240120 iStays - Is there anything you'd like to see done differently?
If you are an iStay, is there anything you'd like to see done differently? What opportunities do you wish iStays had that they currently don't? What areas do you think could be improved on when it comes to how iStays are interacted with?
As a US Stay, I hadn't really thought about this topic a whole lot, probably because with US artists there really isn't a whole lot of "interaction". You buy/stream an artist's music, follow them on social media, read news articles about them and go to concerts. For the most part there isn't all the content, the para social stuff and I really don't know how many US artists even have paid fan clubs. But, the recent post regarding Stray Kids' fan club and the number of people that commented they wished there were different options/benefits for iStays got me thinking.
This is not meant to be a kStay/jStay vs iStay discussion. I'm just curious as to what you would like to see done differently or offered that currently isn't to iStays.
For me, I think the following would be nice:
-As a lot of others have mentioned in other posts, I'd love to see iStay friendly options for the fan club. An option to forgo the stuff that needs to be shipped and be a member at a price that doesn't include expensive shipping would be nice. Benefits that include presale options for concerts in iStay countries would be nice as well (yes we don't know if this will be a thing or not but a lot of people seem to think it won't be).
-I'd also like to see more consistent sub titles/translations on content. Waiting 1-2 weeks for subtitles to be put on things like SKZ-Talker is frustrating to me, because random people on the internet "translate" themselves and make posts that are often not accurate or are outright misleading. And some content, like Stray Kids on Air lives never get subtitles (and the auto generated subtitles offered by YouTube fall short more often than not).
-Finally, I think it'd be nice to see more of an effort made to interact with iStays. For example, with the exception of Bang Chan's initial interactions on the Fans app, StrayKids Pick! interactions have only been with Korean (and possibly Japanese -I'm no expert on the alphabets) posts. When an idol comes on, it seems like English and other language posts are overlooked. And, yes I know that for most of the members Korean is their native/first/main language, but I'm assuming they have a translate button/function like everyone else. I'd like to clarify this point because I went about this wrong. I'm not trying to call out any members or point fingers, but rereading this it does come across that way, and I apologize as it wasn't my intention. As I explained in a reply post below, over time, I've simply made the observation that one-to-one interactions on Fans and to some extent lives tend to skew in a certain direction. (Please note that this is based on my limited experience...I am a new Stay, Fans obviously is very new and I did not have bbl community). To clarify, at the end of the day I don't necessarily fault them for this. They are Korean so the skew makes sense for the most part.