twitter.com/THICJ00N/status/1166149100905148421

https://twitter.com/trivianity/status/1166144871503187969

The whole project got so much attention that it trended worldwide for several hours right alongside the official MTV VMA tags on Twitter. 

The tags created for it like #PurpleCarpet #BTSMVAs #BTSMVAwards went over a couple of hundred thousand tweets. 

The winners were also announced with flourish and class just like a proper award show.

Read More: In Pics: 7 Books That Inspired BTS’s Album Themes And Music

Why This Made Sense 

To be quite honest, instead of ranting or bashing VMAs online I personally thought this was a better and more creative step. 

And really the whole fiasco with the nominations was not a small thing considering how much BTS has achieved with their latest album Map Of The Soul: Persona. 

The very fact that VMAs created a whole new category of Best K-Pop reeked of them trying to get the clout of BTS and other K-pop fans while still segregating them to a niche category. 

Many fans have stated this category is borderline racist as it very conveniently brings in the K-pop sector without actually acknowledging it as good enough for the main categories. 

And really had it been a year or two ago, perhaps it would not have angered the fans this much. But if we take into account the amount of reach that BTS has seen with this last album, they at least deserved their spot in the actual main categories. 

It is seriously a shame that none of the Korean artists were nominated for any of the main awards like Video of The Year or Artists of The Year. 

After all the bashing that MTV got for this move they hastily brought out another category called the ‘Best Group’ which had a combination of artists from Western music industry along with BTS.  

Jonas Brothers who were coincidentally nominated for Artist of the Year had much less numbers compared to BTS. Just a few days before the nominations for the VMAs came out it was reported how the single “Boy With Luv” in collaboration with Halsey had hit over a million sales and was now certified platinum. 

And not only did the 7 member band outsell some pretty well known American, Canadian artists but they also were the first act apart from Beatles to secure three No.1 albums in just an year. Along with this their album also debuted No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart and their single broke the YouTube record of most views in 24 hours crossing over Taylor Swift’s.

It was definitely a wake-up call to western award shows to not sideline BTS or really any non-white, non-English speaking artist. Because the days of giving them scraps to keep their fans happy are over. If proper respect is not given then the fans will just put their energy into creating something of this level, showing their creativity and having fun all at the same time.

Image Credits: Google Images

Sources: Variety, Twitter, Billboard

Find the blogger @chirali_08

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