As many are aware, on the 16th of October former One Direction singer Liam Payne passed away in Argentina. Understandably fans have been in shock and mourning since. Statements have been made by his former bandmates online and the whole world is with them as they deal with this loss.
However, one such account that is not feeling so sensitive is X (formerly Twitter) user @redsleuthing. On the 19th of October the account quoted a tweet from Liam’s former bandmate Zayn with regards to the postponement of the US leg of his tour:
@redsleuthing BTS would never do this. This is so unprofessional
@zaynmalik Given the heartbreaking loss experienced this week, I’ve made the decision to postpone the US leg of the STAIRWAY TO THE SKY Tour. The dates are being rescheduled for January and I’ll post them as soon as it’s all set in the next few days. Your tickets will remain valid for the new dates. Love you all and thank you for your understanding.
As expected, @redsleuthing‘s quoted tweet was met with uproar from One Direction and Zayn fans. Tweets blaming BTS’s fandom, Army, and attacking BTS gained attention in the following hours, some racking up 1000s of likes. This is not the first time toxicity within a fandom has breached moral acceptability, and no doubt with K-Pop it won’t be the last, so it would be easy to blame Armys for the tweet. However, contrary to belief, @redsleuthing seems to not even be an Army at all.
The account @redsleuthing has long been on BTS report pages for wishing harm on the members and it has been speculated that the account is a Blink, aka BlackPink fan. Accounts that regularly interact with @redsleuthing, including those boosting and supporting the aforementioned Zayn quote, also belong to other various K-Pop girl group fandoms. They all but confirmed in a Space held later that day that they were a BTS anti when they spoke derogatorily about the boy group members:
“They’re disgusting. So f*ck all of them. F*ck all seven of them….F*ck J-Hope. F*ck Jin. F*ck Jimin. All of them….Y’all should have kept BlackPink’s name out of your mouths….And f*ck One Direction, f*ck all of them.”
@redsleuthing has also previously disrespected One Direction fans’ attempts to celebrate the group’s music since member Liam’s passing:
While BlackPink-BTS fan wars are nothing new, exploiting a celebrities death just to fuel hate crosses a line. Had @redsleuthing‘s tweet not gained as much attention there would be no need to comment on it, but the hurt to One Direction fans has been very real. This is not the first time members of one fandom have tried to set up another, with tweets in the past mocking Iranian women’s deaths, children in the Uvalde shooting and Palestinian martyrs, just to name a few, all in the name of K-Pop fan wars. While this is not exclusive to K-Pop, it is a practice that desperately needs to end.
