Today (July 30, KST), Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, addressed BTS's decision to opt out of the GRAMMYs through the official GRAMMY social media account. He stated that works submitted to the Asian Pop category would still be eligible for consideration in the General Field categories, including Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Song of the Year. He emphasized that the category was created to celebrate the depth, diversity, and remarkable growth of Asian pop music, with the goal of bringing greater recognition to important artists—not to clαѕѕify or discriminate against them.
The GRAMMY Awards have long faced criticism over what many perceive as a conservative and exclusionary attitude toward non-wнιтe artists. As a result, the Recording Academy's official explanation has done little to calm public opinion, particularly after BTS themselves publicly voiced their stance. While debates and criticism continue to dominate online discussions, ARMYs seem to have shifted their attention to an entirely different detail over the past few hours.
The discussion began after fans closely examined the BTS members' Instagram Stories announcing their decision to boycott the GRAMMYs. At first, some noticed that Jungkook's Story appeared to be identical to j-hope's. Several ARMYs overlaid screenshots of the two Stories and concluded that Jungkook might have simply screenshotted j-hope's Story and reposted it instead of uploading the original image himself. What made this theory even more convincing was that Jungkook's Story did not display Instagram's automatic translation feature, which normally appears on кσяєαn-language Stories for international users.
However, it wasn't long before another group of fans presented a different discovery, challenging that theory. After checking j-hope's Story, they realized that his Story also lacked the automatic translation feature. This led many to conclude that Jungkook had not screenshotted j-hope's post. Instead, both Jungkook and j-hope had likely screenshotted the same template or a pre-prepared image, resulting in the two Stories looking exactly alike.
Fans couldn't help but laugh at the coincidence, with many leaving amused comments about the pair seemingly sharing the exact same posting idea: "Notes screenshot for both, so funny", "They're not copy the text, just screenshotted the notes. Grammy is not that important yk", "seems like both use the same picture they shared on the gc", "Dude cannot be bothered lol they don't give a fawk i love this energy", "It's giving "can I see your homework?"", "Work smarter not harder", "I guess they share the same hobby too, ss from notes",...
Interestingly, V had already become a hot topic earlier because of his uniquely personal way of posting his Story. While most of the members shared the announcement with a certain level of seriousness, V amused fans by posting the statement over a screenshot showing off his Master rank in League of Legends. This quickly led to countless humorous reactions, including comments such as, "Looks like climbing the LoL ranked ladder is more important than winning a GRAMMY now," and "League of Legends > GRAMMYs."
The current reaction from ARMY clearly reflects one thing: the GRAMMYs are no longer a major concern for either BTS or their fandom. Rather than continuing to argue about the Recording Academy's fairness, fans are now far more entertained by the members' amusing posting styles and interactions on social media.
Meanwhile, support for BTS's decision continues to spread throughout the entertainment industry and academic circles. Maggie Kang, director of Netflix's animated film K-Pop: Demon Hunters, shared an article about BTS's statement on her personal social media account along with a clapping emoji to express her support. Rapper Tablo also reposted RM's statement with a brief message showing his agreement.
Chung Tae-young, Vice Chairman of Hyundai Card, also publicly voiced his opinion: "BTS songs have a high proportion of English lyrics—how do they explain that? And does this mean music from ѕιиgαρσяє or ιи∂ια that doesn't use English isn't considered Asian Pop?" He continued his critique, saying, "This is the first time I've heard of categorizing music by language. Does that mean Wagner’s and Verdi’s operas belonged to completely different fields?"
The ARMY fandom has also been showing its support through large-scale streaming campaigns. As a result, "Aliens," a track from BTS's fifth studio album ARIRANG, υиєχρє¢тє∂ly climbed to No. 1 on the iTunes Top Songs chart in 78 countries and territories worldwide. Aliens uses the metaphor of an "outsider" or "alien" to portray BTS's identity and sense of longing while navigating the global music industry.
