In Seoul, South Korea in 2017. A popular music artist that owned his own studio called JYP Studios decided to create a game survival show to see how many teenager contestants can stay on a team and debut as a popular boy band. This group of teenagers are now what 27.6 million people call Stray Kids.
Stray Kids became popular after their survival show went on air in Korea shown in figure 1. They are known to be one of the only Korean pop groups that makes everything including their logo for the band, majority of songs, and even the fandom name, naming them stays.
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| Stray Kids Survival Show |
The fandom name "stay" derives from them taking out the letter R in stray kids and making their own motto saying, "You make stray kids stay". Another way they chose stay was if you are wandering or lost (stray) you can stay with them. Stray Kids have always made it known that they are nothing without their fans and do everything to try and incorporate stays when talking about success. With Stray Kids becoming one of the biggest Korean pop bands around, the name stay became known throughout social media.
Social media
One of the biggest ways Stray Kids became so popular was because of media coverage. Considering majority of K-pop fans are mostly the teenager generation. Having things called fan pages is very common. Especially apps like TikTok and Twitter, fans are constantly making anonymous accounts. Some people will make edits to support their group or just post their opinions on events that are going on within the K-pop community. One-way fans show their support on these types of social medias is by having certain dates that are important to stray kids. Like the day they named their fandom which is a day in august, and the day they debuted as a group which is in March. Each year on those specific days, stays will flood twitter and TikTok with videos and congratulations. As well as when Stray Kids post content on their social media, stays will promote and stream as much as possible to support like in music videos.
Stray Kids Music Video "Thunderous"
Marketing
When it comes to K-pop, there are multiple things that can be collected. Stray kids have multiple different types of merchandise like clothing, stuffed animals and light sticks. With Stray kids becoming so popular, the merchandise that does get sold is only for limited times only and gets sold out very quickly. Many K-pop collectors make profit off of reselling merchandise and are making good money from it. One of the biggest things K-pop collectors resell, especially stays are things called photocards. In an album, there will be multiple things like cd's, posters and around 2-3 photocards. Photocards are tiny "selfies" of individual members and will be randomized. Stays will usually make an account on Instagram or a selling app like Mercari and trade and sell photocards to be able to get the members they collect to show support.
Stay collector unboxing skz photocards.
Events
With fans being so into Stray kids, stays will hold certain events. One event that is big is when a members birthday comes around, cafes around Korea will hold events with self-made merch. Fans will come to the cafe, drink a coffee and take pictures with the birthday signs shown in figure 2. These events are so huge in Korea, that the celebrities who the event is for will sometimes make a trip to see fans and take pictures.
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| Banner for member I.N for his birthday |
Another way stays will hold events is during STAYweek. Which is an event for both international and Korean fans. For the last week of July leading into August, Stray kids will post content of them every day for that week to give stays a thank you for being their fans. Since international fans have a much harder time doing in person events, stayweek becomes one of the biggest weeks out of the whole year. Even making some videos they post go on the YouTube trending page. One last way events can be held is dancing events. Stays that live around each other will hold events in certain cities and do a roulette of all their discography and people will come out and preform if they know the choreography. It's a great event for international fans to find more people from their fandom and express their love for them while going.
Concerts
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| Stray Kids Tour Announcement. |
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| Stray Kids Official Light Stick. |
Information
One last way stays show their support is giving information to new people apart of the fandom. When going into a new fandom with eight different members and a lot of history. It's hard figuring out where to start. With Stray Kids fandom Wikipedia, stays will be able to find all the information on Stray kids and how they became a group. One other way stays will help out newcomers is a website called SKZFLIX, which is a site that looks like Netflix but instead of Tv shows and Movies, it shows every single episode of the survival show, music video, and YouTube video to help stays be more organized and have a better way to find certain things you can't find on YouTube anymore.
Stray Kids Wikipedia: SKZ Wikipedia
SKZFLIX: SKZFLIX
Controversies
Even with Stray Kids making a big name out of themselves, they are one of the most loved and most hated out of all of the K-pop groups. Fan wars are happening constantly, and with how fast Stray Kids rose to fame, fans from other groups did not necessarily like that. Stays are constantly fighting with other fandoms, so much to the point where fandoms had their own awards and stays won "most annoying fandom." Even with the amount of hate Stray Kids and stays endure. Stays are one of the biggest fandoms I know that defend their groups with their all of their being.
"You can STAY"
Fandoms exist everywhere, no matter how big or small they are. Stray Kids fanbase has grew immensely over the years, and as a fan myself I hope it grows even larger. Without Stays, Stray Kids would not have some of the opportunities they were given, and they are able to acknowledge that. With a couple years to go, stays will never not surprise me on how they can find a way to show their love and support for Stray Kids.
Work cited.
FIGURE 1: StrayKSubsTeam. (2022, October
12). STRAY KIDS SURVIVAL SHOW EP 2 | STRAYKSUBS. STRAYKSUBS. https://strayksubs.com/stray-kids-survival-show-ep-2/
FIGURE 2: JKLOOP. (2020, February 8). [EVENT]
Stray Kids I.N 2020 Birthday Cupsleeve Event: Happy IN Day [Video].
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re2ODzerhxw
JYP Entertainment. (2021, August 23). Stray
Kids “소리꾼(Thunderous)” M/V [Video]. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaswWiwMVs8
SKZFLIX. (n.d.). SKZFLIX.
https://skzfliix.carrd.co/
Stray Kids Wiki | Fandom. (n.d.). https://stray-kids.fandom.com/wiki/Stray_Kids_Wiki
thea. (2022, October 24). stay vlog //
unboxing skzshop maxident signed pcs and opening stray kids mail 📮
[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWypTiR-83k
연합뉴스. (2023, September 14).
Birthday cafe of Stray Kids at Hongdae. 연합뉴스.
https://m.korean-vibe.com/news/newsview.php?ncode=1065593941098824
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