Trolls derail girl’s K-Pop campaign

CALLOUS messages from online trolls have forced a Barwell teenager to halt her social media campaign for a ‘shout-out’ from her favourite boy band.

Alex Wade, 15, recently crowned the village’s carnival queen, was hoping her Twitter drive would catch the attention of cult K-pop seven-piece group BTS.

Any comeback from the South Korean boy band would have delighted Alex, who was born with a rare heart condition and is due to have double valve replacement surgery.

The teeanger also suffers from a form of autism and other learning difficulties.

She even hoped the campaign might have inspired a face-to-face meeting with her idols.

But just a few weeks in, Alex and her mum, Leanne Pratt have abandoned the attempt and deleted the Twitter thread.

The venture started off well with thousands of fellow BTS fans nicknamed the BTS Army retweeting the plea ‘Help Alex meet @ BTS-twt before a major surgery’.

Then things turned sour. Leanne said messages became abusive, racist and ranting with one even saying they hoped Alex died.

She added: “It did get so awful that we just had to stop. It was really too stressful and we are already stressed enough with what we are facing with Alex. To make it all even more depressing we didn’t hear a word from BTS about Alex either.

“Despite everything she is still a fan and even though she is upset she still tries to look at it maturely that they just didn’t have time to contact her.”

The upsetting experience didn’t stop Alex spending hours voting 100 times for BTS in the recent Billboard Music Awards.

Her support, and that of the band’s other loyal fans on Twitter, ensured the K-pop group were the first ever South Korean act to win a Billboard award, nabbing the Top Social Artist accolade and beating Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Shawn Mendes.