Glitching into popularity: an analysis of how K-pop fans conceptualise authenticity in virtual K-pop idols PLAVE and MAVE

Since the late 1990s, the Korean popular music industry and the government have focused significant attention and resources on developing and incorporating virtual technologies into pop music. As a result, in the past few years, virtual idols have been gaining popularity and representation within Korean mainstream media. We build on existing scholarly works to examine how virtual technology shapes the Korean pop idol industry and its fandom. We argue that glitching becomes a key component of how fans conceptualise virtual idols’ authenticity. Even though such glitching appears to contradict the way that virtual technologies are often marketed in Korea as futuristic, virtual K-pop idol fans are not upset by the technological failures. Instead, they focus on glitching as moments that best reveal virtual idols’ authentic traits, including work ethic, talent, and personality. Through our analyses of such discourses, we suggest that virtual idol fans dissociate virtual idols from perfection, a trait conventionally used to measure human idols’ authenticity. Instead, they explore different ways that virtual idols are authentic by focusing on their character and talent, claiming that virtual technology’s moments of failure best highlight these traits they use to measure the idols’ authenticity.