MY letter to AB - how AB was born

I'm very very late with this letter but sometimes it just doesn't feel like the right time and you can't gather the words together. Even after such a long time I just couldn't but today I have the urge to share this story with you. The story of AB. This will be long so you might get a coffee and take your time to read.

It all started back in 2016 with a chat called 'Adults only' on 'ARMY Amino'. I created the chat in hope I'll get to know older and more mature ARMYs and that's how I meet Yoko for the first time. More and more joined our little group and we all got along really well. We chatted almost every day and after some time we decided that we should move to another app which we did. Our first try was 'Kakao Talk'.

Shortly after we moved, I joined a Christmas Project that was featured on 'ARMY Amino' and told the others about it. Yoko wanted to join immediately. It was a very nice idea and the response was very positive but everything comes to an end and so did the project after new year. But guess who else crossed my way during that time ? Our genius mind Erika AND Kai. Beside Yoko, Erika, me and very old members no one knows Kai but she is one of the creators of AB. Unfortunately she had to leave us due to personal reasons which I'm sad about until today. But let's continue with the story. Christmas and New Year was over but no one wanted to part ways and we stayed together. Even talked about creating a fanbase. And guess what ? It didn't took us long to do so.

BUT…

That fanbase wasn't AB. It was another Base and let's just call it AN. I was Co Admin of that Base while Yoko was taking care of the teams as a Leader and Erika became one of the Designers. While being with this Base me, Yoko and Kai were talking a lot about doing our own thing as well and we came up with different ideas. Well too many ideas. When we almost had made a decision on how we'd proceed I meet a K-ARMY which asked me for help in streaming. She was in search of more streamers and don't ask me why but I agreed to recruit and help her. I left comments under BTS MV's asking ARMYs for help. I recall it took 1 week and we already had around 20-30 ARMY's who wanted to join. While the K-ARMY group didn't had many English speakers we weren't sure if we could add them all to one group and so the idea was born to create a streaming team.

We moved to LINE and created groups to stream together and enjoy our ARMY family. As the team was growing we needed leaders to take care and guide everyone. I recall we were 5 back then and one day one of the leaders suggest to become a fanbase and open a twitter account. You can imagine it was brainstorming time. Different names were put out but in the end we choose the only right one.

- ARMY Brigade -

It was Yoko's idea and we all loved it. A twitter account was made and so our journey started. Did you know that the K-ARMY group became our sister account ARMY BRIDGE ? Unfortunately their team got disbanded but for the time we worked together it was amazing. Well thinking back it's fate as I can't call it otherwise. It started to help others but they left and we stayed when we hadn't had any intentions to create a base from the beginning.

But anyway. I myself was still part of the other base as well which made it quite tiresome as I had to take care of both. Still I believed that I can do it and worked for a short while until one day something happened that changed everything. At the very beginning I was part of another streaming team but was about to leave that one because I had to focus on the bases I was part of when the head Admin of mentioned streaming got into a fight with the other Admin from AN. I wasn't even there when the incident happened but it turned out that they had another plan in mind. They tried to make me leave the base and even blackmailed me and while I had to deal with all the stress AN Admin didn't do much and that was the point were I decided to leave AN.

It took me a while but I left and it was the only right choice. I also took Erika and Yoko with me and a few others from AN wanted to join AB as well after we all left. I must say once we weren't part of AN anymore the base died. But it was AB's time.

- Finally -

We worked hard and managed a lot without any help or support. Everything we achieved so far is self-earned. But that was what others couldn't take. No one wanted to work with us and some of the other bases even tried to belittle us and make us give up but we didn't. We continued to do what we do and even we had a lot of obstacles we grew slowly but steadily and earned ARMY's trust. It was a hell ride and we lost some amazing people on our way of course we did mistakes as well but new ones joined and here we are stronger than ever with a perfect Admin team and amazing leaders and members. There is a lot that happened but I think I told enough and it's time to end this letter.

What I want you to understand the most is that there is hardly any other base like AB. You won't have the feeling of family with any other team and you won't be able to be just yourself.

That is really rare these days. It's not long ago when I told you that I'm thinking of disbanding the teams but you showed me that there is hope for us. Now please hold on to that and let's continue walking this way together.

Together as AB.