PLAVE: ‘Virtual Idols’ as representatives of K-pop's contemporary struggles

Abstract

This paper examines the K-pop virtual idol group PLAVE as a lens to understand evolving notions of authenticity, fandom labor, and visibility in contemporary popular culture. Drawing on topic modeling of over 150,000 YouTube comments and supported by close readings of fan discourse and platform behavior, the study explores how PLAVE’s avatar-based performances generate affective resonance despite ontological ambiguity. Fans recalibrate authenticity through emotional response, narrative immersion, and collective interpretation—foregrounding sincerity over physical presence. By situating PLAVE within debates on techno-orientalism, post-human performance, and K-pop’s shifting global dynamics, the paper argues that PLAVE does not rupture K-pop’s logic but instead intensifies its core mechanisms. Their abstraction, moral entanglement, and narrative insulation reveal K-pop’s dependence on emotional legibility rather than bodily visibility. PLAVE thus serves not as a novelty, but as a crystallization of the industry’s present condition—where belief is no longer anchored in sight, but in shared affective structure.