LONDON, UK. In a symphony of sniffling and shattered dreams, legions of BTS fans have discovered that their bank accounts have been ghosted faster than a disbanding boy band. The Great ARMY Heist of 2023, as it shall forever be known in the annals of tragic fandom, saw fraudsters pilfering thousands of pounds from eager ticket buyers in a scam so slick it could teach Kim Jong-un a thing or two about effective propaganda.
Picture this. It’s 2 AM in Seoul, or London, or Des Moines. You’ve got a credit card in one hand and a pint of soju in the other. You’ve been refreshing Ticketmaster’s website so many times your finger has developed a callus. Then, salvation. A tweet from a verified-looking account. A link. A promise. A lie.
Within minutes, your life savings are gone, vanished into a digital void where scammers laugh all the way to the Bitcoin bank. The tickets, of course, never existed. But the hope, the feverish hope that you might see Jin and Jungkook in the flesh, that was real. And now it’s as hollow as a politician’s promise.
I spoke to a woman in Manchester who sold her kidney to fund a platinum VIP package. ‘I’ve got a scar and no ticket,’ she wept, clutching a BTS pillow. ‘But at least my blood type matches RM’s.’ This is the level of devotion we’re dealing with. These scammers aren’t just stealing money. They’re stealing dreams. And in a world gone mad, what else do we have?
The authorities are, of course, useless. ‘We advise using official channels,’ bleated a Met Police spokesman, staring at his shoes. Official channels. Yes, because Ticketmaster’s system is so robust it can’t even recognise a bot army running on a Raspberry Pi in a Siberian basement. The truth is, the system is a bloated, corporate-sponsored rollercoaster that makes the passengers vomit their wallets into the ether.
Let’s be clear: this is not a victimless crime. This is a crime against humanity. Against culture. Against the very fabric of pop music. These swindlers are the enemies of joy. They deserve a punishment more cruel than listening to John Cage’s 4’33” on repeat for eternity. They should be forced to work as customer service representatives for Ticketmaster, trapped in a hell of their own making.
As I sit here, nursing a lukewarm G&T in a pub that hasn’t changed its carpet since the Falklands War, I can’t help but wonder. Could we solve this with blockchain? Probably not. Could we solve it by punching every ticket tout in the face? Legally, no. But morally, yes.
The BTS Army will rally. They always do. They’ll flood social media with hashtags like #JusticeForTae and #ScammersGoHome. They’ll organise. They’ll fight. But for now, they’re down. Their dance is a funeral march. Their choreography, chaos.
In the end, this is a tale as old as time. A bunch of wily bastards exploiting hope and desperation. But the lesson, as always, is simple. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Unless you’re talking about BTS themselves, who are, objectively, the greatest band of all time. But that’s another story.
