On July 19, the official Twitter, TikTok and Instagram accounts for the ‘Barbie‘ movie posted a pre-recorded video message from the movie’s lead actor Ryan Gosling who plays ‘Ken’, in which Ryan directly sends a message to Jimin and offers him a guitar as his way to make amends for wearing the exact same outfit that Jimin previously wore for BTS’ ‘Permission to Dance’ music video. According to Ryan, this is in line with an unspoken ‘Ken-code’ regarding wearing the same outfit as another ‘Ken’ [read more here].
Given that the Barbie movie is all that the world is talking about currently ahead of its hugely anticipated premiere, this pleasant surprise took the internet by storm and quickly went viral on different social media platforms. Moreover, numerous media outlets reported on the news, including reputable outlets such as Rolling Stone, Billboard, ET, CNN, NME, GMA, Vogue, iHeart Radio and many more, which went to show how big of a deal this was and further affirmed Jimin’s undeniable mainstream popularity.
The post on Twitter became the most liked and retweeted post on the account in less than half an hour, and went on to surpass 100k likes in under 4 hours, while the post on TikTok surpassed 10 million views in just about 2 hours and is currently the most viewed video on the account as well with over 40 million views!
The news was spreading like wildfire and there are two main reasons for this.
First is that both the movie and Jimin enjoy high popularity in the entertainment industry, with Jimin having been involved in numerous Hollywood productions already, as detailed [here]. Secondly, Jimin is a known die-hard fan of one of Ryan’s past hit movies, ‘The Notebook’, as he once said he was watching it for the 7th time! Therefore, fans were excited at the fact that he got a special shout-out from the main actor in one of his favorite movies. This is something that anyone would be elated to have happen to them. In fact, the movie ‘The Notebook’ started to trend on Twitter for this reason, alongside ‘Barbie’ thanks to Jimin’s impact.
As fans reacted to the news, they mentioned how much Jimin would be thrilled to see that hegot a message from one of his favorite actors and pointed out his insurmountable popularity given the many instances that Hollywood actors or directors had mentioned him.
Here are some of the media outlets that published the news. Numerous film and music update accounts on Twitter posted about this occurrence as well, again a show of the weight of this interaction.
Fans are proud to see their idol’s impact speak for itself.