At Spotify's New York City office, LE SSERAFIM's HUH YUNJIN and podcaster Emily Fan are comparing notes on what it means to be a creator in 2026. One is a K-pop star accustomed to sold-out concerts, choreographed performances, and a devoted global fandom. The other has spent more than a decade building an audience around her personality, turning her humor and observations about internet culture and everyday life into videos that keep people coming back for more.
But the two have something else in common: They're fans of each other.
YUNJIN has been subscribed to Fan's channel for years, while Fan is a proud FEARNOT, the name of LE SSERAFIM's fandom. In fact, their episode of Spotify's Show Notes opens with YUNJIN attempting to give Fan's community an official fandom name. Her suggestion? FanFan. (They're still workshopping it.)
The playful moment captures the spirit of their conversation, which you can watch in full below. For all the differences between the highly produced world of K-pop and the personality-driven world of internet creators, YUNJIN and Fan have a lot to learn from each other, particularly when it comes to building and maintaining a fandom.
Mashable was invited behind the scenes of the Show Notes recording, which centered on YUNJIN's recent move into podcasting with HMM (Huh's Memo), a personal podcast on STAN:A, HYBE's artist-led podcast channel on Spotify. Unlike a traditional interview show, HMM finds YUNJIN reflecting on her thoughts and experiences in familiar spaces, like recording studios and rehearsal rooms. Fan is no stranger to the format herself, hosting her own podcast, Much to Discuss...!
Of course, K-pop idols already share an enormous amount of their lives with fans. Between livestreams, social media, dedicated fan platforms, and vlogs, the industry has built an entire ecosystem around keeping artists and their audiences connected. But podcasting offers another way to deepen that relationship, giving artists like YUNJIN room to slow down, reflect, and explore their thoughts at greater length.
For YUNJIN, the idea grew out of touring, when she found herself wanting more time to speak to fans directly during the traditional "ending ments" that close K-pop concerts. That desire to connect through conversation is familiar territory for Fan, who has built an audience of more than 1.5 million YouTube subscribers and parlayed that support into new creative opportunities, including writing, directing, and starring in her first short film, Bad Company.
And as both women explained, building a fandom isn't simply about creating something people want to watch or listen to. It's about giving them a reason to care about the person behind it.
Following the Show Notes taping, Mashable sat down with YUNJIN and Fan to talk about podcasting, creative freedom, the surprising moments that resonate with fans, and what separates an audience from a fandom.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
When you're making something, are you thinking about what fans want to hear from you, or do you start with what you want to say and trust that they'll connect with it?
HUH YUNJIN: I think fans feel when something is authentic or not. When you're really in tune with what you truly want to talk about or express, the support and appreciation for it will follow eventually, even if it's not right away. I don't think it's in service to anybody if you're chasing something that's so immediate.
Emily Fan: I really feel the same. When you're catering too much of yourself to external factors, that's only going to end up biting you in the butt in the long term. Being able to express what you authentically want to express and then trusting that the audience will follow is the more beneficial route to go. If you start making stuff for the sake of following what's mainstream or what you think other people are going to like, you're going to cultivate an audience who maybe wouldn't actually be interested in the things you want to say.
YUNJIN, there's an intimacy to podcasting that's different from posting on social media or going live. What kind of relationship with fans are you hoping to create through HMM?
YUNJIN: I knew that I wanted to do something like this for a very long time, but I think when it really settled in that this was something I wanted to pursue was during the tour.
It's part of K-pop concert culture to do ending ments at the end of a show, where each member goes through and says how they felt about the day and shows appreciation to the fans. Every time I did something like that, I felt like I had so much that I wanted to say and express.
Through performing and through music, I can really connect with fans, but just talking and telling them how I feel through conversation is another factor. That's one of my main goals of podcasting.
Emily, you're a K-pop fan yourself. What do you think creators can learn from the way K-pop artists build and maintain their fandoms?
Fan: I think what K-pop does really well is interaction. When I think about things like Bubble or Weverse, even livestreaming, there's a pretty direct line to the fans, aside from the physical barrier of a phone. That's something that really cultivates a connection, and I think that's one of the points of the K-pop industry that makes for such a strong foundation of fandom.
Creators can take away things like the ability to respond to comments. Something I really like doing is, at the end of my videos, I've been making it a tradition to say, "Thanks for watching, and today I hope you guys get to bounce on a trampoline," or little things like that. It's that call-and-response sort of thing that's helpful in maintaining a relationship with the audience.
And YUNJIN, what do you think K-pop artists can learn from internet creators?
YUNJIN: I respect content creators so much because they're so authentic to what they want to create. There are so many mediums, whether it's sketches or commentary videos, or people writing on Substack. I think we can really learn from the creative mediums and the diversity of what you can make yourself. The authenticity of everything is something I really respect.
Have either of you been surprised by something that resonated with your fans?
Fan: I do some gaming content, and I hesitate to even call it gaming. It's literally me on the computer being like, "What's going on?" My gamer tag was just a random sentence because so many usernames were taken. It was "the wasps are inside." It literally makes no sense.
That caught on so much that it almost became an inside joke in the comments. If someone says to you, "The wasps are inside," you're going to be like, "What the hell are you talking about?" unless you watch my videos. Then it actually means something. It's one of those things that's for the community, and no one outside of it is going to know what it means.
YUNJIN: There was this one time I bleached my eyebrows, and I said something in Korean about how there's so much beauty in trying not to be beautiful. There are so many definitions of beauty.
Fans came up to me in person and thanked me for helping them look at beauty through a wider lens and not confine themselves to what's conventionally beautiful. I didn't know that would resonate with fans. It was just something I'd said because of my eyebrows! That was really sweet.
YUNJIN, between songwriting, performing, and now podcasting, you're creating in many different ways. Has the podcast expanded how you think about yourself as a creator?
YUNJIN: I think it has allowed me to be more creative day to day. Just the simple act of turning on the camera, clipping on a mic, and talking about how I feel about things is something that people can potentially resonate with.
When you're performing or writing a song or singing or dancing, there's a [specific] time for that. But when you're talking about your thoughts and using that as your medium, whatever I feel can be a source of a story and something to say. It's expanded when I'm creative. I can constantly be thinking of something to make. I'm open a lot more.
We're seeing more K-pop artists experiment with podcasting. What do you think podcasts can bring to the fan experience that other kinds of content can't?
YUNJIN: So much of the K-pop world feels so otherworldly — visually, too, with all the production that goes into it. Which is why fans love Weverse DMs or lives, because it's like, "Oh my God, my idol is a normal person too sometimes." With podcasts, it's a lot more direct and a lot more personal, and there's so much more that you can really express. I think that's the biggest appeal.
Emily, you've been creating online for years, and some of your viewers have grown up alongside you. What do you think keeps people coming back even as your content changes?
Fan: I tend to be quite hard on myself. I look at my earlier videos, and in my eyes, they're objectively not good. Sometimes I wonder how I've retained an audience. But I think the throughline is almost a lack of production value, and I don't mean that negatively. It's a girl with a camera who has ideas or things to say about society or about what we observe in media.
There's something refreshing about that, where the content is solely dependent on what I'm saying and who I am as a person, as opposed to anything else. There's not a particular gimmick; especially now that I've diversified into reactions, gaming, vlogging, and commentary, the throughline is just me.
YUNJIN: I think that is a big reason why I want to tap more into this, because it's so human.
Finally, do you think there's a difference between building an audience and building a fandom?
Fan: I feel like an audience could be more passive consumption, and fandom is a bit more active. When I think of someone who's in a fandom, I think of someone who's actively seeking out your music or films or content. To cultivate that type of audience, it goes back to engaging and interacting. I think that's how you build a deeper relationship.
YUNJIN: It also feels more like a community, cultivating a fandom. It's like we see something in each other.
Fan: And with content creators, there's a sense of feeling like you're on the same level. There's less of that degree of separation. The people who are in your fandom, rather than your general audience, are the people who are going to support you in other things you do outside of content. For my short film Bad Company, the people who were the most excited were those I would consider part of my fandom rather than my general audience.
YUNJIN: A general audience might be a fan of what you make, but fans are typically fans of who you are as a person. No matter what you do, they'll be supportive of you because it is you.
Fan: Exactly. You can have tens of millions of followers, but that doesn't necessarily mean your audience is engaged with you.