By Justine Shaffer | @Iovesyoungho
Lee Taeyong of NCT finally debuted his long awaited Instagram on February 18th during a V Live livestream, sending NCTzens and fellow K-Pop stans into a following frenzy.
At 9:07 p.m. KST, Taeyong held his iPhone to the camera, revealing his newly created Instagram handle to eager NCTzens. The handle, @eh_ovo_nct, is a creative wordplay on the Korean spelling of his name using English letters. By 10:58 p.m. KST the young rapper had already reached 1 million followers on the platform.
#TAEYONG Instagram
• 9:08 – Instagram Announcement
• 9:41 – +500k followers (33 minutes)
• 10:08 – +730k followers (1 hour)
• 10:58 – 1M followers#TAEYONG1MFOLLOWERS in the spam of 1 hour and 50 minutes. pic.twitter.com/SZrXEQnsmL— avi (@tyrofilm) February 18, 2021
It quickly became apparent to fans that their idol had broken the Guinness World Record for “fastest time to reach one million followers on Instagram.” However, the Guinness World Record Twitter account had disappointing news for NCTzens, revealing that by their criteria Taeyong would not be named the new record holder, despite beating the current holder’s time by over half.
https://twitter.com/GWR/status/1362429146920591363
We use the timing of the first post to measure this, not the time the account was created. Hope this makes sense!
— Guinness World Records (@GWR) February 18, 2021
NCTzens were not quick to give up on the matter, flooding the replies of the official account’s tweets with claims that the association was robbing Taeyong of his recognition, calls to “ratio” the tweets, and pointing out the inconsistencies in their deciding process.
ITS CALLED A FOLLOWER COUNT FOR A REASON??? IT SHOULD BE WHEN HE GOT HIS FIRST FOLLOWER NOT WHEN HE POSTED HIS FIRST POST WTF IS THIS LOGIC
— riss ; ࣪ ִֶ✿⋆ TY TAP (@peachjjhy) February 18, 2021
https://twitter.com/tyongbest/status/1362455552945655808
Despite the controversy, NCTzens did not let the incident put a damper on an exciting day for themselves and their idol. Instead, they relished in his other record worthy feats such as reaching half a million followers in just over 30 minutes. Taeyong’s first post on the account is a dance cover to Post Malone’s “White Iverson” and the song title quickly became a trending topic on Twitter thanks to the buzz created by Taeyong’s cover.
View this post on Instagram
As of publishing this article, the Guinness World Record considers broadcaster David Attenborough to be the record holder, with a time of four hours and 44 minutes. EnVi will provide an update if Guinness World Record makes any changes.
We’re looking forward to what Taeyong will post in the future! To get some insight on Taeyong’s top fashion looks, check out his closet breakdown here!
