People don’t exist by themselves. We are all part of different social groups where we come together to share what matters to us. The shared values of the communities we belong to greatly influence our behavior and personalities; in the case of ARMY, alongside BTS, we’ve collectively created a community that encourages us to grow.
Let’s take a look at the many ways in which being an ARMY is helping us grow and become better human beings.
Teamwork makes the dreamwork
ARMYs are goal-oriented. We have worked together for years to achieve what others would consider impossible. We’ve had a special opportunity to work alongside multicultural people from all life paths, recognize the strength in our differences, and continuously evaluate our methods to achieve better results. This is an enriching experience that influences our perspective on teamwork.
Imagine ARMYs applying these lessons at school or work. We can embrace diversity and explore our team members’ strengths. Challenges don’t phase us, because we learn from past experiences, propose and test changes, and adjust our methods to get better results. Most importantly, we’ve learned that positive encouragement works better than relentless pressure and condescending scoldings. How much happier would employees be if this was our work culture?
My strength is your strength
One aspect of ARMY that often surprises outsiders is that we’ve built a community that shares their knowledge and skills voluntarily, and supports its members in more than just fandom-related activities.
There are multiple fanbases where ARMYs help their peers build up their skills or get access to resources for their personal development. The BTS ARMY Job Board shares job opportunities and work advice, ARMY Academics gives students access to free tutoring, Bangtan Academy teaches and supports those learning Korean, and ARMY Writers Club, alongside various fan magazines, cultivates writers' skills. These are just a few examples, but they showcase how we see our personal skills as a strength to be shared with others with the sole intention of helping each other.
Love and speak yourself
The BTS members are role models for ARMY, and their self-growth journey has been a great example for us. Through their words and actions and their art, we’ve learned to be more open and confident, recognize areas where we need improvement, and create healthier habits. This influence is something they are well aware of, and that they’ve taken very seriously.
They’ve explicitly tackled topics like self-love, speaking up for ourselves, and accepting our mistakes as a part of becoming who we are today. From speeches for the UN, UNICEF campaigns to many other public instances, BTS has made it a point to encourage their fans to keep on growing as individuals.
Thanks to the awareness of these topics, we’ve had important conversations with each other, learned about psychological theories, and started our own self-growth journeys. But we don’t learn exclusively from what they say — they also learn from what they do.
Through the years, the members have been open and vulnerable about their emotions, hopes, and struggles. From songs such as “The Last” and “Dis-ease,” to casually mentioning therapy and the positive lessons they’ve gotten from it, they’ve helped normalize these commonly taboo topics. As a direct fandom reflection of this influence, we can mention BTS Army Help Center, a fanbase dedicated to providing a listening ear to ARMYs that need it, and to advocate for mental health.
We are global citizens
The UN defines global citizenship as the social, political, environmental, and economic actions of globally-minded individuals and communities on a worldwide scale — ARMY is a fandom composed of millions of global citizens.
Growth isn’t limited to understanding and loving ourselves; we can also increase our awareness of global and local issues, and start taking actions to improve the world we live in. Leaving indifference behind becoming proactive global citizens is a way of growing, especially important for our community. There’s always at least one ARMY-led project supporting charities, vulnerable people, animals, or the environment. The most known fanbase that organizes this kind of activity is One in an ARMY, but anyone can organize a project for good, even small groups or individuals.
However, charity projects aren’t the only way in which we grow as citizens of the world and people living in a multicultural environment. While we must acknowledge that there’s still a lot of work to do, ARMY has been a space for many to have complex conversations about topics such as racism and discrimination. We aren’t perfect, but if we are willing to listen to the members of our community speaking up about the issues affecting them, we might be able to change and do better.
Growing Together
Our ARMY community has made the encouragement of each other on our life journeys an axis of its existence and fandom activities. We dedicate plenty of time and effort to supporting BTS, but we also spend a fair amount building each other up, learning about all sorts of topics, and making good use of our numbers to create a positive impact on the world.
Having a growth mindset doesn’t only make us highly effective, it also opens up opportunities for us to become better people, and to be more kind to ourselves and each other.
DISCLAIMER: We do not own any audio & visual content in this video except for the editing. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO THE RIGHTFUL OWNERS. No copyright infringement intended.
Written By: Rebeca
Edit By: Aury
Checked By: Esma
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