I discovered ayu when she released YOU and then I didn't follow her up until she released LOVEppears. At the time, the almost naked album cover / single cover were really big deal.
And then I met a group of ayu fans in Hong Kong on a MSN newsgroup (For those who doesn't know what it is: You need to use Outlook to connect it, and tt stopped at 2002)
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-a...group-support/
However, the group members had lots of drama when ayu visited Hong Kong for the first time. One or two guys took all the group members budget / prints to support ayu and organize to show ayu only for them (these two guys). These two guys threw member's gift for ayu and did not give them to ayu when they met ayu. Many group members were pissed and tried to approach ayu to complain.
Around the same time, I joined this site, and we had the joke about EGG in I am... era. We got the rumor about the 4th album called NATURAL with a song called EGG.