I honestly can't believe I'm making another one of these after my last tribute for Vlive but it has been announced that on June 16th, Soompi Forums is drawing to a close.
For the uneducated, or perhaps the too young 😂😅 Soompi Forums was one of the first international kpop fan communities online. Before any social media sites, this was the place to check out kpop news, pictures, discussions, and fan projects. Now I'm not saying it was a masterpiece, the site is definitely a product of it's time, ripe with disgusting insults that are sure to get a person cancelled, but isn't that basically all of kpop socials 😂 Nevertheless, this was truly an archive of kpop moments as they happened.
No where else can you get a glimpse into real time reactions of iconic kpop events such as the release of Sorry Sorry or the messy disbandment of legendary groups like Sechskies. There's many things you can note that aren't even included in kpop "history books" such as how fans were organizing SM boycotts even as far back as 2009 or how the first-ever pushes in the kpop industry towards the western market were perceived. All these aspects will now only be recorded in the minds of the users back then who lived through that time. Of course, we still have some archives, r/kpop being one of those (wasn't around for the unhinged era but I've heard stories 😂) but pre 2010, that's all on Soompi.
It's important to note that, at the time, kpop was no where near the powerhouse it is today. News moved slow, as the only way you could get English news was a person generously translating Korean forums and news sites and spreading that information, so the community was small and tight knit. Spend a few minutes on some threads and you can easily spot some common names. It was easy to build friendships on the forums, because it was one of the only places that existed (shout out to LiveJournal, thankfully you're still kicking, if you die I will actually cry highkey 😭)
Of course, the clock was ticking on Soompi Forums long before this moment. As the announcement states, as kpop socials slowly increased in the mid 2010s, less and less people participated until there was almost no one left. I mean look at some of the most recent posts, there's barely five threads a year. Heck I didn't even know it was closing down until I was lurking for some old DBSK content and saw the pinned announcement. Honestly speaking, the forums couldn't be saved, even the active users who were left mentioned how there were issues popping up. I mean even for older fans, when's the last time we've even participated in an actual forum? 😂 The art of the forum is dead, long live social media I guess, with Soompi Forums being one of the last victims.
Although still there's something tragic, something that makes me kind of want to cry. Maybe it's just the fact I'm also a jpop fan and two of the biggest magazines, Potato and Wink Up, are also closing down after ~40 years, but it just feels like everything is falling down like sand. Times are changing and the things that were part of your childhood, the things you thought would last forever, are shutting down left and right. The art of staples in the 2000s, from magazines to forums, are closing down, and all I feel like doing is going back to those simpler times. I still feel like I'm the young middle schooler checking out a SUJU MV when the entire world has moved on. Logically I know that these things aren't what they used to be and it's a waste of resources, but selfishly I want them to go on forever, to stay a constant in an unpredictable life.
The thing I'm upset about the most though is how much lost content there is, or will be. Sites such as Veoh have already closed, making any content on there lost forever (doesn't work on Wayback Machine 😭) Of course, I'm a 2nd gen fan so I check out various pages to check content, however it's a graveyard of ghost links. Variety shows, interviews, TV segments and more, lost to time solely because of the fact these groups didn't debut 10-15 years later. The announcement isn't clear on whether Soompi Forums will be archived or not, but if it isn't, that's almost 40 years of kpop content gone forever. The users, the communities, the shared laughter and tears. Sometimes when I read the comments from back then, I wonder where those people are today. The first year middle schooler hiding from her mom and fangirling over Rain could now be a mother herself, the user managing a banner fan project for Wonder Girls could now be a project manager at a company, I wish I could have been a part of those conversations sometimes.
Unlike Vlive where most kpop fans were still using the app before the shutdown, Soompi Forums doesn't have that advantage. During the what I dub The Great Vlive Archive, most groups active or disbanded were able to have their content saved, expect for the smaller nugu groups. Soompi Forums on the other hand is on it's last leg, and with the amount of content for groups that have been inactive for sometimes decades, it's almost impossible to completely archive everything.
Now unlike my previous post I don't think I can even highlight any big moments because there's just so many (if I do decide to do it, it'll probably be on r/kpopnostalgia so keep an eye out if you're interested) so instead I wanted to have this space for everyone to talk about thier memories of the site. I wasn't able to participate during the forum's peak (was already a fan, but didn't have unrestricted internet access (yet) lol) so I would love any stories from those times. Any fun memories? Any favorite interactions? What communities and memories do you remember the most? Are you guys as emo about this as I am or am I just too much of an empath? 😂
If anything else, I just hope this post serves as a plea to the remaining Soompi Forum moderators. Close down the site I understand, stop comments I get, but I'm begging of you literally on my knees to not delete the site fully. Even now I still use the website to check old comments and content, and I know I'm not the only one. For newer fans who might get into these older groups, it's a well of information to learn more about the members and the fandom. I'm not sure what resources are needed to keep the site at least semi functional to view, but for the memories of all the kpop fans from back then, I hope it can still exist, if only in archive form.
