The President's Hobby
Bang-sel was, at its core, a product that mixed the collector's itch with the urge to show off in just the right proportions.
The desire to decorate your broadcast station with Bang-sel from a streamer you love — or one famous enough that the whole platform knows their name. And the impulse to flaunt that collection to anyone who visits your station, to prove just how many high-profile streamers' Bang-sel you own. Those twin hungers, I figured, were what actually drove people to buy the stuff.
So I just need to poke those nerves.
I thought it over carefully. How do you stoke a viewer's collector's itch and their need to show off at the same time?
The answer turned out to be surprisingly easy. In the streaming scene it was a little murky, but if you looked sideways into other industries, there was a revenue model that users cursed by name while companies quietly called it genius.
Collectible mobile games.
Every update, drop a new high-rarity character with a gorgeous illustration and absurd stats — and money just starts printing itself, right? Picturing the whales cracking open their wallets without a second thought, I already felt the certainty of success settling in.
Yeah. This was it.
Right then and there I gave myself a full round of applause and a massive mental upvote. An ambitious project that would stuff my completely empty wallet full again.
From Normal (N) all the way up to Super Special Rare (SSR).
If an N-grade Bang-sel was just a regular photo with a signature and nickname added on, then R-grade took it one step further and threw in a short handwritten note. For a true fan, a handwritten letter was simply irresistible. The price points for N and R were 1,000 and 2,000 Candies respectively — nothing that would seriously strain an adult's budget.
The real show starts at SR, though.
The main event: Super Rare grade Bang-sel. These were animated GIF Bang-sel.
By 2025 that kind of product was pretty common, but back in the early days of the virtual scene, over ninety percent of all Bang-sel were still single still shots. And these weren't just ordinary GIFs, either — every one of them was a carefully sliced and edited clip from my concert stage. Even if I sold Bang-sel again later, these would be the ones you could never get a second time: limited-edition "Virtual Streamer Seo-a's First Concert" Bang-sel.
At the end of the day, sales is storytelling. How well can you make the buyer feel the value of what you're selling? I leaned hard into that narrative and sold the audience on what concert GIF Bang-sel were actually worth.
The title of "first virtual concert GIF." Plus the scarcity of a ten-person limit. I'd only carved GIF Bang-sel out of my own stage footage, carefully avoiding any duplicates, so that was all I could produce. Well — that, and I'd deliberately kept the numbers low. Flood the market and the whole "first virtual concert GIF Bang-sel" brand starts to lose its shine.
And of course, buying at SR grade also came with the still-shot Bang-sel and the handwritten letter as a package deal. The SR price tag: 5,000 Candies. A regular office worker might feel a slight pinch, but factor in the limited-edition angle and I was confident they'd sell out.
And then the last one. Today's highlight. The long-awaited SSR-grade Bang-sel.
"Honestly, calling this Bang-sel might be a little generous. It's a video. I went back into the concert map and performed one more time, filmed it, and edited it all pretty. Think of it as Virtual Streamer Seo-a's concert stage — New Version! Oh, and only one person can buy this. It's SSR grade, after all. Scarcity is the whole point."
The chat went completely feral. The premium on a product no one else could ever own — how perfectly engineered was that to light up pure desire?
The news went viral on FM Community in real time, and the viewer count that had been sitting stagnant started climbing fast again.
"The SSR Bang-sel price? There's no set price for this one. Once every other grade is sold out, I'm planning to run an auction. If someone's lucky, they might even snag it for something close to an SR GIF Bang-sel, right?"
Ahem. Was that a little too transparent?
After dropping the line, I snuck a glance at chat to gauge the temperature.
At last, the Bang-sel sale I'd been waiting for was about to begin.
Seo-a-ui-bin-ji-gap thought to himself: the SSR-grade Bang-sel existed for him alone.
On stream he kept a relatively dignified image, but that was just a mask. Being a hardcore fan in the first place meant you already had a healthy dose of attention-seeker in you. And the President sitting at the absolute peak of that pyramid?
I'm putting that on my station no matter what.
Right now the main decoration on his broadcast station was a Bang-sel from the famous girl-cam streamer Kim Ha-yoon — one he'd gotten after donating 7,777 Candies about four months back. Seo-a's secret concert video would be in a completely different league of value.
"Alright, we'll start with N-grade Bang-sel! Please apply by donating Candies, everyone. Manager, make sure you log them carefully. We'll only take applications for a short ten minutes."
Hardcore fans poured in, and even the regular mid-tier donors who'd usually chip in a little started buying Bang-sel in droves. A fair number of casuals who were just into Bang-sel collecting joined the rush too.
Ten minutes vanished in the blink of an eye. Seo-a put on a show of being startled and said,
"Whoa! Thank you so much. Thirty-four people bought N-grade Bang-sel! I'll work hard and get all of them uploaded by this weekend. Next up is R-grade. This time I'll take applications for five minutes."
With the price bumped up, buyers were fewer than for N-grade, as expected. When the five minutes were up, the announced total came to eighteen people.
Now it was SR's turn.
"SR-grade Bang-sel will only be sold to the first ten people. Anyone out there who wants to buy Lovely Seo-a's SR Bang-sel?"
From SR on up, the price was clearly starting to bite — purchases came mostly from hardcore fans, with the occasional big-spending casual dropping in between.
Five thousand Candies could get you Bang-sel from a named girl-cam streamer. Seo-a's really making it.
It was a package deal — still shot, GIF, and handwritten letter all together — but for virtual Bang-sel, still stuck in a niche corner of the platform, it was definitely on the expensive side. The fact that they were selling anyway felt like proof of Seo-a's value at this exact moment.
"Wow! Sold out. Now all that's left is the long-awaited SSR-grade Bang-sel. Like I said earlier, this one's going to auction. Dragging it out forever would kill the fun, so I'll only take bids for ten minutes. Let's go!"
At Seo-a's cue, a pulse-pounding BGM kicked in. The Vice-Chairman, who'd already bought an SR Bang-sel, let a little greed show through.
"My goodness! What on earth is our Vice-Chairman saying right now? Shall we step over there and have a little chat? I'll explain just how serious a crime obstruction of business is."
"Whoa! Thank you for the 7,000 Candy bid, DoCoins! Huh? But this isn't even a stock stream today, and you still showed up. Ooh! So DoCoins has finally discovered the charm of my regular broadcasts. Looking forward to seeing you more often."
"Ah, right. Stocks, auctions… you like that kind of thing, huh."
"Come on, Vice-Chairman. Don't force yourself to donate like that. And every time you donate it's the same cup-ramen bit, the same 'I'll go pick scrap paper' bit — switch up the material already. I'm starting to get bored."
What had started as a fight between hardcore fans suddenly had a big-spending girl-cam viewer mixed in — someone who'd apparently caught wind of the rumor on the community boards. Time kept ticking, and before long the auction price had climbed all the way to 15,000 Candies.
"O-one minute left. Will DoCoins become the owner of the SSR Bang-sel just like this? Drumroll! There's still a chance for a comeback."
Seo-a-ui-bin-ji-gap was waiting calmly for the final moment. The protagonist always makes their entrance at the decisive second. Besides, he had a concept to maintain. Keep chipping in with little bids and you start looking cheap.
"Thirty seconds left. Anyone else want to bid? Vice-Chairman! Don't tell me… you're going to lose?"
A short back-and-forth later, the clock ticked down to ten seconds. Just like that, the SSR Bang-sel looked ready to fall into DoCoins's hands.
In that instant, Seo-a-ui-bin-ji-gap's fingers flew — he clicked the Candy donation icon and typed in a number.
"Three, two, one — finally, sold to— wait, huh?"
Thirty thousand Candies — the maximum single donation amount on Pangea TV, the one that triggered the platform's signature full-screen image. A number you almost never saw. The stream fell into a brief, stunned silence.
Then the chat exploded into pure chaos. Most of it was pure praise for the President, Seo-a-ui-bin-ji-gap.
"W-wait? Hah! Th-thirty thousand!? President! I love you, President. Should we set a date right now? I'm fine with a small wedding, honestly."
Fervent reactions from streamer and viewers alike. Seo-a-ui-bin-ji-gap fought down the corners of his mouth that kept trying to climb, and typed a short reply in chat.
"Ah! President, you're so mean. You've been toying with me this whole time, haven't you. I poured my whole pure heart into this. Sob! Now recruiting a new one-true-love President who only has eyes for me."
A born broadcaster. Even a pointed jab in chat, and Seo-a volleyed it back with perfect ease. Seo-a-ui-bin-ji-gap felt a quiet satisfaction settle in, then casually switched screens and wrote a post.
It was the President's secret hobby.