
Idle Worship: K-pop Promised Intimacy. Some Fans Took It Literally.
The K-pop industry sells closeness at industrial scale — and a small, devoted minority takes the promise literally, escalating from devotion into surveillance, stalking, and worse. Drawing on BTS, NCT, and Jackson Wang, a guest essay on the machine that manufactures longing, and the people who pay for it.
10 min read