While all three candidate pairs for the February presidential election have toured key battlegrounds to garner more votes in recent weeks, they are also embracing online personas that have bloomed organically on social media through memes and fandom.

Presidential candidate Anies Baswedan has benefited the most from this phenomenon, especially after a supporter made him an account called Anies Bubble on X, formerly known as Twitter, that resembles a K-pop idol fan page.

“I initially did it just for fun. As a K-pop fan, I am used to running a fan account on X to promote my favorite idols,” the 20-year-old account owner, who prefers to be referred to by the initials of their Twitter handle AB, told The Jakarta Post in early January.

AB said they only wanted to share what Anies said whenever the presidential hopeful did a live stream on TikTok, without expecting a response. But many of Anies Bubble’s posts have since garnered millions of views on X, raking in thousands of likes despite mostly being written in Korean. The account currently has over 137,000 followers.

Not long after the boom, Anies intensified his TikTok live streams, with rival candidates following in the former Jakarta governor’s footsteps but failing to create a similar local K-pop phenomenon.

Anies has also used an owl emoji on his X profile that the Anies Bubble account initially popularized through its posts. K-pop fan pages tend to associate their idols with different animals that suit them best, hence Anies’ association with the owl.

Read also: Presidential candidates venture into TikTok to win over young voters

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