Thirty-three pairs of AirPods.
I’ll say it again: Thirty-three. Pairs. Of AirPods.
That’s 66 of the little white buggers, more than $9,240 worth of earbuds just sprinkled around the globe. No doubt already sprouting Apple trees by now.
This weekend, K-pop rapper and BTS star Kim Namjoon revealed in a live-streamed Q&A with fans that he’s somehow on his 34th pair of AirPods after managing to lose the rest.
While Apple’s truly wireless earbuds do have a reputation for being notoriously easy to lose track of—my colleague Jennings Brown called orphaned AirPods “a plague upon New York City”—a K-pop stan I consulted with for this article told me this is all extremely in-character for Namjoon. Case in point: the pop star’s lost his passport so many times in the past it’s inspired fans to give it a Twitter account.
But let’s pull back a bit and put that number in perspective: At $139 a pop for Apple’s earbuds, complete with charging case, of course, since they’re not sold alone, that means he’s lost the equivalent worth of a Mac Pro in AirPods. Two words: Holy shit.
And RM (his stage name) didn’t specify whether any of those pairs were Apple’s new $399 high-end model, the AirPods Pro, so that $9,240 number is a conservative estimate. But I guess when you’re the lead singer for the most popular boyband in the world, you’ve got money to burn.
After hearing this, the A.R.M.Y., a moniker for the band’s millions of fans, immediately began clowning the hell out of Namjoon on Twitter, calling him an AirPod fairy and suggesting that, if he’s going to lose so many, he should sign all of his earbuds in case fans stumble upon them.
NAMJOON IS ON HIS 34th AIRPOD? HOW THE FUCK DO U MANAGE TO LOSE 33 AIRPOds pic.twitter.com/lZKacPnPkW
— ♛ (@TAESUNlVERSE) December 14, 2019
Namjoon owning and losing 34 pairs of AirPods?????? Sprinkling AirPods all over the globe like a little AirPod fairy???? Santa Joon. Apple store regular Namjoon.
— taehyung’s perm [s/h] (@taehyungster) December 14, 2019
imagine walking along han river and finding his airpods scattered around….
*sells them for $1000*
— Esu • エスエン (@Esu_N_) December 14, 2019
#Au where Y/N finds all 34 of Namjoon’s AirPods and gives them to him at a fansign, and Namjoon falls instantly in love with his AirPod saviour????????#Threadfics#AO3#Fics pic.twitter.com/tx6yQKRwZo
— Bad AUs (@BadBTSAus) December 14, 2019
My favourite is a conspiracy theory fans have already cooked up: Obviously, this is all an elaborate and covert effort on RM’s part to redistribute wealth to the proles. That’s right: Namjoon is secretly K-pop’s own Robin Hood.