I listen to a bunch of visual kei bands and music (ofc) but I’m not very in touch with all of the band men in most of the bands I listen to, like idk anyone in d’erlanger or deadman which are 2 of my favorite bands
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To paraphrase a quote I’ve seen on vkei reddit once: you can do whatever you want, forever.
Being a vkei fan is not something defined or sustained by encyclopedic knowledge as if it’s a competitive ranked match, nor is it an academic exercise. Just enjoy what you enjoy.
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^^ ya, sorry ^^
edit:
vv ya, sorry vv
Am I the only one who really hates the idea of being fully ingrained in any group ? If I had no poser inclinations I’d feel like I ceased to be an individual
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The more varied your tastes, the less likely you are to have time and space to memorize details like that.
Some people in the scene choose to hone in on one band or even one member and become an “expert”, kind of like an autistic special interest. If that works for them, great.
A lot of the foreign fandom, especially when I was first getting into the scene, the expectation was for people to listen to multiple VK bands and be kind of familiar with many discographies but not necessarily an expert in any.
A reason for this was because most of us kind of had to take what we could get. Spotify wasn’t a thing, not YouTube or even iTunes. If a VK band came to your local anime con, it was either that or nothing. So it was in our best interest to be familiar with many bands.
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controversial opinion maybe? but sorta yeah, i think most of us here are, and it’s good to think that and not as good to not think that
ofc exception for who’s on this forum reporting in from Japan! if you’re there idk how much else could be missing.
but i think if we ask what scene most of us are in and know well, it’s wrong to say ‘vkei’ but better to say ‘overseas vkei fandom’.
It keeps happening (maybe more so for the tumbler and tiktok circles, as i think ages skew older here) that someone might respond w/ an opinion (eg “angura kei is a thing that exists”) which is very much in line with the english-speaking overseas fandom’s understanding, but completely alien w/ Japan’s.
And i don’t guess there’s necessarily anything wrong with that - my iTunes uses the angura kei genre tag bc it has use to me - but i know that and a lot of my understandings & opinions are sourced from & reflect the communities i’ve ACTUALLY been in and around, not necessarily those we look across the world at.
TL;DR do what u do, like what u like, don’t stress and any bands u like should be happy for your support regardless of how many facts you’ve memorized - BUT also it’s worthwhile to be aware that this & reddit, tiktok etc are communities for overseas fans, which is its own scene that may or may not be similar to vkei in Japan on all sorts of things.
btw i think i stopped learning members’ names around the time i graduated high school, but i expect i’ll be listening to vkei when i’m 80 & i wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a lot of peoples experience as well
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To me, a poser is someone who claims to like something, but when asked, doesn’t know a thing about it. For example, people who wear Nirvana or Misfits shirts but can’t name more than one song from those bands.
You don’t need to know everything about the scene or even about one particular band. As long as you’re listening to and enjoying the music, you’re not a poser.
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when did the word “poser” have its revival… not to hate on it but hunny we speak in dark triad personality disorder traits now… if you arent a verifiable psychopath you can stan whoever you stan guilt-free imo
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We have a rule for this, funny enough:
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You good in these streets dawg.
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Haven’t heard this p-word since I was 15 (and fought till death with local goths to prove that I’m not! Trauma has been unlocked 
)
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But nobody is asking that specefic quetion. And even if, it’s not like one would be lying on purpose or trying to pose, if we just say visual kei. If the person also likes vk they can probably tell which one you are refering to and if they don’t know vk it makes no diffrence to them if you make that distiction 
Isn’t it more likely to get asked “what music are you into?”, “what artists are you a fan of?”
And the answer “I am into visual kei” is true no matter if you are an oversea fan or in Japan.
And you can be a fan without being involed in any of the “scenes”. If you sit alone at home and listen to vk, you can still call yourself a vk fan. If anyone thinks that makes one a poser, well it’s certainly a them-problem.
Yeah sure there is a lot if misinformation on tiktok and so on but believing in any of “Kyo’s real names” does change literally nothing about enjoying the music. If you don’t understand lyrics you might miss or missinterpret the meaning of a song but it’s art and even if you associate something completely diffrent with a song than anybody else, you are still enjoying a piece of art. I think there is no “wrong” way to do that.
And oneself is the only person who can decide if they considere themselves a fan, a casual listener or whatever. You can disagree but again… it doesn’t matter to the person enjoying the music if you personally don’t consider them a fan.
Liking a thing requires exactly one thing: your brain releasing endorphine when interacting with thing.
It does not require being able to write an essay about thing 
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You’re only a trve kvlt VK fan, if you know Kyo’s undie size, Yoshiki’s social security number and Miyavi’s favorite tooth paste brand.
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Does knowing that Kyo owns at least one red tanga counts?
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Then you already know more than I do 
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What makes you an true visual kei fan is knowing at least one deeply cursed lore that damaged your brain
Like Gackt’s dick growing exercise routine, that’s a freebie so now you are an certified visual kei fan
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It doesnt matter. You dont have to even know the names of the band members, let alone their entire history to enjoy music.
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Or the MiA nipples/plastic surgery saga.
Or Kiwamu and Dada’s unhinged Facebook rants in English.
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A poser is someone who walks into a scene, claims to have it all figured out in a day, adopts an expert’s posture and starts telling people to do this and that and be this and that way to be qualified to enter the scene, and then hops on another trend a couple of months later. Most of the visual kei TikTok protagonists will inevitably be like this and just like the influencers of my day from nearly two decades ago, they’re weebs on Monday and by Tuesday they’re rastafari and by the end of the week they’ve got office jobs and nothing to do.
So I don’t think anyone qualifies as a poser from lack of engagement and not internalizing the scene as your chosen consumer identity. I think the poser term was sort of beget in scenes that were imbued with some kind of a price of admission, whether those were political beliefs or lifestyle choices; the closest visual kei comes to those is being in Japan and being active in the livehouse circuit, but honestly, there’s no reason for anyone to care about that. Aside from some of the people I know who did go to Japan to live in the proximity of bandmen and haven’t steered away from that path, the most sincere, knowledgeable visual kei enthusiasts were those who just collected music, talked about it online and didn’t make too much noise about themselves but these ended being the same people you saw in 2006 and still in 2025. I feel like those people only knew the names of bandmen generally out of necessity when browsing through their songwriting contributions and band histories
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I think people should stop making such labels. TRUE fan or POSER… so lame! If a person loves music and choose a certain genre - it’s more than enough. In the end of the day, musicians are just people.