BTS in Europe - Disappointed

BTS in Europe - My Disappointment

By

Eve Griffiths

What do I mean? This is my not getting to the BTS Love Yourself tour story.

I discovered BTS via my 7 year old daughter watching Clubland TV, I think it was Battle of the KPOP boybands.  She was totally engrossed by the music and the dance moves.

I sat down to watch it with her and it became clear who our winners were, BTS, we didn’t know what they were saying we just loved the energy and the melodies of the songs, they were so catchy.

That was obviously the beginning of our BTS rabbit hole, we started having BTS hour just before bed time (some would say bad parenting, I don’t care) we watched their videos on YouTube and were hooked.

We realised they were more than a boy band, they were a group of inspirational people making their way in the world by giving amazing music and performances to their fans.

We downloaded the Vlive app and spent our BTS hours working our way back from the oldest videos right up to today, the day we heard they were going to be touring in the UK, excited was an understatement.  My son and other half heard about our plans to get tickets and spend the weekend in London having a girly weekend so many times, it was decided because of the cost it was going to be my daughter’s birthday present as she would be turning 8 in December.

The day came i promised my daughter she would have tickets when she got home from school, I told the other half to get ready for me to book trains and hotels when I got home.

At work my team all sat with their phones in the queues waiting for the spinning wheel or the walking icon to stop.  It happened; I ran over started filling in the details, I saw seat numbers and then… it disappeared.

We kept trying for two hours after, with no luck; the rest of the day was a little bit pants... ok, it was more than pants, I was gutted.

Got home, she asked and I broke the news “No Annabelle, I didn’t get the tickets.  They sold out.” I waited for the meltdown…… shrug of the shoulders and “we’ll just watch it on the tablet”.  Ok, don’t get me wrong, which parent wouldn’t want that reaction when they hadn’t been able to give them something they had promised; but I wanted some tears, some devastation I think to justify how I had been feeling.

It became apparent in the days afterwards that I may have overtaken Annabelle in the ‘who is the biggest BTS fan in the house’ competition (not a real competition we had going, just in my head), I was still gutted, she hadn’t really given it a second thought after my announcement.  She still wanted to listen to their music and she still wanted to watch the videos and tell all her friends all about BTS, so she was still up there with the best armys, on the other hand I couldn’t go on any of my social media accounts without retweeting any numerous tweets with the hashtags that went along with the lines of #justiceforLondon etc etc, I couldn’t listen to their music for at least a week, my son asked me if I was ok as I hadn’t mentioned BTS.

Eventually I got through it, I got my enthusiasm back and tried to start a fanbase for yorkshire, but working every day, with two kids, a house and an unenthusiastic (where BTS are related) other half in the house, it was hard.  I stumbled into a Facebook chat with Marsha one of the lead admins of BTS Radio UK, we had a chat and I bombarded her with my ideas of ways to help BTS gain more recognition in the UK and she invited me to join the social media and editing team with BTS Radio UK.  I jumped at the chance to help and join a team of like-minded people, it then hit me I was struggling anyway trying to run my own small, but with big ambitions, fanbase.

Luckily, I can’t remember the exact details I heard of two girls on facebook that wanted to start meetups in Yorkshire.  I approached them and offered my readymade Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts and they went for it – please check out @BTSYorkshire, FB BTS ARMY UK Yorkshire and Instagram btsukarmyyorkshire as they are lovely, I have been to their meetups too.

Anyway where were we, I am getting over the disappointment and joining the amazing BTS Radio UK team.

A few months pass and all of a sudden, someone announces they have just managed to buy tickets from AXS, I was straight on there, got to the same position as before and this time I couldn’t remember my app account log in details!!! WTF I am not destined to see this concert.

So the months leading up to the concert were ok, might have had to leave group conversations a couple/few times while everyone was excited about going and making their plans, but who wouldn’t have been and when I was in the right mood I liked hearing about their plans.

I every now and again checked the resale sites but £400 a ticket was a little bit too much for me to pay and I really couldn’t go without Annabelle (bad mum moment again, I did consider it for a second).

The comebacks, the news, the daily updates of BTS Radio UK helped me feel included in the build up anyway.

It came round to landing in the UK day and the excitement was growing, I was still checking the ticket sites and searching for last minute competitions but I think it had become more of a habit than needing to go anymore.

I had a bit of a wobble when I went to see the Artic Monkeys the month before at the O2 arena and I imagined what they would look like on the stage in this huge arena.  They looked good, very good, but I enjoyed myself anyway.

So the day of the first London concert came round, I was at work so I was totally focused on that (not) checking twitter, facebook for any scrap of information of what was going on.  Got home it got to lights up time and I took myself off to bed, or finding streams of the concert that weren’t blurry or kept moving or looking at the crowd and had a good shot of the big screens.  Well let me tell you they are not easy to find, so my expectations had to lower a great deal.

The amount of times I screamed stop commenting, apparently the comments make it blurry I never had this confirmed but I screamed it a lot, then urging the wonderful armies whose arms must have been aching to turn the phone left, no right, no I don’t want to look at your friend with the biggest smile on her face.  I want to look at the men on the stage, the ones I have been obsessing over for the past months.

Anyway I got through the first day watching these streams with thousands of other armies across the country, Europe the world even and to be honest we had our own connection.  It may have just been me, I shouldn’t talk on their behalf, but I was looking at the comments and seeing the streaming numbers growing and I felt like we were in this together.  We might not be there for different reasons, not getting tickets, not having the money, not having any way to get there, etc but we were there for the same reason our love of BTS, their music and their wonderful message.

I must add Annabelle gave up after the first few songs because the streaming quality wasn’t up to her standards, so again I won the biggest ARMY award in my house that night, but we have already started planning for when the next concert is announced, and how I will be taking the day off when the tickets go on sale and nothing will get in our way to see BTS next time they come to the UK.

Thank you very much to Eve for sharing her story, we hope that next time BTS tour in the UK that she is not disappointed.

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