It’s amazing to think that Soshified is a community that has over 186,000 members. Yet we, as Soshified members, are but a small part of an even larger family – the SONE family. As someone who is proud to call himself a SONE, I sometimes marvel at how close SONEs are with one another. For a long time after I joined this fandom, I felt as if I could easily become friends with any SONE anywhere in world, simply because the one common bond we already share is such a strong one. The recent Soshified field trip confirmed my feeling, as people from different places around the world who had never met each other before were able to form true friendships over that short period of time. But as unified as we are as SONEs, it’s impossible to deny that we’re all individuals and that we all lead our lives in our own ways. Every SONE is unique and makes his or her love for Girls’ Generation known in his or her own fashion. Today, on the fourth anniversary of their official debut, I took a look back at what being a SONE means to me in particular, and how I fit into the SONE family.

A small gathering of the SONE family

For myself, it all starts and ends with how Girls’ Generation makes me feel. There’s an undeniable power that the girls have to completely uplift my mood. One song can turn a bad day into a good one, just as yet another song can easily bring me to the edge of tears. Watching a subbed radio show of theirs can lead to an entire week of happiness. Taking a second to look up at the posters on my wall always brings a smile to my face. But to say that they just make me happy or affect my mood is the simple, but incomplete, answer to what defines me as a SONE. The truth is that there are so many different ways for myself, and of course others, to say, “This is what makes me a SONE”. It’s a much more layered explanation that brings up small slices of my life, the life of a SONE.

For me, living the life of a SONE can be explained in a multitude of ways. It’s listening to “Himnae” after a difficult day of work and then finding that I’ve forgotten what made the day so difficult to begin with. It’s caring about friends on the other side of the world whom I’ve never even seen. It’s trying to explain to someone that it’s not a contradiction at all that I have nine favorites. It’s having to put aside money every month in my budget specifically for Girls’ Generation merchandise. It’s bringing my roommate’s cat into my room for the sole purpose of watching a brand new Japanese Genie DVD with it. It’s missing a turn while driving because I was too focused on trying to do a dance move while strapped into my car.

But I’m not like every other SONE out there. I’m not the type of person who sees a picture of the girls and spots a pairing before anything else. Fan fictions aren’t really my cup of tea. I don’t have a binder full of Star Cards, and don’t really plan on getting to that point. But that’s what makes the SONE family so wonderful. We all have our own distinct way of letting our inner fanboy/fangirl out, and none of those ways is “the wrong one”.

Absolutely nothing wrong with this… though I probably wouldn’t do it

In a way, that makes us SONEs much like Girls’ Generation themselves. Both groups are made up of people with incredibly diverse personalities and backgrounds. Under any other circumstances, these differences might clash and create friction. Instead, they come together to form the perfect combination, one which simply can’t be duplicated. Just as we can see how the distinctions of each Girls’ Generation member work together in harmony, each SONE’s individual quirks and spazzing tendencies mesh with each other to form the family that we are.

So today, on Girls’ Generation’s fourth anniversary, let us all take a moment to reflect upon our fellow SONEs, whether they’re just down the street from where we live or on the opposite side of the world. Allow yourself to smile at the SONEs who can sing every Girls’ Generation song by heart, and be proud of the SONEs who spazz on Soshified until they can’t move their fingers. Praise your friends who say that JeTi and TaeNy are their reason for living. No matter how we choose to show it and no matter why we show it the way we do, we’re a family of SONEs united in our love for Girls’ Generation. Ultimately, the diversity of this Global Generation of fans and the way I feel connected to all of them: that is what being a SONE means to me, and the bond between SONEs and Girls’ Generation as well as SONEs and each other is something that will last for many more anniversaries in the future and beyond.

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