Jamjamj had no idea her YouTube channel would amass nearly 250,000 subscribers in just five months. The 17-year-old American, who wishes to remain anonymous, started her channel back in May out of a desire to create videos honoring her favorite K-pop boy band, BTS. Her first edited video was a tutorial for a mobile BTS game - it was her first video to hit 100,000 views.

"I've been editing videos for a long time. I started when I was like 10," she said. But it wasn't until recently that her mom allowed her to start actually publishing her videos online.

The teenage BTS superfan is part of a larger generation of digital fans who are playing an active role in shaping fandom and entertainment. While a pre-internet world had teenage fans taping fold-out magazine posters of boy band members on the wall, Jamjamj and her cohort actually create ongoing content on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Tumblr for each other to consume. Their original fan content not only helps attract new fans but also helps newbies better understand an idol, TV show or storyline.

"Someone dmed me and told me my videos had helped her get more into BTS," 21-year old ChimChimTrash wrote in an email. She's a popular Danish BTS YouTuber who is also online friends with Jamjamj. "I was very touched by that, like I never expected to have that kind of influence on anyone."

Hye Jin Lee, University of Southern California professor specializing in K-pop and popular culture said: "Fans feel obligated to take upon the role of a manager to promote their idols. They do a lot of different kinds of labor."

This labor often takes the form of fan-created content. In the case of Jamjamj and ChimChimTrash, their videos play a specific role in getting new fans acquainted with the personalities of each of the seven-member boy band. Different from the music videos and variety show clips that the group might officially release, fan-created videos and content provide a different type of context.

Thanks to ChimChimTrash and Jamjamj's artfully edited videos, new fans don't have to sift through endless hours of content to know the personality quirks of these idol members are - they can just watch a three minute fan video instead.

With titles like 'bts moments that boil my noodles' and 'bts being crackheads for 5 mins straight', their videos immediately zero in on the personalities of these K-pop idols that make them so loveable to fans. The videos capture subtle eye glances, questionable touching, background reactions that might have been missed - all the small nuances that tell an untold story about the person.

"[One video] took like 12 hours straight to make, which was kind of overkill for me because I just sat all day editing," Jamjamj said.

This type of meticulous dedication pays off. Both ChimChimTrash and Jamjamj's videos are extremely popular, averaging around 30-100K views each. It's clear that there is a thirst for this type of content amongst the fandom.

Allison Shao, 15, is a big Taylor Swift fan. Two years ago, the San Diego teenager decided to take her love for Taylor Swift to the next level, creating both a fan Instagram and Tumblr devoted to her idol.

"I just wanted to post more about Taylor without being judged for it," Shao said. "I also wanted to find a group of people who love Taylor as much as I do and then we could talk about her and not have it like seem weird."

Joan Miller, a doctoral student at USC specializing in how fan culture impacts social behavior, said: "When a group of fans have a similar affective relationship a piece of media, it allows them to connect effectively. The two of you could start to become better friends just because you're in such a positive emotional experience and environment."

Building that type of positive environment within the fandom is what encourages fans to create more. Shao, who occasionally draws fanart of Taylor Swift, said she will post her drawings when she wants to kick up her follower count.

"It's really nice to see the reception from my followers and it kind of boosts my ego when they say it's really good," Shao said. This type of encouragement by other fans is what keeps fan creators creating.

"I think my subscribers trust me a lot, like they know they will enjoy whatever I make," ChimChimTrash wrote. "I made the Hunger Games video with BTS because some of my subscribers requested it."

That sense of community online often bleeds into the real life. Shao said that for some of her fellow online Taylor Swift fans, she's only known them for three months but they'll talk every day.

"It's like a normal friendship, you know, we talk about how our day's going up, like spilling tea or whatever, like all that kind of stuff. We talk about Taylor but not exclusively Taylor," Shao explained.

She hasn't met any of her online friends in real life yet, but she plans on meeting one in December at Disneyland for the first time.

The passion that inspires fans to create is playing a role in bringing mainstream audiences into fandoms.

Henry Jenkins, one of the early academics studying fan culture, emphasized that the internet has helped to mainstream fandom. "It created a space where fan activities that had once been hidden from you suddenly are so visible," Jenkins said.

Because of this, people don't need to spend much time on any of the social platforms before they run into fandom content. And as mainstream audiences become exposed to what historically would have been niche fan communities, Jenkins said that "more people are experimenting with being fans."

The visibility of fandoms through mainstream media platforms means that fan creators begin to play a significant role in influencing entertainment as a whole. Jenkins calls this convergence media.

The best example of this is the Star Wars series where storylines go back and forth through time and sometimes veer off based on side characters. A newcomer to the Star Wars series couldn't possibly understand it all by just watching one movie. Instead, that newcomer will most likely turn to the internet where fan created media might help them connect the dots.

"It depends really on the infrastructure fandoms provides in educating each other about the connections across those various stories," Jenkins said.

Amanda Brennan, Tumblr's insights manager and creator of the platform's fandom stats aggregator Fandometrics, has seen similar fan support within the Tumblr fandom. She said Tumblr K-pop fans are some of the most meticulous taggers she's seen.

"They'll tag [posts] with the band, the band member, the date the photo is taken, the place that it was taken, what tour they're on," Brennan said. "Like all these little bits and pieces to give a more holistic look at the content."

Whether it's a Tumblr post, a YouTube video, an Instagram fan illustration account, the original content that superfans create on each of these platforms help other fans wade through the fandom world. Sometimes it helps to highlight less-publicized personality quirks of certain idols, other times it may provide critical analysis on complex storylines.

Either way, the fan labor of creating videos, art, stories is critical to growing the fandom and enticing new fans to stay.

"Like 10, 20 years ago, you needed to have mass appeal to be successful. But nowadays, you just need a strong engaging fandom," Lee said.