Billboard's Fan Army Face-off started like a harmless fun poll on July 15. However, as the elimination progressed, the tension began. On Aug. 12, the Directioners, fans of One Direction, and the Queens, fans of T-ara, were pitted against each other for a chance to advance in the finals.
The Directioners moved on to the semi-finals after beating New Kids on the Block's Blockheads, Selena Gomez' Selenators, Katy Perry's KatyCats and Justine Bieber's Beliebers.
The Queens made their way to the semi-finals after moving forward CN Blue's Boice, Girl's Day's Dai5y, Sistar's Star1, and 2PM's Hottest.
Unfortunately, instead of just clicking vote on Billboard's website, the stans of the Korean girl group and the cheerers of the English-Irish boy band started exchanging hashtags on Twitter.
The Queens accused Zayn Malik of being a terrorist and trended #DirectionersFuneral while the Directioners claimed that T-ara fans were cheating and trended #kflop. Even T-ara's Wikipedia page was altered at the height of the fan war.
To appease the two fan clubs, other netizens went to Twitter and trended #WeLove1dAndKpop. The third hashtag prevailed proving that more netizens love both Hallyu and Hollywood, Hollywood Take reported,
The Billboard semi-finals ended with a close fight, with 1,727,823 votes for Queens and 1,189,147 votes for Directioners. The Queens are now facing Beyonce's Beyhive in the final round. The voting will end Aug. 19
T-ara, a visual girl group, is popular across Asia for their catchy danceable music videos. The group made their comeback with "So Crazy" on Aug. 3.
One Direction is globally famous among girls for their charismatic love songs. The group released "Drag Me Down" on Aug. 4.