i've been an army for almost a year now and i finally feel like i have a good grasp on everything bts has done, their history, and who they are. so i just wanted to know other armys' experiences with transitioning out of being a baby army, and how they know it's happened :)
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When ppl started calling me old recalling certain experiences like around 2018 (I was like 14 then) I started stanning them when I was 11
Same 😂 When people made those polls about when everybody joined the fandom and I found myself not in the “[year] - [year]“ categories but in the ”prior to [year]“ category, or when people say people who joined before [year] are veteran armys even though it doesn’t feel like that for me. Time flies fast when you’re an army and every year you missed feels like a lifetime :D
i'm literally the exact opposite! some of those polls don't even have an option for me since i've only been an army for a year lmao. i regret not stanning earlier because i've always known who they were and i loved dynamite/butter, but you find them when you need them most so i guess it worked out 😭
yeah i would definitely consider you an old (and extremely lucky) army haha
The moment when I realized I could recognize whose voice I'm hearing even when I'm not looking at the screen. Or recognize a member just from a body part (arms, fingers, ears...). Which happened fairly quickly, maybe not even half a year into me being ARMY :D
yes! i can tell silhouettes now too 😭
Imagine my face when I could hear someone sneeze, cough, or clear their throat and immediately know who it was. 😂
They saved my life in 2016 but I would have to say in 2018 when I could start remembering their names and birthdays without looking since it takes me a while to remember things since I couldn't afford posters and plus I was still going to therapy and was getting my health back in shape so I was just listening to their music in 2016 and was reading about them so I was baby army till 2018 because some episodes of BTS RUN I couldn't watch due another one of my medical condition
ahh i'm so jealous, i would've loved to be a 2016 army haha. but i strongly believe that you find them when you need them most, and since i've found them they have saved my life and changed it completely :)
Suga lead me to them the night i wanted to do it the song save me came up on Pandora so I looked it up and Suga popped up then read about him and some of the members but took me a while to get to know them
oh my goodness, i'm so happy you found them at that moment, and i'm happy you're here :) yoongi would be so proud
He would and same
Glad you found them as well
I've been at it since 2018 and I'm still baby ARMY 😂 tbf, that's mostly my own fault, I primarily engaged with their music and videos and way less with their (individual) story(ies). I read the 10 year anniversary book and that helped, but I've still got ways to go haha. No rush tho, I'm savouring the journey ..^
Edit: reading the other comments, I realise I'm not just a baby ARMY, but an ANCIENT baby ARMY! 🤣 For me, mots Persona still feels like a relatively new album omg... tbf, the pandemic really messed with my sense of time so it's like I've been a fan for 4 years rather than the actual seven 💀 Happy to hear so many new and active members have joined in recent years!
yes, everyone goes at their own pace! not knowing every little detail doesn't make you less of an army :)
Hot take probably, but Persona has one of the best opening songs of all their albums. Not trying to hype just Namjoon here (I'm OT7), but that song and Joon's rapping came out swinging. I have a playlist to play on sunny days, and that track is the one I put as the opener.
Hard to argue when I go "this song is sick!!" every time I hear it - and yeah, the release went hard! Also, as a Namjoon bias (of course, also OT7 💜) I fully approve hype for him 🤩
I still remember the day the MV dropped. I got the notification while driving to work and had to pull over into the nearest lot 😂
Same here the pandemic really messed with my sense of time also. I still get anxious going to public spaces sometimes 😮💨
Baby ARMY wasn’t actually a phrase we used when I became one (2015) so it’s hard to tell. I guess it was when I started seeing people talk about what I felt like were fairly recent eras as if they were ancient and before most people became ARMYs.
ooo that’s interesting i didn’t know that wasn’t a phrase before. but yeah anything like 2013-2019 is ancient to me because i simply never experienced it. i really liked dynamite and butter when those came out so those eras don’t feel as old, even though they were 5 years ago
I feel like the phrase probably started post 2017/18 when they started getting more mainstream and there was an influx of new ARMYs. Before that there wasn’t really a big enough community of us or the resources to guide anyone. Calling yourself a baby ARMY came out of new ARMYs asking other more experienced ARMYs to explain confusing things to them, but back then there wasn’t really an option to get that help so I guess there was no point us saying it. You just kind of jumped in on your own and fought for your life for a few months trying to work everything out alone lol.
By the time they blew up with the BBMAs we’d already made fanbases to focus on getting them to breakthrough in west so we were organised enough to help out new ARMYs when they arrived. That’s when we started identifying them as baby ARMYs.
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honestly after the scooter situation I feel like I just changed. I had always read and was aware of a lot of the scandals BTS had been a part of but going through it in real time was just something else. feel like I aged a decade in that week lol. I think at that point I had been army for two years
yeah i haven’t really been through a scandal like the scooter one yet, but the hate train against bts (especially jk) recently has been very exhausting so i feel that
When I understood what musters, memories, winter and summer packages were.
I used to think season's greetings were a generic term for winter and summer packages but I realized recently they were a different thing altogether 😭
When I listened to all their songs from 2013 to present so I could make sure I wanted to actually be a fan of them instead of a casual listener
I will be ARMY for two years next SPRING (waving to Taehyung,) and I felt like I grew out of baby ARMY after going to both Jhope and Jin's concerts. I had extensive knowledge prior to that, but going to those concerts were my graduation. There's something about being at a tannie's concert with tens of thousands of ARMY, getting my first light stick, and doing the fanchant that put my baby ARMY era in the rearview mirror.
aw i'm so happy you got to go to their concerts! i've been waiting to go to a concert of theirs since i started stanning them, so in 2026 when i finally get to see them i definitely feel like that'll be the pinnacle of me being a new fan. it's literally something i think about every day and i've saved up so much to see them
this is exactly how i feel! i became army in september 2024 and fell in pretty hard and fast with learning all about them (and don't personally have much trouble with remembering names/faces), but it was after attending both nights in chicago for hobi and both nights for jin in dallas (with vip d1!! 🤯🤯) when i was like "hmmm it feels almost odd to call myself baby army now". but i'm not really pressed if someone refers to me as that still; it doesn't really matter in the long run after all!
When I dove DEEP into their predebut info, like the blogs and vlogs and stories about trainee life. Also when I read things like the White Paper Project and info about some of their tough times over the years to get a bigger grasp onto how things worked out.
i've watched a lot of pre-debut content but i feel like i've only scratched the surface so i definitely need to dive more into it haha. i have read the white paper project though and it's so well put together and overall just brilliant
I learned everything I needed to know and more about them within 6 months (watched way more content than the average army), but I still considered myself a baby army for almost 2 years, then a toddler. It's been 7.5 years now and I'm definitely not a toddler army anymore but don't consider myself an old or veteran army, since I missed the first 6 years of bangtan.
😲 You just made me feel old. I read how you've been a fan for 7.5 years and I thought, "Aww that's great!" And then you said you missed the first six years and I realized how long I've been in this thing. 😅
how long has it been for you?
Almost 11 years 😅
yeah i consumed so much content in such a short span of time that for months they were the first thing i thought about in the morning, all the way till i went to bed (got a wee bit unhealthy at times lmao). but i feel like some portion of not being a baby army anymore is simply spending time being a fan, and being one for at least a year or two
I had those moments as well, but they would show up in my dreams too! So it was almost BTS 24/7 for me
When I could start naming all of their tracks after the first few seconds. Lol.
When I started understanding references that date back several years.
at it since 2021 I think I’m still a baby army. I became a fan in 2019 but only a real baby army in 2021. maybe the next chapter will make me an adult army
When people says that Butter is quite an old song LOL
I still don't realize (been in this bangtan shiz for 6+ years)