It’s time for another episode of QRIMOLE!  Let’s look at questions for Kpopalypse, and also the results of the end of year list survey!

Let’s start off with the usual QRIMOLE selection of random ask.fm questions from Kpopalypse readers!

Survey results pl0x kthxbai

The survey to guess my end-of-year picks was easier this year, as 2016 was the first year where I had a full year of roundup posts for Kpopalypse readers to do their detective work on.  This is what Kpopalypse’s 30 favourite songs of the year would have been, according to counting the votes of all readers’ #1 picks:

The colours indicate the actual chart positions in the real Kpopalypse 2016 favourites list.  Green is top 30, blue is honourable mention, light orange is dishonourable mention, dark orange is worst 30 (none above, but some below) and red is the #1 worst song.  There’s no colour for the #1 best song as nobody who completed the survey guessed it correctly.  White means the song didn’t appear in any best/worst list for 2016.  Well-picked, caonimas!

Here’s how the 30 worst songs of 2016 list would have looked:

Very accurate results from caonimas given the absolute wealth of shitty songs in 2016 to choose from that could have been included – I’m impressed!

The question where I asked you to guess the bonus OST track in the 2016 honourable mentions list, quite a lot of you correctly guessed Gain and Minseo’s “Imi Oneun Sori“.  With so few OST songs anywhere of any worth, I guess it wasn’t that hard to pick!  The other questions, where I asked “what song that I hate will you love” and vice versa, the results were so all over the place that they’re not even worth including – but Twice, BTS, IOI and Blackpink were all common selections!

Thoughts on Rotta’s photography? Apparently two Chaeyeon photographers have quit because of her Rotta calendar. Massive risk to my Chaeyeon fapping.

I understand that Rotta got into some controversy because he photographed some kids (in quite benign settings, with parental permission) and that was a problem for some people because he also works on k-pop shoots and adult model shoots.  That’s a really dumb objection for people to have and it really shows how much the k-pop world is run by nonsense values and extreme naivety.  For those who don’t know much about how the photographic industry works, here’s a heads-up because I work with photographers frequently and am quite aware of their struggles.  The truth is that the photographic industry has been in serious decline ever since every man and his dog started owning Photoshop plus an iShit with 23587 megapixels in it.  A (good) professional photographer will probably always be able to produce better results than an amateur, but these days a lot of media outlets don’t see the value in paying extra for a professional and are learning to make do with snaps from journalist’s phones, so it’s becoming harder and harder for specialised photographers to acquire regular work.  On top of this, the equipment technology within reach of the average consumer is getting so good now that amateurs and hobbyists can create decent results and someone who “weekends” as a photographer for a bit of extra cash on the side of their main job can do the same job for less than a dedicated professional.  Of course work in photography is still out there, but it’s more difficult to come by.  Because of these factors, most photographers don’t get the luxury of specialisation.  Very very few photographers will say “I only take wedding photos” or “I only shoot rock bands” if they’re professionals who are making a full-time living from photography.  It’s essential for these people to stay in the game to diversify their portfolio and pick up whatever work they can get.  That might mean shooting wedding photos on Sunday afternoon, shooting models in a strip club on Friday night, and shooting children for school yearbooks the following Thursday at lunchtime.  Rotta is no different to any other photographer in this regard, he’s just really good at shooting the adult stuff so it’s grabbed people’s attention.  He’s essentially being persecuted for being very good at his job, no doubt much to the secret delight of his competition, which is why you don’t hear too many people speaking in his defense!

While on ESPs website, I found a new extreme metal band Chthonic. Oddly enuff, singer is a congressmen in Taiwan and the singer looks like a pop singer/model, but all this metal led me right back to Kpop, Hyuna wore their shirt https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CuF9zOzUkAAvhSP.jpg Think she likes metal? Why do i ask? Many metal bands have tweeted in the past if Kanye and Kardashians are a fan of metal or just starting some weird trend. (Kanye wearing Testament, Slayonce merchandise in Slayers font, Slayer /Metallica shirts on Kardashians. Or is this some marketing insider campaign?

It’s true that metal fashion is fairly mainstream these days, but then we have to remember that so is metal itself.  Many of the metal kids who grew up in my generation and previous now have families, mortgages and high-paying jobs.  Some of them even have high-profile positions of notoriety, such as the singer from Chthonic, another example would be the current Indonesian president.  When I was young, metal was something that kids got into partly to rebel against their parents, but these days they’re just as likely to get into metal because their parents were metalheads who turned them onto it by playing it around the house when they were children.  I have no idea about the Kardashians and couldn’t really give a shit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just fashion and they just thought the shirts looked cool, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if they had a legitimate interest in heavy metal.

They’re deflecting responsibility – the fact is that they ruined their own relationships!  They just want something to blame outside of themselves.  Yes, porn can be damaging if you let it rule your life, but then so can anything.  There’s a difference between the person who expects their entire romantic life to play out like a porn film and the person who accepts that porn is just fantasy fap material.  Just like there’s a difference between the pot smoker who smokes it socially once a week or two with friends and the pot smoker who packs their cone the night before at their bedside so they can have a puff before their feet hit the floor the next morning.

Watching the above video certainly enhanced my appreciation of lemons.

Is there a noticeable difference between sound quality for headphones? I’ve read reviews saying one brand is amazing, other brands are garbage etc and just wondering if there’s any truth to it

The short answer is that it depends what you want them for, and that different headphones suit different functions.  However QRIMOLE isn’t really about short answers so here’s a longer answer.

There’s three basic types of headphones:

1. Passive listening headphones
2. Active listening headphones
3. Studio reference headphones

Passive listening headphones are the type that you would buy in any supermarket or hi-fi store, they are for listening to music.  They range from the shitty earbud things that come with your mobile device, to blinged-out fancy looking headphones that cover your entire ears (“closed” headphones) and cost a lot of money.  They all have the same function which is for music listening.  These headphones (if they’re any good) have a frequency response curve that makes music nicer to listen to.  Usually the bass and treble are boosted a little and the midrange is cut a little because most humans who listen to music in western countries prefer these characteristics from modern music.

Active listening headphones are also for music listening but they are a little different in that they have active circuitry in them that actually changes the audio beyond just a differing frequency response.  You’ll know if you have these type of headphones because they need to be powered by something, some need to be used with batteries while others take power from whatever device they are plugged into.  The most common type of active circuitry in headphones is noise cancellation that blocks external sounds electronically using a process which I’ve described before here.  Other active headphones provide “aural excitation” which is a specific type of frequency boosting that is used to make music sound more “present”, Beats By Dre are a classic example of this type of headphone.  Whether they sound better or worse than passive headphones is much a matter of opinion, but my belief is that if the music is good and hasn’t been produced poorly then extra-special headphones shouldn’t be needed to listen to it.

Studio reference headphones differ completely from the other type of headphones listed here.  The goal of studio reference headphones is not to provide the best listening experience, but rather to recreate the sound of the recording as accurately as possible.  Studio reference headphones therefore aim for a completely “flat” frequency response, where no frequencies are boosted or cut when listening.  These types of headphones always are expensive (if they do the job they are supposed to), because getting a near-perfect flat frequency field out of a set of headphones is actually a very difficult engineering task.  Because the sound that comes out of them is “flat”, studio reference headphones aren’t much fun to listen to music with – the average listener used to regular headphones would find in particular that they sound “boxy” and don’t have enough bass for their liking.  The reason why these headphones are flat in response is because by presenting an unchanged audio field, an engineer can make better mixing decisions.  If headphones are unnaturally bassy for example, the engineer might think “there’s too much bass – I need to cut the bass on the recording to compensate”, and the result will be that when listening to the finished product, there is almost no bass at all because the engineer removed it all because they were listening while working using headphones that amplified the bass that was there to a large extent.  However if an engineer knows the are getting a “flat” signal and they hear too much bass, they can say with confidence that yes, the bass on the recording is too loud, because these headphones shouldn’t be boosting the bass frequency at all.  So they’re very useful for studio work, but if you’re not interested in a career in audio mixing, don’t waste your money on studio reference headphones because they really do sound like dogshit for general listening purposes.

Can u copyright “drum patterns.” Like could u just rip an entire drum pattern from a song and just make your own melodies n riffs over it maybe changing a couple things?

You can’t copyright a drum pattern, otherwise it would be basically illegal to play the drums, because everything on the drums is pattern-based and there aren’t that many patterns per style of music.  However you can copyright the recording of a drum pattern.  Creative copyright isn’t enforceable on drum patterns, however mechanical copyright is enforceable on the recordings.  So you can’t just rip off someone else’s drum pattern by sampling their recording, because that’s violating the copyright present in the original recording.  However if you were to play that exact same drum pattern yourself on a drum kit and record that, then sample it and loop it or whatever else, then this would be completely legal even if it wasn’t one beat different because you’re sampling from your own recording, and that’s actually how a lot of people get around sampling laws these days.

Currently taking an intellectual property class (in the US btw) and we discussed an interesting case: Bridgepost Music v. Dimension films. Unsure how much you know about it, but I think it may be another reason hip hop is so shitty now. The case essentially made ANY use of a sample (regardless of length) to be infringement. A lot of the golden age of hip-hop extensively involved sampling and if you tried recreating that in the US today it would be very expensive specifically because of this case. I’m sure there are other reasons why hip-hop is shitty today (like your Dr. Dre theory), but where do you think this fits into hip-hop’s deterioration?

I think this just fits into the existing framework of sampling law which came into effect in the 80s and 90s, I don’t consider it to be a new development at all.  Sampling law from my understanding says that you must not take a “reasonable portion” without permission, which is defined as being something that is traceable back to the original material.  So in other words, if nobody can tell, it’s legal, but if nobody can tell then you’re not going to get sued anyway, because… nobody can tell.  So when you think about it, the “reasonable portion” law is just a fancy way of saying “don’t get caught”.  Bridgepost vs Dimension doesn’t really change this!

Of course, beats like the ones created in the 80s and 90s rap music are still possible to make using the process I described in response to the previous question – create the noise yourself and then sample that and as long as you’re not making a “copyrightable noise” (such as singing someone else’s iconic vocal melody) then it’s okay.  However this makes the process a lot more difficult and puts it a bit out of reach of people who aren’t musicians.  To counter this, there’s a market for royalty-free sample collections, where musicians play common bits and pieces and waive their own mechanical rights (for a fee, of course).

I read your post about being a songwriter, and I got reminded of your other article about plagiarism. So, if for example you were to send a song, and the company decided to release it without your permission after changing a few notes, what would happen?

Well you could take them to court over it, if you wanted, and try to get some royalty out of it.  This may or may not be worth it – if the song flops anyway you’ve wasted your money on court fees that you won’t get back even if they agree to start paying you, because a song that nobody listens to doesn’t generate royalties.  That’s why you only ever hear about these disputes when it concerns a hit song.  If someone steals your song and it flops, you weren’t in line to receive much in the way of money anyway.

Can you go through a good amount of the reasons why a lot of bands (usually Dance and Metal) debut in Europe and Japan? Usually these are artists originally from America. Well besides the reasons on how hard it is to debut in USA

I’m not so sure about Japan and dance music (that question will have to be one for Jpopalypse), but Europe has a really big market for heavy metal.  The population density of Europe as a continent is also far greater than the USA, with more large cities condensed into a smaller land mass, and visa restrictions are also lighter, which makes it a great place to go touring.  I know some friends in bands who do nothing but tour Europe constantly and return to Australia just to see their family every few years.

About that QRIMOLE question earlier about putting trainees in MV’s, could it be that the powers that be do that so when they debut and get a strong fan base, the fans obsessed with reading their profiles can go back to oppa’s cameo? Like if you check the comments for OC’s My Copycat, they’re mostly about trying to find Seventeen and Produce 101 members.

Maybe, who knows?  Sounds like a plan but I understand that it’s not hugely common at least as far as backing dancers go.  Mind you if you’ve got a cast of dozens of young boys and girls at your disposal and you’re trying to do a big ensemble production like “My Copycat” where the individual parts aren’t really all that demanding (and thus require not much special instruction) then there’s probably no good reason not to use them!

Oppar, I made the mistake of engaging with a crazy Taeyeon stan in the comments of that Asian Junkie article. I tried to reason with them, but they were beyond reason. Why do people identify so strongly with idols who will never meet them or give a shit about them?

K-pop is all about trying to get that “special connection” going between the listener and the artist.  Of course this connection doesn’t exist in reality, but k-pop has become very good at simulating it to the point where people often feel like it’s reality.  That’s why when scandals happen people get so suckered in by them.  If you don’t put your faves on a crazy unrealistic pedestal, it will be less devastating when it’s revealed that they’re only human and make the same fucking dumb mistakes your high school friends did.  More info here.

What is experimental music? People say fx, shinee and red velvet do experimental music. The last two doesnt really bring a new sound imo

I guess if all your listening diet consists of is Drake, Beyonce and k-pop I can see how something like f(x) might come off as “experimental”.  The truth is that there isn’t really a set-in-stone definition of what experimental music is, but whatever it is, I feel that it certainly doesn’t emcompass anything within the pop music realm.  I personally would liken experimental music with:

• The “music concrete” of the 1940s-1960s and “dada” music
• John Cage’s various musical experiments
• Throbbing Gristle and the birth of industrial music

Obviously there’s a lot of subjectivity here.

If artists are constantly in debt to their company does that mean the company managers, stylists, coaches, etc make more money than the artists themselves?

In a lot of cases, yes!  The artist may have more income than all of them put together, but a lot of that income (often all of it) goes into paying back debt, so their “income less expenses” is zero.  Whereas a stylist or a coach may earn very little but doesn’t have a debt so they get to keep all of that money.  Of course they probably also don’t live in a dorm and have their food and expenses paid for by the company either… so it’s hard to say who is better off without getting a close look at the numbers and exactly what’s involved, but rest assured that the artists generally get stiffed in most cases.

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The following are all responses to the “Hi!  How are you?” question in the survey.

Oppar, I want to confess something to you. I think I might be bi, but I don’t have the guts to come out. I was sure I’m 100% straight but then I met someone at school who I’m attracted to. Of course I won’t confess to her or anything like that (she’s into guys for sure) but this has never happened to me before. Now I only think about her and how it would if we were a couple but the thing is other than her, I don’t have any feelings for a girl…I honestly don’t know what to do about it. I don’t want to disappoint my family or become a number-one-target of bullies at my school. Please give me some advice TT TT

Well first things first, does she feel the same way, or doesn’t she?  It doesn’t seem like it, so if there’s no chance of anything actually happening between you two, why bother to come out?  Now that you know you’re probably bisexual, there’s no harm in keeping that information to yourself for now.  After all if you won’t confess to her, there’s no point confessing that you like her to anyone else, it’ll achieve nothing except maybe start gossip.  The time when coming out is going to matter is when you meet another girl and they do have feelings for you, then coming out actually has some implications for your life beyond the theoretical.  I’d ride out the current situation slowly and just see what happens.  There’s no rush for this shit, there’s a good possibility that by the time you’ve figured yourself out, you won’t be in school anymore and will have some independence and therefore bullies and parental approval won’t be such an issue.

Do you have any tips that you can provide on beating a serious writer’s block?

All writing starts from an idea, even my crappy writing.  When I can’t write it’s because I don’t have ideas, so I try and do things that are conducive to idea-generation.  I’d suggest try and change the patterns of behaviour in your life somehow, something that isn’t related to actual writing.  I don’t think it’s the same answer for everyone.  It also would help if I knew what you were trying to write about, as the answer may change, depending!

Good despite of apparently suffering from global warming and the fear of the apocalypse led which is the real one not the kpopalypse one

I’m not sold on the idea of there being some kind of massive global apocalypse anytime soon.  When I was growing up the biggest fear was a nuclear war between the USA and USSR and that didn’t end up happening.  Of course I worried about it a lot but this didn’t change the outcome.  About ten years ago people were saying that there’s only a few years worth of oil left and once it ran out humans would be headed to disaster, that didn’t happen either and I worried about it at the time but it didn’t make any difference.  Fears of the end of the world for various reasons are classic “boy who cried wolf” territory.  I’m not saying global warming isn’t real, I’m just saying it’s pointless to worry about things that you can’t control.  If the planet gets hotter your life won’t change much except you’ll perhaps wear one less layer of clothes more often, and so will your favourite k-pop stars so look forward to that.  Humanity isn’t going to just suddenly stop existing because of a temperature change… and even if it does, what are you going to do about it?  Probably nothing, so just accept life as it comes, and try to enjoy the ride as best you can, because you’ll feel stupid when you look back on your life later if things turn out basically okay and you spent all that time worrying instead of having fun.

annoyed by your insistence in including this question in every survey i’ve seen on the site. seriously, fuck off

lol sucks to be you

To be honest lately I’ve been feeling scared as fuck. I started attending university two months ago and my first three big exams are coming up. I’ve got this fear that I will fail at all three of them. Meanwhile, I know that I shouldn’t be scared because I’ve got four attempts to take the exams if I fail. Yep, four. And still, I can’t get rid of this stupid anxiety.

Hopefully my university guide can help you.  Four attempts!  Holy shit you’ll be fine, come back to me and ask me this again after you’ve fucked up the first three, but I doubt you will.  I bet right now you’ve already passed all three exams and you’re on a tropical island somewhere reading this while sipping a cocktail.

Met a childhood friend of mine yesterday and we talked about our old personalities. I’ve realized that I was such an asshole when I was younger as I used to pick on people’s physical appearances and be violent just for fun. I was totally like an iljin and I don’t even know how should I reflect about it.

Just like worry is pointless concern about the future, guilt is pointless concern about the past.  You can change neither!  Just worry about focusing on the things that you can change.  You can’t change the person you were but you can be a better person today.  If you’re still feeling weird, proceed to your nearest church of Rainaism and do ten Hail Rainas.

Ohmigosh, hi. It’s me, your lovely caonima. I have posters of your cat all over my room and I fantasize about you in bed at night.

As you rightly should.

Need encouragement…

I’m not well, I’m seriously contemplating suicide

Don’t do it!  You spelled “contemplating” terribly and I fixed it for you.  See, somebody cares.  Also you’ll die eventually anyway so you might as well stick around to see what happens.  There’s no rush to get to the same destination we’re all going to.  Also perhaps seek medical advice (as opposed to the advice of some dickhead blogger who will probably just make you feel worse).

Hey! I’m great! Only 16 but already under pressure for university apps, plus IB is fucking me up. Any advice, oppar?

I’m feeling a little bit down these days. It’s my last year in high school but my grades are constantly getting lower which makes it impossible for me to get into a good university. I know I have to study harder, but I feel like I’m wasting my time for nothing.

Don’t stress.  Remember the university guide – there are several ways for a crafty caonima to enter university.

I’m managing!! I’m nearing finals (two this week!) and it’s my first semester in uni and it’s weird af
I had a Japanese oral test today and I basically went blind during it while trying to answer questions so I probably got a solid 60%
Remind me to go back and reread your uni tips post
I’ll need that, I’ll probably donate another 5-ish dollars to you just for that if it works lmao

Anyway, how are you? Answer however you want (with pics of Raina), I don’t care, man.

The last time I answered this survey I was on the brink of death from uni. Now I’ve graduated! I’m working up my portfolio and hoping to make $$$ from art commissions. I continue to drop by your blog/AKF occasionally, I’m glad your content never loses quality. Cheers!

I have no response to this other than “Great!” but I just wanted to put this here to show caonimas that success is possible!

I’m feeling pretty shitty. I’m a skinny caonima (think recent Lizzy, but slightly less concerning) and I just can’t seem to gain weight. I’m not sure if you can help me out on this, but I’m desperate at this point. Could you please help me oppar?

Don’t worry too much about it.  I was the same, people thought I was anorexic when I was in high school but I actually just couldn’t gain weight.   Eventually I decided that I didn’t give any fucks and just enjoyed life.  Better to be a bit too skinny than too fat and having mobility issues.  Later in life your metabolism will change and you’ll have the opposite problem so enjoy being skinny with no effort while it lasts.

After joining the kpop world last year, I was lucky to find your blog a few months afterward. If I never did, I’d be thinking mr removed videos are all real, vocal pedagogy matters, and many more things for perhaps a lot longer. Glad I found your blog earlier rather than later in the game. You do you man.

Cheers!

Hello. Today, I am very happy! Together with my housemates, we decorated the common room with tinsel, lights, snowflakes and hearts to celebrate Christmas. In the morning, I also had received several notes from my friends and I could feel the love emanate from them, which put me in a good mood the whole day! Lastly, I got to spend lots of time with the girl I like untangling Christmas lights and talking about various topics. In the end, she looked very happy that the common room looked so pretty and subsequently gave me a hug – and that’s all I wanted, really!
So, yeah, that’s my mood at the moment, and the reasons behind it. You probably think I’m a stupid cunt, but I don’t really care anyway, so, have yourself a nice day, and a merry little Christmas!

Actually this is awesome!

Hey. I’m doing pretty good, although I feel obliged to bitch about college or finals or something like everyone else does around here, despite having graduated in 2012. Oh well. I feel old.

Not as old as me when I get my survey answers back and there’s 100 of them that are all Uni stuff!

I’m good! I’m not sure if you care but just a follow up: I asked you for advice once about a guy I liked and it worked out! We are dating now and very happy. Thanks for your advice!

Depressed and jobless. K-pop is my alcohol to run of my problems.

It’s a better alcohol than actual alcohol.  Being unemployed kinda sucks but at least you have lots of free time, you’ll miss that when you get a job again, so try to find work but also enjoy being a bum while you can!

Pretty good thanks, as I’m about to enter a new chapter in my life where it seems very likely that I’ll get laid more often. I’m just wondering though, were you serious about rubbing your dick between a girl’s stomach fat rolls? If you were, what’s the best way to ask someone to do it without coming across as rude? I feel like suddenly doing it with no explanation would weird her out.

A lot of girls are embarrassed about their stomachs, which is a real shame, because a lot of guys (like me) find them attractive.  Given that this shame women feel is unfortunately largely trufax, penis-on-stomach-roll action is therefore a fairly advanced bedtime maneuver which I wouldn’t attempt until a few months have passed and you know the girl fairly well.  By that stage you’ll probably have a pretty good idea of how she’d react to such a move and therefore if doing it is a good idea or not.

As an aside this has to get some kind of award as one of the best questions I’ve ever gotten from a survey.

Feeling kinda shitty. I’m finding myself with fewer friends and I don’t know how to increase my social circle anymore. It was so much easier at uni. Even my coworkers don’t bother inviting me to their outings. 😦

Then don’t socialise with co-workers.  Find something that you’re interested in outside of work and explore that, and try to meet some people who are involved in that kind of thing that have nothing to do with your work environment.

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And here’s some questions that were generated from my “free text at the end of the survey, write what you want” area.

Why is everybody’s opinion on Reddit shit? Do any of them bother thinking before they speak? The discussion posts have one decent reply at best. Also why are they so afraid of talking about ranking fapability? They act like they don’t do it, such cunts.

I assume we’re talking about Reddit/kpop here rather than general Reddit which seems a bit more mature.  Reddit/kpop is prone to all sorts of strange behaviour that I don’t quite understand but I’m putting it down to a general lack of maturity perhaps?  (This is backed up by their occasional demographic polls.)  Other Reddit communities don’t seem to have the same issue.

Can you update us about your relationship with 15&Jimin?

She didn’t accept my Instagram request.  I calmly accept her non-acceptance.

So I finally read your account of seeing 4Minute and have been thinking about it ever since — specifically Jihyun and Sohyun being all, “Hi, Kpopalypse! Great to see you!” and you reacting with understandable distrust. When I saw Infinite in 2013 one of the things that struck me was their seemingly real desire to connect with the audience — not just the fanservice gestures, but the way they (some members more than others) talked to the audience or kept looking out at the audience, despite their being likely exhausted (this was the New York stop, their fourth in the US, on their first tour) and nervous (this was also the show with so much pushing fans had to be rescued from the pit before they suffocated; I was well back of that and didn’t realize the danger at the time). I thought at the time, and subsequently, that it would have been understandable and fair for them to perform as robotically as possible and shut the audience out, and they didn’t. (It would also have been understandable and fair of them to go get blind drunk after the show, which, I’ve heard, is exactly what they did.) Reading your account led me to question my own memory — was I overromanticizing their behavior, because I’ve got so much tied up in affection for Infinite? Was their seeming desire for connection as staged as their dancing? And then I thought, is the more distrustful response necessarily the true one? To look at Sohyun’s gestures on stage from another possible perspective — Sohyun is in a country she doesn’t know and isn’t allowed to see, tired, bored, doing dances she ceased to find interesting two thousand rehearsals ago, and then she sees a random fan and smiles, and the random fan responds with joy: might not Sohyun find that rewarding? Maybe less so as she does it more and more often, the law of diminishing returns being what it is, but still, K-pop performers are asked to spend good percentages of their waking hours developing a skillset of very limited use, over which they usually have little or no creative control: doesn’t it make sense that they’d take some comfort onstage where they could find it? I’m not sure I’m right; this may be just a case of me performing confirmation bias. But I thought it would amuse you to hear how you made a reader re-evaluate. Anyway, thanks for your continued interesting writing! I hope you and your cat(s) and your loved one(s) have a happy New Year and a 2017 full of blessings!

Those semi-planned interactions with the audience are indeed part of the “performance” itself, and I’m sure it feels good for the performers to do that and get a little something back from the crowd with a “wow, he/she noticed me” look or whatever.  Just like it feels good onstage for any part of a performance to go well and be appreciated.  Just because the gestures aren’t spontaneous and the connection they’re building with the audience is illusory doesn’t mean that the performers still don’t have gratitude and appreciate the fans who come to the show and are part of that semi-interactive experience (well, some more than others perhaps!).

my suitemate I’m living with in residence is wonderful, but she also likes kpop, and yikes. i’ll mention something off-hand about how like, singing doesn’t really matter in kpop (it really doesn’t) because everything can get touched up on stage or in the studio anyway, so who cares, but she always jumps in with “but not (her fav group)!!!!” and damn. she also only likes boy groups. all the girl groups she kind of likes have shit music. sometimes i want to try and help her realize some things, but most of the time i just avoid talking about kpop with her.  is there an easy way to get her to stop inserting how perfect-100%-pure-talent-no-extra-tricks-necessary her favourite group is into every (music) conversation? or do i just persevere and ignore that side of her? damn

There is no solution for you.  Welcome to hell, enjoy your stay.  Maybe try to get her to read my blog a bit?  That’s all I can suggest.

Let this be a lesson to all readers – you’re better off like me with a boyfriend/girlfriend/housemate who isn’t into k-pop!  Don’t rush to “convert” every person you meet!

Hey theres this guy i used to like so i flirted with him now he thinks i like him but his new hair cut looks like shit. How do i break it off without hurting his feelings?

Hair grows back.  You might break it off and then he starts looking good again so be careful what you wish for.  You’re going to hurt his feelings anyway by the sound of things so tell it to him straight that his haircut sucks ass and that if he wants any play he has to do his hair exactly as you say.  Most guys are remarkably non-petty about such things so there’s about an 80% chance he’ll be really grateful for the information and do exactly as you suggest.  You’re welcome.

What do you think about my fat dick?

Needs work.  Daily Gain videos for you until you develop some muscle tone.

I don’t know what to do with my life

I would quickly like to ask for more advice, this time concerning by best friend. We’ve been besties since college, and she had always wanted to be an idol. She’s Korean-American, and recently got the opportunity to go to Korea and train in a really well known academy there that has a lot of connections. It’s a name everyone would know but it’s not a company, it’s a facility training people to be able to pass those auditions. She’s been at it for a few months now, and of course being a kpopalypse reader I know a lot about the difficulty of being in this industry, and also because she tells me a lot of her struggles. I am currently on the other side of the world, and I can’t be there for her the way I want to. I don’t want us to grow apart but I also want to help her succeed because she is an amazing singer and this is her dream! But I also don’t know how to keep her positive spirit from being broken by a cynical industry. Any advice on how to support my friend? Thanks.

There’s not a lot you can do except keep the line of communication open.  Realistically she may not have a lot of time for you – or anyone, while she’s in the thick of that stuff.  Also don’t forget to tell her that if she gets burned out on the biz and wants to give it up there’s always Kpopalypse interview!

Keep up the good work, pal. 3 years ago I knew nothing about kpop, then one day I randomly *cough* found one of your boobs posts. Now i’m à dedicated follower and à kpop fan. Thank you ❤

❤

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That’s all for this episode of QRIMOLE!  Kpopalypse will return soon with more postings!