It’s time for QRIMOLE!  Read on as Kpopalypse tackles more questions from readers!

Hello kpopalypse, i hope you are doing good and no one accuses you of being a bully in high school (jk)

Since you have to watch and listen to tons and tons of music i wanted to know a little bit about your preferences

I have read your blog for a long time and im well aware you are not into vocal analysis and that kind of stuff but i was wondering what singers (either from active groups or disbanded ones) have nice/”original”/pleasant/distinguishable in a good way or just your faves overall vocal timbres.

Sure: none.  I don’t really care about vocal timbre.  Contrary to popular belief in some places that I prefer girl groups because I like “high girly voices”, no I actually don’t care and never have.  I prefer girl groups because I feel that the songs written for girl groups are (on average) better, not because of the voices.  I wouldn’t care if every girl in every girl group had a voice like T.O.P as long as the songs were still better than average.

K-pop singers are trained to sound the same, much like Hollywood actors and actresses were trained to sound the same in 1950s Hollywood.  There was a certain “on-screen voice” that was the standard and considered ideal, almost all people adopted it because they had to if they wanted to work.  Hollywood gradually gave this up when they started to realise that some of the outliers actually carried a lot more charm, but k-pop hasn’t gotten to that phase yet and one singer really sounds much like another to me.  Apart from very obvious edge cases who mostly aren’t very idol-like (e.g PSY when not in ballad mode) I couldn’t pick any of them in a double-blind listening test and I doubt anyone else could either – stuff like “King Of Masked Singer” doesn’t count because there are always clues giving it away, but even the fact that this show confuses many people even so, just shows how soundalike so many k-pop singers are.  I remember when early mixes of T-ara’s “Bunny Style” leaked before release date, there was super-hot debate on forums at the time about who was singing what part – and everybody, even hardcore T-ara fans who had followed the group since debut, got it wrong.

Hi Oppar,
I wanted to get your opinion on this as someone who actually has a background in journalism. I recently graduated with a communications degree from a fairly prestigious university and I’m not sure what my next steps should be. I thought for a long time that I wanted to go to law school, but after doing a brief internship during my senior year, I realized that I really want to be a journalist. However, journalism is highly competitive and I lack the experience to get a decent-paying position. I recently scored a job writing for my city’s local newspaper, but its part-time and I only get paid a freelance rate, so not ultimately sustainable. My question is this; do you think that it would be worth it to pursue a graduate degree in journalism? I come from a pretty poor family and I live in the late capitalist hellscape that is the U.S. where one normally has to pay upwards of $50,000USD if they want a higher education. I was fortunate enough to get a full scholarship for my undergrad, meaning I came out with my Bachelor’s completely debt-free, and I’m worried that grad school would undo that. I do stand a decent chance of getting most of my grad school covered by scholarships too, would it be worth it if I came out with, say, under 10,000 in debt? Maybe 20,000? How much does a Master’s degree actually help when breaking into journalism? Thank you!

I think you might have your wires crossed here.  I’m no journalist and I do not have a journalist background or any journalistic aspirations whatsoever.  My background is in the music industry – performance, academia, contracted session work, touring, production, engineering, teaching and radio.  The closest I come to journalism is probably that I do interview people from time to time, but the way I interview them isn’t very consistent with how journalism typically operates – basically, I do a far better job, because unlike journalists I’m more respectful of the process and my subjects than most journalistic publications are.  So I’m in no place to advise people about journalism.  I do know a few journalists personally, some are okay people stuck with a shitty job and others are trash humans who I avoid talking to when I can.  However from what I’ve heard around the traps journalism is sketchy work that pays peanuts and to get anywhere you pretty much have to cast all semblance of moral values aside.  I wouldn’t know how useful qualifications are but I’d suspect not a lot.  Honestly if I were at university I would do literally anything else, but if you’re passionate about it, it makes more sense to follow your passion as that’s going to make you happier than drudging through law or whatever, so you’ll be more motivated to stick with it.  Good luck and remember me when you come out the other side if you get anywhere, I wouldn’t mind doing an interview for the New York Times about how k-pop fandoms suck.

Hi oppar. Now I’m experiencing the first online targeted hate for the first time in my life and I still feel so overwhelmed by everything (as I’m the type to be conscious when it comes to commnunity harmony so my opinion this time really blows up and I receive a lot of hate from many people, simply because I state out what I think). I have read some of your post about bullying and I still feel so overwhemled by all the information I get that I decide to private my Twitter account and log off for a time. I know I’m not following your words but I still feel so scared and the thought of deleting my account still consumes my mind, and I tried hard to fight the urge to do so. I know you have written posts regarding this issue but I really want to ask how can I overcome my confusing feeling right now. I both feel vindictive for saying what I think but I also feel guilty for hurting some strangers (despite I know what I did is not wrong but I can’t stop the guilt that I feel right now). Now I even more appreciate your bravery and calmness when you dare to say what you think, both on Kpop issues and sensitive issues on Qrimole (I love that section a lot. Although I don’t always agree with what you said but some of your insights are very worth reading). Thank you.

Online mass cyber attacks are a genuinely difficult thing to deal with, which is why I wrote my post about how to handle it.  It’s true that there is a lot of information there, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with going on private while you consider your options, just be aware that if you have a lot of followers you may not be completely safe even on private.  All I’d say to you is don’t suffer alone – reach out to others, and especially tell people in your real life what you’re going through and how you’re feeling.  At the end of the day it’s the flesh and blood friends that will have your back the most, not the people on your Twitter feed, so maintain the connection and that will probably help you sort through some of the confusion.  Sharing my post with them might be helpful if they are struggling to understand the context of what you’re experiencing.

How do I become less socially withdrawn & awkward at work? I often tell myself to shut the fuck up cus I’d rather be quiet and stay out of trouble but at the same time I wish I could connect with others. I’m scared of accidentally annoying, upsetting or offending anyone. And always repeating conversations in my head after.

Just look at socialisation as part of the job, a thing that you have to do, rather than a true “social event”, that might help put it in a better headspace for you.  Ultimately I feel like it is actually part of work, you don’t want to be the person who is always absent from every work function.  You don’t have to “impress” at these things, it’s more important just to show up and say hello.

Do you think idols deserve to be cancelled for being bullies prior to debut?
(Personal opinion warning: I don’t really am a fan of any idol and can’t bring up any fucks I should give about their past behaviours, I actually feel bad for them as ruining someones job and career prospects feels irrationally disproportionate. However I do care about proper work ethics and not doing criminal things while they’re active as idols.)

No.  I don’t really care what they did in school or whatever.  I think it’s good that people are talking about these things, but not from a “let’s cancel people” point of view.  I think it’s more important that bullying allegations come out because:

• if people don’t discuss bullying in Korea openly and how pervasive it is, the problem will only ever get worse
• it probably helps the victims heal (in the cases that are legit)
• it’s a helpful reminder that idols are not perfect and the idol system that promotes perfection above all is a catalyst for mental illness, for both the idols and their fans

Those concerns outweigh other factors for me.

Hi Oppar. Thank you for transcripting Han Seo Hee’s videos. Reading them make me have a better impression on her, and I actually do agree with some of her points (like how she mocks people’s hypocrisy that if they are just as rich and beautiful as her, they would be just as arrogant like her; or how she points out that she just has struggles and problems like anyone, and her struggles and problems shouldn’t be dismissed just because she’s rich and more privileged than other people; and of course the trend-following question) and find some of her answers pretty hilarious. Although I’m not always agree with everything she said, she does make some points and points out people’s hypocrisy and double standards which I pretty much appreciate.

No problem.  Han Seo Hee adds so much value to the k-pop world, people don’t realise it or don’t want to admit it, but her impact has been entirely positive.  We need another hundred Han Seo Hees to normalise this.  I’m still looking for that Episode 2 video but I don’t think I’m going to get it, sadly.

Have you tried asking to interview Seohee? I think it could be really interesting.

Yeah I’ve asked her back in her Instagram days.  Never got a reply.  I’m sure she gets swamped with requests.  I would definitely do it if the opportunity arose.  However like with anybody, they have to actually want to do the interview, and the chances of some random who already has a lot of media reach wanting to talk to me specifically just because I asked them are basically almost none, unless they’ve already seen my other interviews and are really sold on the idea of being part of that type of content (which has happened, but is rare).  I generally can’t pick and choose who I want to interview due to this.  People wanting me to interview a specific person would probably be better off approaching them rather than me, passing on my details and other recent interviews, and putting the seed of the idea in their heads that it would be a good thing from their perspective.

Hi Kpopalypse, you should consider interviewing Gina Maeng.
She works as a lyricist and vocal guide and was previously a kpop trainee from the age of 15 in various companies including JYP. She has a very long video detailing her experiences in the industry here.  She also appeared in one of Coco’s clips where she talked about being invited to take part in a rigged program at 16:00.

Again – don’t approach me – approach them.  The success rate is much greater if you approach this matter the other way around.  If I actually had the power to get people to respond to my requests and interview whoever I wanted, you would already have mad interviews with all sorts of cool people.

Is you have the chance to fuck either Angela White or Hitomi Tanaka, who would you fuck?

Assuming I was single etc (because I’m in a long-term relationship and very monogamous) it’d have to be Hitomi.  Angela White is the spitting image of a good friend of mine (who also worked in the sex industry for a while, but who I never did anything with personally of a sexual nature even before I met my partner) and so fucking her would actually be kind of strange because of that, because I actually met my current partner through this person so it would just feel like all kinds of weird and that would definitely prevent me from enjoying the experience as intended.  Whereas Hitomi is equally attractive but isn’t a dead ringer for anyone I personally know so it would be easier to enjoy the experience on its own merits.

I’ve had some issues with a person who I’ve considered my closest friend for a long time. We talk to each other in our school environment and friend group and are happy enough there, but our relationship doesn’t seem to “carry over” to other activities that we share. I also seem to be more out of my comfort zone socially during these other activities, but I still feel hurt whenever I see my friend talk with all these other guys he’s known for way less, and I’m just left by myself, and has stirred some negative feelings toward him on my part. How might I go about fixing things with him?

I wouldn’t worry about it.  Just keep the relationship between you and this friend as-is, and focus more of your energies on other friends.  You can’t force a friendship to be something that it isn’t and probably won’t ever be, but you can supplant the empty feelings you might experience with new friends and new experiences.  Then you can be that person with a bunch of friends that other people can be jealous of.

How will I possibly be able to judge if Red Velvet’s Joy MRS if you don’t update the bias list compendium anymore?

You might have to learn the art of thinking for yourself.  Radical, I know.

Hey Kpopalypse hyung. I submitted a question to last month’s QRIMOLE about having feelings for a guy and my struggles with coming out (I also sent a response thingy like this one now, but without my current hindsight, so please ignore that one thanks). Basically, I told him how I felt, and he told me that I wasn’t the very specific kind of guy he was looking for. It kind of stung at first, but at the point I finally told him, I had been bottling up my feelings to the point that there wouldn’t have been much there anyways even if I was the guy he was looking for. I guess that shit just doesn’t work out sometimes. I didn’t really get to ask him about coming out, but based on some past implications of how he handled his own situation, I’m considering just coming out to my family and close people.
For my question, I’ve been working on some songwriting over the pandemic, and have been experimenting with communicating feelings through things like chord progressions or melodic writing, specifically nostalgia. You’ve described songs in the past like Crayon Pop’s 1, 2, 3, 4 as having nostalgic writing, would you have any information about how the song communicates those feelings exactly (this might be a bit complicated for QRIMOLE so sorry if it is)?

I don’t actually remember describing it like that, but it’s possible that I did.  I think that if I did say that, I may have been thinking of the keyboard textures reminding me of the 1980s Van Halen songs I grew up with, rather than anything to do with specific melody or harmony choice.  Now that’s obviously a very subjective determination which isn’t going to work for everyone.  So what I’m saying is that I don’t know if there’s a fixed way you can trigger this for all people, unless you’re catering to a very specific group of people with very specific taste (for instance, if you wanted to trigger nostalgia in 20-something k-pop fans, you could try writing like something which was a big hit in their teens).

Hello Mr. Kpopalypse!

Do you know any songs with a bittersweet atmosphere?

Something like What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. Sounds sad but happy at the same time.

Any genre is fine, I’m just searching for that specific feeling.

Also if you have any advice on writing such songs that would be great too.

Thanks in advance.

It’s really hard to answer this, because I fucking hate that song.  Maybe this?

I don’t know, “sad but happy at the same time” is even more subjective than “nostalgia” in my opinion.  I’m not sure how to write a song like “What A Wonderful World” without it sounding pretty much exactly the same.  In all seriousness maybe some of the ballads in 1940s and 1950s Hollywood musicals might be your style.

Hi oppar, I don’t remember asking you this before but do you have a favorite Tarantino character?

I think Gogo Yubari needed her own miniseries.

Oppa, so I was just reading up on random kpop companies for no particular reason. And I noticed that a lot of them have subsidiary companies to manage just one artist or one actress or one group. And it’s not like that one talent is recruiting and creating their own kpop groups or idols. So why do companies do this? Would you have any idea?

Having a dedicated team focusing on one artist is a way to increase output.  JYP does this with Twice, which is why they’re so much more prolific than miss A or Wonder Girls were (where he didn’t do this), he just doesn’t designate a company for it, but many other labels do split off a certain team to work with a certain person or group or people.  It’s the same reason that a manager of any other company would have different sub-managers in charge of different moneymaking aspects of a business.  Having a more concentrated focus reaps benefits – as long as those sub-managers know what they’re doing of course.

On Twitter reading how you mocked many Kpop fans as being “performative” make me think a lot. It’s like nowadays people care so much about showing how they are morally right and nonproblematic on social media that they are willing to execute those who don’t follow them, to the point of making me felt suffocated just by the thought of expressing my opinions, because if I write something so… different, people will accuse me of anything from “abuse apologist” to being “misogyny” (while I’m definitely not misogynistic or think abuse is normal in any sense). I even think they are hypocritical for doing so because if they really care for abuse like they said, why they are willing to harass and mock a real-life human being to the point of making them feeling scared and nervous? It’s like they (the crowd) are gaslighting the target into thinking they (the target) are truly what crimes they are accused of and making them felt like they are less of a human-being. Just because of different in opinions? The more I think about the subject, the less belief I have towards people on social media, as I think most of them don’t even truly understand what they are talking about (topic like feminism, sexism,… like how you pointed out their hypocrisy in some of your posts), and they even commit the crime that they preach others of not supposed to do (mentally torture other people for not conforming to them while preaching about not support abuse and stuffs)

K-pop fans don’t actually give any fucks about being socially responsible.  Not in any real way, certainly not in any way that involves any actual investment.  Lip service to good-looking causes, trending hashtags, sure, they can do low-cost, low-effort things like that which involve no sacrifice on their part, they can even spend a bit of their parents’ credit card money, that’s no big deal.  However they won’t really throw down in any meaningful way.  They’ll talk about how they champion women’s rights and #metoo etc but they won’t stop getting their k-pop news from a revenge-porn site because to go somewhere else and never visit that site again would be an inconvenience, and convenience matters much more to the majority of k-pop fans than justice.  We know for sure that this is true, because if k-pop fans actually gave the slightest shit about how women are treated, that site would have stopped existing completely in 2013.

People on the internet like to behave like sheep in a flock. Knets seem to lack originality and spread similar rumours in batch. (nowadays, lots of idols are accused of school bullying ). Any idea where that herd mentality comes from? I’ve always found it peculiar how people come together to bash celebrities online.

The real reasons for the sudden influx of bullying accusations are less to do with “originality” and herd mentality, and more to do with changes to Korean news portals, plus some other factors.  You can read more about this here.  That’s not to say that there might not be a sheep aspect involved too but there’s a good reason why this has all specifically emerged just now.

Not a question. I just wanted to say thanks to the translator caonima~ I love how you post about HSH.

Consider this passed on, as I’m sure they are reading.

Conspiracy theory time: why would Han Seo Hee need a YouTube channel? Whole “I did many wrong things in the past” sounds kinda stretched. It’s obvious, that k-pop industry is screwed up in so many ways, and that was this way even before she got into k-pop. The only difference, that she got media coverage, while others know how to keep their mouth closed.
What if she is some kind of agent infiltrated into industry just to keep knife at someone’s throat? For example some higher ups from competing company would like to have someone to do dirty stuff to keep everyone in good shape. And that way, it’s possible that she isn’t only such person. However, as whole industry is already doomed, situation is pretty stable, since nobody want to speak up the problems without getting something in return

Nah that’s a silly theory.  Definitely not correct.  Her scope of activity is far too scattershot for this to even have the slimmest chance of being true.  It’s not she’s only affected just one idol, group or label, she’s literally been all over the place.  The fact is, no she certainly doesn’t “need” YouTube, and she knows it (look how quickly she deleted everything once she decided she was over it).  She did it because she wanted to do it, it’s as straightforward as that.

Hi oppar! I’ve seen someone asking you to elaborate on your thoughts about anime from your collection of the most common Q&A on ask.fm, so I’m very sorry to bother you furthermore about something you dislike so much, but I made a certain parallel after reading those.

While I am an anime fan myself, I’m not trying to paint you as the bad guy for saying that most of anime sucks because it’s technically true!
Actually I believe I can see even more reasons to dislike anime than an average person who can usually see the most obvious flaws, which are the ones you mentioned: lazy animation, misogyny, dumb plots, lame endings, poor writing. All of these and even more bother me as well and I sometimes find myself suspensing my disbelief in order to enjoy the good aspects of a particular anime/manga.

(specific example: I love Death Note but the author is quite sexist and can’t write female characters to save his life. Each one of the female characters in Death Note is in the shadow of a male character, even the seemingly strong ones. The most complex female character is ironically the most obvious example of his prejudice.)

But if we’re going to judge anime that way, are western cartoons really any better? Hell, are non-animated western shows and movies any better?

Is there bad animation in western cartoons, movies and shows? Is misogyny present there? Do the above-mentioned frequently suffer from bad writing, plots and endings? I think the answer to these questions is “fuck yes”. I bet some examples crossed your mind as well.

So is anime objectively worse in some way that I failed to understand or is it just a matter of your subjective preference?

Also, I’d like to know what do you hate about the classic anime so much? For example, I like Neon Genesis Evangelion a lot for it’s mindfuckery and deconstruction of common tropes so I’d like to hear an opposing opinion.

I don’t watch shitty western cartoons either.  Fuck those too.

I just get dragged into talking about Japanese anime more for some reason, probably because a lot of western k-pop fans are also into Japanese anime, which to me just marks them out as weird creepy cultural fetishists because k-pop and anime have literally not a single thing in common other than being (generally speaking, at least superficially) of Asian origin.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is insultingly bad.  Just what a fucking mess in every way, all the reasons I’ve outlined that I hate anime apply to it.  Someone actually made me watch the final episode of that shit all the way through once because they were convinced it would change my mind.  Nope.  What utter trash, what a massive wankstain on the cultural underpants of life.  I’ll thank all readers for no more anime questions and no I will not elaborate on any points here, I’ve wasted too much time on this topic.

Reading over your year-end lists, I couldn’t help noticing how many of the songs were entirely in English (or, like “Star”/”Voice,” had fully English versions). I assume k-pop companies are doing this to attract international audiences, but how necessary do you think it really is? After all, BTS became a worldwide phenomenon because of their Korean songs, and even Blackpink sing mostly in Korean.

It’s certainly not necessary from my perspective – I couldn’t care less what language something is in.  However I guess it helps in certain markets, for instance witness the penetration into American radio that “Star” has seen for example, I’m sure that the Korean version “Voice” would have struggled a little bit more.  The groups that seem to be really focused on the overseas market seem to have a lot more English.  I mean something as huge as BTS and Blackpink, those groups will no doubt succeed anyway, but the ones who are outside of that absolute A-list tier (which is… well, all of the other ones) could probably use a little crossover help.  Not that I give a fuck, but since you’re asking, there’s the answer.

Hello oppar! I’m trying my best to be concise. I had bulimia for at least 10 years, the first 4 were brutal while the other 6 are recovering half way and then relapse again. This time I really did my best, I was almost 2/3 years without doing it. I was fat and unhealthy but I didn’t throw up. About 2 months ago I started dieting and exercising, for my first time in my life I was seeing really good results health wise. My problem is I relapsed again, I started hanging out with my friends and they starting to order unhealthy food, so I ended up throwing up. I felt so guilty almost like all my effort went to the trash (my diet and my recovery). Now if I’m in my house I do exercise and eat good, however If I ate junk food I throw up. How can I deal with relapsing? I really want to stop but my mind started to work like when I was bulimic. I started dieting and exercising with a clear mind of focusing on health, but now i feel horrible. How can I recover my mentality to focus on health? I’m sorry for the difficult questions, any advice is a good step for me since I don’t have that many people I can be open about it.

I’m no expert on this, but what I do know is this – as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become completely unable to eat any very very junky junk food.  Nothing to do with being bulimic, my body just literally can’t handle trash food any more.  Maybe this is happening to you, and you’re confusing the unhealthy bulimia that you used to have, with what now is just a trained reaction from your body.  Also you probably have a mental association with eating shit food and actually vomiting that was built from years of bulimia in your past, and honestly… in my opinion, not such a bad thing to have, I have the same thing!  I used to love takeaway when I was growing up, but I had to stop eating pretty much all junk when I turned about 18, because I could not keep it down… and I have no pattern of bulimia in my past, my body just “grew up”.  I can usually tolerate a pizza if it’s from a really good pizza place but I can’t do a Dominos style fast food pizza.  KFC, Maccas, Hungry Jacks (Burger King in the USA) – I can’t do any of those, I can’t even eat their fucking salads.  Can’t do Subway either, that shit isn’t healthy, tastes like fucking cardboard.  If I were in your shoes I’d just stop eating unhealthy food and be happy, because that just really seems to work for you, so why not just do that?  Friends eating unhealthy?  So what.  Tell them that you can’t eat that shit and eat something different instead, that’s what I’ve had to do for my entire adulthood.  Don’t think I’m minimising what you’re going through, maybe you really are bulimic again – but I think at least give some thought to the possibility that your body might actually just be healthier now and is rejecting what is bad for you, and that might not necessarily have anything to do with your toxic thought patterns from the past.  If in doubt I guess talk to a doctor/therapist about it, but I think the fact that maybe you’re just healthier is something to consider.

Hello kpopalypse-sunbaenim. Recently I have had some troubles with a dear friend of mine. I’d consider him my most longtime friend and the person who may understand me the most out of anyone. I talk to him with a comfortable close group of friends near-daily, and then we’re pretty cool with each other and talk easily. However, we both happen to be on the same volleyball team (ya sports is crap and all that piss off), which happens to involve a lot of socializing. I expected us to be just as on friendly terms during then as outside of it, but he doesn’t talk to me at all during those times. I know I suck at communication and all that shit, but I thought he might at least make a gesture once in a while, considering he’s substantially the most outgoing guy out of us two. But no, I just end up getting patronized by him and the rest of the team because I look sad and awkward and can’t fucking talk my way out of a paper bag, leading me to feel even worse and digging me down a deeper hole of shit then I was down before. I figured I had put all of this self-pitying and loneliness when I was in elementary and going through my super-antisocial phase, but the same things keep coming back to haunt me, and I have no idea how to get out.
Sorry that was a mouthful to get through, but to get back to the topic, how might I make things better with my friend? Thank you kp-nim, all the best!

I feel like I don’t have enough information on this to really help.  Like, I don’t know what volleyball people do when they get together.  Are you talking about socialising while you’re actually playing together?  If so it would make sense that he might be more focused on the game, and maybe also on his other friends who might be really good at the sport.  If you’re talking about socialising in another setting, I don’t know what you mean… do volleyball players hang out?  Do they go to the pizza bar?  Do they slap each others’ assess in the gym showers?  Where is the conversation happening, and what makes it a different dynamic to the “comfortable close group of friends” you mention earlier?  All I can think of, based on the little I have here, is that talking to him while you’re in the most “traditionally comfortable” setting possible, about the other stuff, might work.  Just say something casual but sincere like “hey we get along really well generally but when you’re with the volleyball guys I get the feeling like I bother you somehow, just let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your life easier there because I don’t want to be a nuisance”.  By pitching it as “I want to help you feel better about your volleyball group” instead of “I feel left out and miserable”, he’s much more likely to open up, I think.  That’s what I’d try.  Mind you, whatever happens even if it fails, remember that you deserve this misery anyway because you’re willingly consenting to sport.  (Sorry couldn’t resist!)

Hello kpopalypse-hyung. I asked you in the last Qrimrole about having feelings for a guy, but not wanting to have to deal with all the messy shit about coming out, etc. I finally told him, but he pretty much said he wasn’t interested, and was interested in a different kind of guy. Damn that stung to hear for the first time, but I think I’ll be good soon. The whole ordeal was also pretty awkward for the both of us, so I didn’t get a chance to ask him for advice on being LGBTQIAPBCXYZ, but he implied only a few people knew, so I think I’ll just start off my telling close family first. Maybe I can pull a YG and make some banging songs out of this shit.
My question would be, how did things go for your first romantic situation, and how did you get to know your current long term partner? Do you have any advice for young lovesick caonimas such as myself? Many thanks!

Well, at least you know your gaydar was on point – he was definitely gay, just not gay for you.  That’s progress of a sort.

My first romantic situation – we met at a party where my punk band was playing at a house that was in the process of being demolished, it was a “let’s trash this fucking house so the demolition crew has all their work done for them” party (kind of like that Young Ones episode).  I don’t really remember how I started talking to this girl, she probably approached me about the band I guess, I was shyer at the time than I am now, and she was a lot older, which I didn’t realise at the time.  Ended up staying at the demolished house until 5am and then going back to her place after that.  Given that it was my first time, the actual sexual activity was pretty awkward and honestly quite bad as first times generally are for most, but she was cool about it, just like I had no idea I had picked up a MILF, she also didn’t realise she had bagged a virgin and I don’t think that was part of her plan either hahaha.  The next morning afterward I left the place and happened to politely pass some random girl about my age in the hall on the way out to my car… it only dawned on me weeks later that the person in the hall was her fucking daughter.  No regrets though.  The mum was definitely hotter.

My current partner – also met at a party.  I don’t really want to go into great detail about how we met, because she’s known to some of you and she didn’t sign up to be an Internet celebrity like I did, but I’ll tell you this much – there was no “just friends” period.  It was just one of those things where you knew you met the right person and that was that.  The amount of time that elapsed between us first meeting each other and us locking lips was about ten seconds.  Sometimes relationships involve planning and “how do I get past the friends part to the next level” but most of the time in my experience when it works it just falls in my lap randomly.  Almost all of the situations I’ve gotten into I definitely did not seek out or see coming.  Who knows, maybe that just meant that the other person was the one doing the planning…

At 2:20 girl from Lovelyz holding ancient soviet camera “Чайка 2М”. Interesting, are there any idols who really know how to use film cameras and what to do with film afterwards?

No idea, how the fuck would I even know that.  I don’t collect random facts about idols!  Don’t objectify me as a trivia source, I am a person!  You are cancelled!  lolololol

I was listening to the instrumental of snsd’s genie, and there is a very nice catchy part during the second part of the chorus. I thought it was kind of weird how the backing is catchier than the actual melody that the girls are singing, its barely audible when listening to the song normally. Is this common and is there any reason for this?

This is called a countermelody and it’s pretty common in a lot of k-pop’s better songs.  You have to learn to listen through the layers a bit to find them but most Korean pop music is actually produced quite densely and you’d be surprised how many songs that you like have features like that that you never really noticed.

I’m making a youtube video about sexual symbolism in kpop. Do you have any examples when it comes to cute gg concepts? So far for cute concepts
I have banana allergy monkey, tt and dream candy, but since you have a super comprehensive knowledge of kpop, maybe you could provide some more examples?
thanks 🙂

And of course every k-pop song ever, new or old, called “Ice Cream”.

It’s been a while since release, and I dunno if I missed your review or if you even did one yet, but did you check out Kyla’s debut songs?

Yeah I’ve heard them.  I honestly liked them better than most of the post-debut Pristin stuff.

More of a rant than a question, but there I know there are other readers who feel the same way as me so I think it’s good to get out. I turned 19 this past december and for a few weeks now I have this nagging feeling that I’m somehow old now and that I’ve lost my “youth”. Maybe it’s stan twitter’s nonsense. whenever I go online there’s always older people advising about how when you get older life speeds up so you have to enjoy your youth or whatever and that makes me even more worried. I just feel anxious that I’m already 19 and haven’t done much of anything. Like 19 years?? Just gone like that. It feels very strange. Like I still don’t feel that different from when I was 14, and now suddenly in several years I’ll have to deal with my metabolism slowing down. I like the way I look (I’m a bit vain) and I don’t want that to change. I just don’t know what I’ll do when I turn 20. It feels like everything is going by way too fast and I’ll be old and dead by the time I’ve figured out life properly at all lol.

19 years old: “I’ve lost my youth”… sorry, no sympathy from this old bastard!  Plenty of time to go, don’t rush into anything.  You’ve probably already missed the boat if you want to be a world-renowned concert pianist, violinist or k-pop singer, for anything else, I’d say there’s still plenty of time.  Look forward to getting older anyway, life gets better, you get better at sifting through the bullshit, and your character strengthens.  Stay healthy and off anything that can damage you and you’ll be an old fuck like me and still having a good time.

Hey Kpopalypse,
My first semester of university finished recently and it’s been dreadful. It’s expensive and I’m struggling in every way you can think of.
My mental health has always been crap so it won’t improve if i change majors, but seeing my parents spend so much money on my education while I keep disappointing them is humiliating. At the same time I can’t even get a job because university takes up my entire week, even saturdays and sundays. So my question is, is going through 4 more years of uni worth it?
Also, I’d like to thank you for the thoughtful answers you give in qrimole, they keep me going.

I don’t really know how to help in detail because your query is so vague.  What I would do firstly is read my university guide.  The second thing I would do it I were you is avail yourself with whatever mental health facilities the University provides.  I can fault many Universities in many ways but one thing that they always get consistently right is that they always have excellent free mental health counseling for students.  Use it!  It’s probably the only chance in your life that you’ll get to have decent quality free therapy.  These people have been where you are and they’ve heard it all before, they know what you are going through and they may not have the magic-bullet solution but they can certainly give you a hand and make things feel less hopeless while giving you some direction on how to proceed.

Hello oppar, this quarantine I’ve been recording and mixing music to give myself projects and goals to work towards. Since I play the flute and saxophone, I’ve been trying to record those instruments but my efforts so far have sounded mildly shit. The tracks sound reasonably ok on their own, but once you layer a bunch of them together, the distortion becomes quite obvious. I’ve turned the gain on my mic all the way down and literally put it a meter away from me when I record. This situation is kinda funny to me because I’ve never considered a flute a ‘loud instrument’ to the point of audio distortion before in my life. Granted, maybe this is because my mic is too cheap and shitty but since this is just a hobby for me, I don’t really want to spend lots of money on a ‘professional’ one. Do you have any suggestions?

I’m sorry but flutes are loud as fuck.  People don’t know, because they’re used to hearing that kind of sound buried in the middle of a huge symphony, and it’s always associated with prissy angel music so people think it’s a soft sound, but a solo flute is piercing and can be devastating to the ears.  Flute players actually are at high risk of hearing loss and often don’t even know.  When recording digitally, remember that the zero point or “digital zero” is the point of distortion, it’s not like analog where some clipping and going “into the red” is desirable, so if you see any red bars when recording you are WAY too loud.  Also remember that your instruments sum in volume so try to mix spatially (discussed here).

why do you think why not was chosen to be the title track as opposed to star/voice? star is very obviously the better song, and i think bbc knows this hence why theres an english version, music video, and their campaign to get it played on local radio. they know they have gold on their hands, i really cant understand why they chose why not as the lead single.

I think I already answered this here.

I was the poster who sent in a video last time from this idol – I’ll call him Jake – that was crying about his fans on vlive. You may not have an answer for this mystery, but you’ll know better than I would on what the fuck is going on. I’ve been a kpop fan for almost 6 years now and never encountered anything like this??? I was curious about him because I heard about his fanservice but I didn’t know how deep the blackhole was, and now I’m almost intimidated lol.

Jake’s the main fanservice dude for his group and he’s quite intense about it. There was another guy in the group originally designated, but he left and Jake took over in early 2020. It makes me wonder if some of his strangeness can be attributed to the pandemic.

There are a lot of links that you don’t need to publish but it’s good for you to see how much fanservice he does to get my point across. I’m sending this earlier in the month so maybe you’ll be arsed to read some of this, who knows. This fanletter:
The last section of it is what sticks out to me because it does seem to be genuinely heartfelt, but I’m not sure.

He also uploads a shit ton of selfies on twitter. These things by themselves aren’t that much, but he uploaded nearly a 1000 selfies in 2020.
Also 152 in one month
All of the vlives last year and the few he’s done this year are also 2 hours at minimum.

There’s this weird app called universe that he also abuses. It works where idols can “private message” different users and have their names filled in so it feels like the kpop fan is being directly talked to.

These universe messages started blowing up (because of how crazy they sounded) and OP deleetd it probably to avoid backlash:

Jake does this kind of thing so often enough that his top twitter search for 3 days were “jake delusional”

and there’s this tweet that went semi-viral

Jake is so into fanservice that his own fan base finds it funny, at least english-speaking fans. He has admitted (can’t find a source) that fanservice is a job for him but claims that he loves doing it now and loves his fanbase and wants them to be happy, etc.

He even wrote a fan song by himself for his fanbase, comparing them to plants with him being the sun or something like that.

Apparently he’s really into romance? The anime mentioned here are mostly romance and he’s always talking about “heart-fluttering” movies and recommending them to his fans.

I’m not even exaggerating when I say like this is only a ⅓ of what he does, like it’s crazy. I really cannot figure out if he likes his fanbase or what. Is he trying to avoid getting into scandals? Does he get paid more for this? Or does he actually love the fans? Any help is good 😦

After looking at all that – I think he’s morally compensating.  He’s done some really bad evil stuff in his past (or at least stuff which he personally considers morally wrong, even if it really isn’t that bad) and now he’s just trying to embrace the light and give as much of everything about himself to as many people as he can, and spread as much happiness as possible… as a way to sort of find peace with himself and reset the moral equilibrium in his soul.  At least that’s the energy I’m getting.  I could be wrong of course.

Which do you think is the overall stronger song: “Wannabe” by Itzy or “Crush” by Weki Meki?

One got on a top 30 favourites list, one didn’t.

Oppar, you have shit taste

Thanks cunt, stay tuned more shit taste coming your way

I wanted to ask something about f(x) and Monrose’s Hot Summer. Using my untrained ear (or probably tone deaf ear), it feels like f(x)’s version is slightly harsher and louder (????) musically than Monrose’s version. I think they tweak some part of the song to accomodate Sulli’s cutesy voice (RIP girl). Is this true or not? If my hearing is correct, what kind of device, tool, or machine did the arranger or songwriter use to achieve that harsher effect? In general, I am just curious the modification that was made by the producers from Monrose’s version to f(x)’s version of the song.

Wait, I got this question in 2021 and not 2016?

It’s not like SM just lifted the Monrose song and tweaked it a little – it’s not a “remix”.  The f(x) version is a fully-fledged “cover version” where they’ve redone the whole song, from the ground up albeit with a very similar sound and mimicking most of the instruments and synth backings very closely.  The main difference from a musical production angle is f(x)’s song isn’t louder but it’s very much “brighter”, a lot more high-end on everything, very aurally excited.  It’s probably the aural excitation that you’re really noticing, it’s not obvious in isolation (it’s not designed to be) but it’s very much so when listen to the two songs back to back.  Look up “aural exciter” if you want to know more about what actually happens.

Hey Oppar,

Just wanna know, what’s your take on the rise of VTubers and specifically the emergence of “idol” managements like Hololive etc. Do you think it’s the same as KPOP idols?

Hope you’re doing well.

I’m good!  Sadly, I don’t know enough about this to comment.  I don’t even know what Hololive is.  Not my area of expertise.

I have no idea if you’ve already mentioned this, so don’t mind me if you have, but is it just me, or is the rookie lookie song by red velvet SUPER creepy/ mildly dog-whistle-y? The whole frilly dress thingy which I tend to see eight year old kids wearing is odd enough, but whatever, idec; but that one portion of the choreo where they crouch down and look really short, almost like children and it creeps me tf out when combined with the outfit . I like my cutesy releases as much as the next person, and lookie is a fine song but I personally can’t stand the music video because of this singular reason.

I never really noticed to be honest but I guess they are wearing some really weird kid clothing in some scenes.  It doesn’t bother me though.  I’d rather see adults in kids clothing than kids in adults clothing.  Something like Chrissie Amphlett from The Divinyls wearing her school uniform to gigs even when she was in her 30s and 40s and 50s – she rocked that uniform right through her career and I’m fine with that, it’s even sexy and she was considered Australia’s sex symbol for decades for a reason, and was loved by men and women alike.  It’s when things are the other way around that it’s creepy.  Underaged kids crammed into micro-dirndls (April) and tight miniskirts (Busters) with adult makeup to deliberately make them look older than they are, is just as disturbing as little kids styled as adults in kiddie beauty pageants, and ewwwww, fuck that shit.  Totally gross.

Can you describe your cat’s personality? Does she have the same personality as yours?

She’s honestly a bit of a cunt who likes to attack anything and everything, she also really likes food and being rubbed around the ears.  Whereas I’m just a cunt.

Hello Oppa,

I’m sure you’ve seen this but I thought I’d send it across anyway just in case you didn’t. Sunny is serving us after years of NOTHING in this interview. I honestly couldn’t concentrate on what the article was saying because of the pictures. Enjoy!

I honestly didn’t like the pictorial at all – too photoshopped, too carefully posed, and Sunny’s natural assets buried too deeply under careful angles, sneaky shadows and industrial-strength clothing choices.  She would have looked better in a simple loose t-shirt and cardigan or something.  Like Tiffany, we’ll probably only get to see her “girls bring the boys out” once she leaves SM, because it’s quite abundantly clear that they don’t really allow that sort of behaviour to any great degree.  Being LSM’s niece though, she’s probably there for good, or at least a long time yet.  Sad times for fappers.

So I wanted to write about how shitty and ashamed I feel about my past choices ,which led me to a shitty life but I don’t feel ready yet so instead I am going to write about a conversation, I had with someone I know since it has been bothering me. We met couple years ago she was my tutor. She is someone, who helped me a lot when we met and not only with teaching and last year when she asked me for help of course I helped her as well. I am saying that so show that even if I can’t really say she is my friend, we don’t hang out or have same interests, she was an important figure at some point in my life. Generally she is someone I look up to. Last year slowly we drifted apart after she stopped tutoring me and started working as a fulltime teacher. We talked like every two months or so just to ask what’s up. Few days ago she responded to one of my instastories to ask how I am doing. And I was feeling down and wanted to talk with someone so my responses were bigger than hers .So I was talking about my last job and what I am doing now and that I feel, I am moving like turtle towards my goals but at least I know where I am going. In one message among all the other more important things I was talking about I mentioned twice my dislike towards costumers. The first time was when I was saying that the last job was okay if you ignore the costumers and the second time when I was saying that I just want an office job, where I don’t have to interact with costumers anymore. For some reason she focused only on that and asked me about it. (The dialog wasn’t in English so I’m trying to translate it properly):
-Why? If you talk to costumers what’s going to happen?
-Through my personal experiences I have come to conclusion that if your job requires a continuous interaction with people like costumer service, if you want to be good at your job you should first be an/a extrovert/social person or generally not be negative towards meeting and interacting with many and different people during the day or you must have a lot of nerve. Years later after getting to know myself better I have come to realize that those kinds of jobs don’t suit me and have a negative impact on my wellbeing.
-There isn’t a person, who isn’t social. I am just saying there are only fears.
-What do you mean?
-Or insecurities. Anyway I don’t really know.
-So anyone who wants to find a job, where they don’t have to constantly interact with many people, they are only doing it because they are afraid and insecure? Are those the only reasons? I am not saying I am antisocial just an introvert, an aspect which isn’t based on fears and insecurities , but in comparison with an extrovert I lose energy though social interaction instead of gaining no matter how good time I am having.
-I don’t know I can’t take a stance on this.
– I didn’t ask you to. Actually take a stance on what exactly? Anyway have a nice day.
-What happened now did you get mad?
-Not at all, I just think there is nothing else to add to the conversation.
-I made you mad. *monkey emoji that hides its face*
-You confused me.
-Ok. How is your sister?
-She is doing well.

Honestly I wasn’t mad but confused about what she was implying. Take a stance on what? My questions were rhetorical! Of course there are other reasons. I mean okay to be fair I have said to her before that I don’t feel comfortable around too many people, but that was more than a year ago and it was after I had quitted an awful terrible job in a coffee shop, so my emotional state wasn’t great.
At first I was thinking of making a joke as a response or say my patience towards idiots/assholes costumers is running thin but since this is a realization I had few months ago, which helped me to decide what I want in my life, I chose to share it with her so she can understand better my point of view and why I made those comments about costumers. Finally I admitted to myself why I am never going to be as good as want at those jobs and that’s okay I would rather focus on enrolling in University and trying to get into a different work field, where social skills aren’t as important.(okay yeah generally socially skills are beneficial for any part of life but I hope you know what I mean). Even on good days without any assholes costumers at the end of the shift I am exhausted and it takes me a lot of time to fill my social battery .Of course there are also the shitty hours, shitty pay and shitty future opportunities.
I don’t know, her implications that I am only saying that because I am afraid and insecure felt like an unwanted opinion at best or an unwanted criticism at worst. I can still think reasonably despite my fears and insecurities. I wasn’t trying to put myself down I just said what my limits are, everybody has them and it’s not bad to recognize them. Personally they helped me understand and accept myself a little bit more.
Also, I feel like an idiot for trying to explaining my thoughts only to receive cryptic answers, and ‘I don’t know’. You asked first. And lastly, simply put I don’t like interacting with costumers. So what? How does that affect her? It’s not that I am constantly talking to her and complaining about it or I am asking for her emotional/financal support. So I don’t get her response. It may sound selfish but in this instance what I feel or think about it it’s my business and it’s not up for debate. Maybe I should have answered to the first question that : “Nothing is going to happen if I talk to costumers , I just don’t want to.” In the end I feel like she didn’t ask me with the intention to understand my point of view but to criticize it.
So what do you think? What I am missing?

I think by “stance” she means taking a stance on your opinion about how introversion/extroversion relates to jobs.  I think you’re hyperfixating on this and you just need to let it go.  People don’t communicate perfectly and I think this is just a case of the both of you talking “past” each other a little, where each person is having a slightly different conversation to the other one.  I think she wanted to have a brief conversation and basically was trying to brush off your concerns and give you a pep talk because she wasn’t really into being introspective at that moment, and you wanted something longer and more introspective, and in trying to come to a middle ground you missed each other completely.  I don’t think it’s a big deal.  We’re human and we don’t always communicate that well.  I’m not getting vibes that she hates you or whatever… and even if she does – so what of it?  Maybe future conversations will go better, or maybe they won’t and you’re better off not opening up, I can’t really judge as I don’t know this person.  However it just feels to me like you’re digging deep into something here which is really pretty shallow waters.

I’m supposed to be in online church rn lol, but I don’t think I can stomach a whole hour of our pastor ranting about homosexuality BAD. He’s out here telling people that if your country legalises gay marriage, you need to go and protest and stuff because that’ll give you some brownie points from cloud daddy. So I’m just gonna binge on nine years worth of oppar’s blogs for now, perhaps:o
What do people get out of this? What if after we’re all done and dead, we just join the soil, none of that afterlife stuff, but you still wasted an entire lifetime hating on a bunch of dudes for liking penis boo

ONLINE church, that’s really a thing?  Now that really is a blessing from god.  You can turn the volume down on the sermon and watch gay porn in church and nobody will know.  Or straight porn, if you’re into that weird straight stuff.  I guess my writing was the second best option, glad you enjoyed yourself somehow.  Why do people do it?  They’ve probably got a little bit of gay in them and feel threatened by it, that’s usually how it goes down.

Hello Kpopalypse oppar
As a person who has zero knowledge about music, how can they differentiate a good song from a bad one? Also because I have no idea about instruments, I end up focusing more on the vocals and believe that any song which has good vocals is a good song. Is that a bad thing?

Easy:

Do you like it y/n

How you answer that determines if it is a good song or not.

Nothing wrong with focusing on vocals if that’s what floats your boat.  Just because I don’t really do it doesn’t mean that my way of listening is the “best” way or the “only” way or whatever.  We all hear music differently.

You’ve probably lived quite a few more decades than I have, so I’ll ask you this, how am I supposed to stop being tormented by all these flashbacks to the absolute cringe I’ve commited in the past decade. I just keep regretting everything I’ve done and when I remember the stuff I’ve done, the cringe makes me want to jump off a cliff randomly. I can’t sleep because I keep remembering this stuff. I’m so scared that I’ll meet people from that past I left behind because wow, I can’t imagine what they’d have had to put up with, namely me. I regret things even from barely a month ago, its like I don’t have critical thinking before I do stuff. Which i guess is expected considering my age, but WOW, what was I even thinking. I seriously wanna learn how to block off memories and you probably can’t help me there but oh well. Honestly maybe I’ll look back at this wall of text in a month and regret it too i don’t KNOW.

Actually you probably will be like “I can’t believe a month ago I wrote to that Kpopalyspe dickwad and now he’s answering my question and I gotta read it in his blog and it’s so fucking cringe like fuuuuuuck what was I thinking”.   I’m not sure how to help – maybe think more before you do stuff?  But also accept that life is a learning process.  I did stuff when I was younger that I probably wouldn’t do now, but I can’t be too judgemental about it in retrospect, I was relatively dumber and less experienced in life back then, and making mistakes and fucking up is how you learn.  Just try not to make the same mistakes repeatedly!

My mum hasn’t talked properly or looked at me in a week because I told her I don’t care about her feelings after somewhat of an argument. And I guess that hurt her, because now I feel like she thinks I’m just as much of a cunt as my big sister is. She won’t even say anything more than a general murmur in my direction and it gets on my nerves. My mom’s my only friend basically, but that’s mostly because I’m a socially inept loser, perhaps?She’s the only one I talk to, the only one that tolerates me even though I never really talk out my actual feelings with her.

My mom and I have had a pretty good relationship so far, save for the times she’s harrassed me just for liking shitty korean music, being an atheist, or for me apparently being transgender just because I didn’t like wearing dresses or pretty shoes lol. OTHER than that, we were always chill, we could always laugh at and with each other. Its only been a week but sometimes I’m paranoid that my mom’ll just prolong this, or wants me and her to have the same relationship that she has with my big sister, i.e mostly non-existant. I never hold grudges and I’m physically incapable of doing so, but my mom, she’s different. I’m possibly overthinking, and maybe my mom’ll come around but if she doesn’t, well then.

My family’s absolutely fucking dysfunctional, but I’ve always shielded myself from it from a young age. But god, sometimes I get reminded of just how disjoint it all is and it’s almost embarassing.This wasn’t the reason why my mom got mad at me today, but some time back I woke up one day and my mom was all mopey, as she usually does when she’s sick and then she went on a whole rant about how my big sister’s a cunt that’s out to harass her and break her down, and how my sister always started the entire problem. I listened, and I don’t particularly disagree tbh, my sister can be venemous and for some reason she detests my mom.

But I go to my room and ten minutes later my sister comes in and starts saying the SAME shit, crying and moping about how hard her life is because of mum, about how my mum is ALWAYS the one who starts off the altercations and how my sister’s not even DOING anything wrong 😮 Literally both of them were saying the same exact thing, except they’re both saying that the other one did it first and that everyone else is at fault except them and i’m just sitting her like?? These are grown ass adults and WHY are they like this wtf. Its embarassing to the point that I don’t even care about them. Both of them just act ultra manipulative and don’t realise that ESH, they’re both shit. The communication is non-existant and time they do talk, they bite each others’ heads off. I wish they’d patch up because i like them both, and I like the whole family thing we used to have going on back in the dayss when I was young lol, but I don’t even want to to be caught up in crossfire because I like my mental health.

I totally just wanted to get this off of my head, so sorry for the rant/ possibly chronic lack of punctuation.

Okay well I don’t really have anything to say in response but I’m glad you putting it out there helped.  Other than that you should try and move out of home as soon as you’re able.  Your relationship with your entire family will then improve drastically almost immediately.  You don’t need a lot of money to do it – share houses exist.  Something to work towards.

I kinda wish there were more actual lgbt people in the industry so that young kids would quit assuming some rando idol’s a ”lgbt icon” just because they reccomend mildly gay movies or have gay friends.

Well guess what, Korea is homophobic as fuck so it’s not going to happen soon.  I’m sure you knew that already though.

How’s aussie food like

Shit.  Anyone sensible who lives here just eats Asian food instead which is plentiful and relatively cheap.  Only V8-driving bogans care about “aussie food”.

Anyhow, this was the first year I’ve been in online school, it was terrible mainly because I have no sense of accountability. So I totally ended up bunking an entire year of school, and wow, now I have finals in less than two weeks and I’m still too bored to start studying. Its like I’d rather do anything other than it tbh. I spent a few months just obsessively watching true crime docs and now I’m constantly terrified that I’ll get abducted.
I always knew about your blog but I never really cared for it lol. But somehow, now I do? Or at least that’s what it seems like because I’ve been spending a few days just binging all your posts, and woah. Its so odd because I think we have polar opposite tastes: most of the songs on your worst lists are on my best ones, and I can’t stomach the retro trend so ‘_’ I share your dislike for ballads, though I do have a few favourites lol. I don’t know what to say about it, its pretty interesting to read how much you hate stuff that I love lol.

Everytime I sit down to study nowadays, and i have only a few days, some random song pops up in my head and i’ll be like “HMM what does the aussie think about it”, and before I know it I’ve read a million of your blogposts and I won’t get anything done the entire day. I have some nine years worth of posts to catch up on and I really should not have started two weeks before finals. But yeah, I guess I’m ranting for no reason, and neither is this a question in the sense, plus I’m terrible at phrasing but YEAH, bye, I’m gonna keep your site on a blocklist so that I don’t get distracted because I have a shit ton of stuff to finish, stay safe ^^

Well I got this question about three weeks ago so I hope you got through finals by now and have since unblocked me so you can read it, but if not, oh well.  Remember the purpose of the blog is humour, education and enjoyment, I’m not out here trying to brainwash people with my music taste.  The roundups and favourites lists are just for writing fun times and laughs, and while yes those are my real opinions it’s totally okay to disagree.

Dear Oppar

I decided to binge BTS’s discography with lyrics printed out to see if they really deserve the hype they receive as the greatest group of all time.And boy I was disappointed.I mean they had one good lbum and that’s it.They went mediocre and are still mediocre.Their lyrics are either emo or them bragging about being popular.I don’t understand why the media compares them to the likes of Beatles or their fans who risk their lives to get btS to the top

Help me???

This is what happens when you listen to hype.  You’ll know for next time.

At the end of this song you’ll notice the key sort of changes, to make it sound more eerie. I don’t know the term for this but it kind of sounds like the chords forming in the song have been resolved? The song starts changing keys at around 2:45 and into the outro. I’ve heard this sort of tonal change in other songs and want to know if there’s a name for it specifically or just a chord change.

This is called a modulation.  In this case the song modulates into a major key which has a kind of resolution effect.  Pretty common in classical music and not very unusual in pop music either.

Brave Girls went viral. Yay! One less hungry nugu girl group. But they went viral with Rollin, a tropical house song. There’s a risk of it killing the new 80s sound trend you enjoy and making tropical sh*thouse vogue again xD

I don’t really care.  I’ve lived through shit trends, I will live through more of them.  Also everything always comes back one day.

If kpop will try to reproduce Sigur Rós, what will it look like?

Sigur Rós with Koreans, I guess.

When I saw the title of this on youtube I thought “kpopalypse must know about this video.” Now you do!
“Meet Produce Pandas: China’s ‘chubby’ boy band”

I guess this is correct!

Hey, I have a couple questions for you:

1. I’m still in school, and as such, I have to research things very frequently, especially for the history class I’m in right now. However, I have no idea how to research effectively and I always feel so lost when I try, which ends up in me procrastinating. My history teacher says that our plan of action should be to pick an arguable inquiry question about a topic, then research about the topic, then use that research to pick a thesis, but I always find that I end up having absolutely no idea what to write down when researching. I have no idea what qualifies as important enough to save, and I hate having to research for both sides just to pick one in the end. Any tips on how to decide whether what you’re finding will be useful to the end product?

2. In my other class (tech design), I’ve been really enjoying it, and I think this is what I want to do for a job. I enjoy working with it, and I spend more time out of class tinkering with it than is required by the class. However, there are a couple people in my class who are also doing really well, I’d say better than I am. I know you’d say to not give a shit about how they’re doing, but I’m worried that they’ll look better to prospective employers simply because they know more tools than we’ve been taught – I only know how to use tools that we’ve been taught in class, but it looks like they spend time out of class researching new tools. I mean, I’m definitely qualified to do things that the teacher assigns, and based on the progress of most of my classmates, it looks like I’m a bit on the above average side (not to brag), but the aforementioned students are definitely the top of the class, while I’m maybe 7th out of 20. I guess what I’m trying to say is, should I spend more time researching tools outside of class to catch up with the top? I wouldn’t mind researching since I really enjoy working with the software, but I want to know if it even matters to employers whether some people are more qualified when we’re all qualified.

Thanks oppar and have a nice day!

1. “How to research” is a blog post of its own.  What might help is reading me actually go through the process.  A post like this or this will actually take you step by step through a research methodology.
2. I don’t know enough about tech design (or anything, really) to know how highly these people respect your qualifications vs just want to train you in what they do.  What I would try to do is actually talk to some employers, not about getting a job as such, but about what they look for.  I do some hiring consulting and I know personally that when I’m looking for people to hire I don’t really give much of a shit about the academic side, all a degree proves is that they have a work ethic plus a background in the general area, it doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily be a good fit for the company or that they’ll warm to the company’s specific processes.

How do you feel about youtubers releasing music, and why is most of it consistently shitty?

I don’t really care, anyone can release music if they want?  I haven’t heard enough of what “YouTubers” release to even know how much it sucks let alone be able to tell you why.  I guess maybe it’s like anything else – if you’re well known you can do pretty much whatever and people will like it.

Oppar,

Can you do a guide to big butts in K-pop?

I can but I won’t.  The objectification survey actually started out as a way for me to address this.  It was originally just an ass poll and nothing else, as I didn’t have strong opinions on any idol butts I just let my readers determine the best butts.  The survey then expanded as people indicated that they wanted to vote in other categories.

Interestingly, I think I would be a poor choice for writing a big butts post anyway.  I don’t actually like the super-maximal stereotypical curved twerk-friendly butt, I actually prefer flatter butts.  Note I’m not talking about weight here, but about the amount of curve.

Mister Kpopalypse,

As someone who got into kpop in the early 2010s i’ve got to say that all the idols nowadays are real low quality fap material. Kpop desperately needs another Sunny or Gain or Eunjung. This wouldn’t really be a problem if any of those idols were doing anything worth looking at nowadays but they’re not. Dear kpopalypse oppar, where are the hidden aces for kpop fap in the modern day? Why did overtly sexy concepts die out and get regulated to ultra nugu territory? Will the sexy concepts ever come back?

Everything comes in waves.  While there’s obvious resistance to it in the k-pop sphere, sexy concepts just generate far too much media buzz for them to be ignored for long.  Patience.

Hi Kpopalypse! I’ve been dealing with a bunch of stuff, I was formerly homeless now almost a full yr, but sadly had to move in with my abusive family to do so. Luckily in my program they gifted my this really sick yamaha, never opened before me. I really wish I could have taken up the piano as a kid&this feels like a big step, I’ve had this thing for three yrs total now. But I have I idea where to start. Like even looking on youtube petrifies me,I bought a scale book but never opened it. Other than just turning the little shit on, what exactly do I do?

Start with learning major and minor scales in different keys, and also really basic tunes – like nursery rhyme stuff, first with one hand at a time, then both together.  Then graduate to pop music and try to do the vocals with the right hand and the chords with the left hand.  From there you can decide which direction you want to go.  Also get a music theory book, just a basic one.  That shit helps with piano.

heyo mr kpopalypse sir

I’ve started a diary of sorts very recently, but not a normal diary. I have troubles with my mother and took it upon myself to write down everything negative she says to me on a daily basis just so I can sort my thoughts out and attempt to analyze the main reason why I feel uncomfortable around her. A lot of it’s just mean words (she has anger/patience issues) that she usually apologizes later that day, but there’s also some stuff that I don’t know what to make of it.

There’s some gaslighting (I only recently discovered this term) that makes me feel really unsettled, but I’m used to it by now. When I don’t do well on tests or similar, she explains how traumatized she is from me not knowing how to study properly. She throws around the word “trust” a lot and tells me “I have trauma because of you” (this exact sentence) whenever anything irresponsible on my end pops up. My mother likes to tell me how much my dad spends for my tuition (I’m incredibly grateful) and threatens to withhold the school money so I won’t be able to finish high school if I don’t “get my head in the game.” But then a few days later, on one of her nicer days, she spends lavishly and asks what kind of take-out I want to eat and sometimes buys expensive clothes for me.

It makes me horribly confused all the time, but I can’t withdraw in myself to think too deeply on it because whenever I become moody or untalkative like a teenager (because I am a teenager btw) she doesn’t really get angry, but tends to shove in my face how grateful I should be to her because she sacrificed so much. And she did sacrifice a lot – she became a stay-at-home mom because my dad was super busy at work all the time.

But I’m used to the mean words (I get called “dumb” and “brainless” a lot, but she usually always apologizes afterwards) and I think I’m okay with the gaslighting (I don’t like how she says “you’re the reason why I’m mad at you” but it makes sense because I’m not the most studious child, I don’t pay attention to her well, and I tend to make up a lie on the spot just so she can get out of my room).

What I really really don’t like is the staring.

Whenever we’re in the same room, she stares at me for several minutes at a time, or glances up every other second or so. I try to tell her with my body language that I don’t like it, but if she notices she misinterprets the hunched shoulders and scooting backwards as having poor posture. I get a lot of “chin up!” and “relax your shoulders, your neck looks too fat right now!” But if she does catch on, she says, “Oh wow, how on earth can you be so cute” or some other variation of calling me cute/adorable. Being called cute is nice, but not by a mother who stares at me the entire time during dinner (I try to eat fast), shouts at me for being disrespectful for an hour, then just thirty minutes later comes to my room to bring me snacks and coo over my chubby cheeks. I don’t know what’s even going on.

I started the diary to make sure I wasn’t going insane. I needed these accounts written down so I knew I wasn’t going crazy. I’ve brought up the staring thing a few times, but every time my mother just scoffs and tells me how rude I am. She just wants to look at her child. It takes about two or three little things that irritate her throughout the day before she completely blows up, so I try to avoid her at all costs.

Example 1: last week, she accidentally spilled some makeup. Then later that day she accidentally spilled coffee on her bed. That night, she was very snappish whenever I was in close proximity and she yelled at me for being stupid because I don’t read enough books (we had the Book Argument last month but she likes to bring it up a lot).

Example 2: a few days ago, my hair was oily because I used the wrong shampoo. She stared at my hair the entire morning and made many comments about “your hair is so gross, it looks like so sticky and disgusting” and then later moved on to talk about my pimples. Later that day, she looked at my test results and yelled at me for about an hour about how traumatized she was because of how bad I was at studying in the past (we’ve had this argument many many times before). She told me I would never amount to anything and she’ll tell my dad how truly irresponsible I am so he’ll stop paying for my school. She tells me that then I’ll only have a middle school diploma as a result for never paying attention to her and lying all the time.

But I feel bad about the lying, I really do. I started “avoiding the truth” since around 3rd grade because if I told my mom how I did bad on a test or forgot my homework, then she got really angry. I just wanted her to stop being so angry all the time. She did threaten to leave (out of anger?) when I was 12 or 13, and I might have some underlying issues with that (especially because my sibling got mad at me for trying to get her to calm down, since my sibling really wanted my mom gone).

Sorry, that ended in a bit of a deviance. My main concern at the moment is why do I feel uncomfortable with her staring at me all the time? Why does she stare? How can I get her to stop treating me like an angsty piece of artwork?

love,
someone who is suffocating in confusing emotions

Have you tried staring back?  That’s the first thing I’d try if I felt some discomfort, especially if I’d already asked them to stop and they didn’t.  Just maintain eye contact and see what happens.  Okay I’ll admit that’s a high-confrontation strategy, it may not be productive.  I guess I’m just an asshole.

One thing less threatening you can do though, which I would do for sure – I’d quit writing down all the negative shit she says – why even bother to process it or give it importance?  You already know that you’re being gaslit, so it’s just junk-thought, you don’t need it in your life.  What you need is to get away from that instead and try and think some positive thoughts about yourself to counter her reinforcement of the negative.  Here’s something cool you can do – give the book to her.  Tell her that you’re letting go of the negativity in your life, so she can have the book.  Then start thinking more positively.  If she won’t take the book, or you think giving it to her will cause more problems, then burn it, or destroy it in some other creative way – that can be symbolic of “letting go” and might help.  Just don’t destroy your house at the same time.  Fire safety, kids.

Also, can you move out of home yet?  That will help enormously.  Even if not under ideal circumstances, it would probably still be better than being in this toxic environment.  Your mother isn’t going to change radically – if you’re really lucky she may wake up to herself a bit but overall people don’t tend to change their personality once it’s set.  So you have to take control from the inside and work on yourself positively if flight is not an option.

Hi Kpopalypse,

I have a group chat with friends in job, we are about the same age and likes to talk trash our company or talk about anything. However, lately I find that my replies, responses, or questions are rarely responded by others. It’s probably because my take on something is different than the others. I feel ashamed, because I always feel I can’t contribute to the chat and like . For days I ensure myself to don’t let post anything in the group so I won’t feel that way. But, just one message from others already makes me talkative. Is my feeling is wrong because I want to validate my chats by their approval/response? What do you think should I do to get out of this feeling?

Thank you

Talk to them more in person if you can.  If that’s not possible because of COVID drama, then I think don’t worry about it too much.  There’s no point worrying too much about what others think, just try not to say stuff that you know will go down like a lead balloon.  You don’t have to disclose everything, keep some stuff secret and share the bits that you know will make you and others feel better.  I mean, I could speak my mind on Twitter a lot more, but I’d probably just get banned, right?  So I keep it to the things that I know are appropriate for that audience.  It’s the same with a work chat, the rules are maybe different but the overarching concept is similar.

any tips for incredible wanking session?

SNIS-451

Hi Kpopalypse oppar!

Love your blog!

I have been a fan of Stray Kids since Miroh. This month, one of the members old rap he wrote when he was 13 was leaked which included offensive lyrics and use of the word “kkamdoongie”, presumably in an attempt to emulate hiphop which often utilises offensive lyrics and shock-value. As a result of this he made a public, handwritten apology on Instagram.

I’m not usually the type of person who gets affected by kpop drama – this kind of thing happens all the time and usually I’m sitting back with popcorn. But this time, for some reason I found myself kind of bummed out.

I think it’s partly because the kid was 13 and I’m empathetic because I know I said a lot of stupid shit when I was 13 – nothing racist but certainly things that would get me cancelled by the mob if it had been preserved in any way. However, I still wouldn’t apologise for that because I was struggling and growing just like everybody else and it was all part of what made me who I am today.

Basically I’m a little upset and kind of confused. Oppar, can you tell me how to feel about this situation so I can go back to living my life?

Thank you!

Who didn’t write offensive lyrics when they were 13?  What a dumb thing to have to apologise for.  There’s nothing wrong with being offensive and having shock value.  Okay, now of course I would say that, but it’s still true anyway.  Offensive lyrics are great.  When I was growing up it was N.W.A, Ice-T and Kevin Bloody Wilson, back in the 1980s they were regarded as scum by the “moral majority” but now people see that their music is classic, and nowadays it’s a whole different group of people that are hated on but that history will remember fondly also.  I’m just upset that the kid from Stray Kids grew up and joined a k-pop group instead of realising his destiny as the next G.G. Allin.

Sorry that this question might be weird for you to answer as a man, but I’m shit scared of getting pregnant to the point where it’s badly affecting my ability to have or enjoy sex. I have a lovely boyfriend I’ve been with for years but this really is an issue for me. I get quite paranoid about condoms failing, but then I’m also worried that stuff like the pill or coils will affect my hormones and make me go crazy (happened to two of my friends, although they were fine once they came off them). Do you just rely on condoms? Am I being unreasonably paranoid? Pls help oppar.
(PS thank you for looking after all your caonimas)

Since there seems to be a real lack of decent sex education among k-pop fans:

Condoms really work pretty well, a lot better than paranoid sex ed teachers and creepy pastors would have you believe.  If you use them correctly they will work as intended.  In my experience they only fuck up when:

• People put them on or touch them with sharp nails or dirty hands, or are otherwise very rough with them (rougher than what just sex would entail)
• The wearer forgets to hold the base of the condom when he pulls out, or doesn’t immediately withdraw after orgasm
• Someone deliberately sabotages the condom before the event (if you’re feeling ultra paranoid, look for pinholes, or blow some air into it like a balloon and watch what happens, but hopefully you can trust your boyfriend more than this)

The pill also works quite well in my experience, I never got someone pregnant when they were on it.  Yes it can mess with your hormones etc but that effect varies depending on who you are – like anything that is a drug, it will affect different people differently and it’s not for everyone.  There’s other options for birth control as well, the other one which I’ve encountered on a regular basis being the implanon, these work quite well in my experience but have similar drawbacks to the pill in that wearers can sometimes suffer side-effects.  The only contraception that I wouldn’t really recommend is diaphragms, in my opinion too fiddly and too much shit can go wrong if used on their own, although they’re a reasonable “second line of defence” if you can’t get over condom failure paranoia.

Wow the state of sex education online is really poor if people have to get this information from some k-pop blog.

Hey Oppar.

I was just recently reminded of my friend who lives in Bali (I’m also from Indo, but on another island) and our conversation a couple years ago, where she said Bali is pretty much the go-to destination for drunk Australians to, well, get drunk, because Bali is accessible and inexpensive for them than to go elsewhere, or perhaps somewhere in Australia itself.

I guess my question is how much is the truth in this observation? And from an Australian like you who I know won’t give me cunty bullshit reply, like just how accessible it is to go on vacation/holiday/trips to Bali for like regular Aussies? Is it like “shit my boss and coworkers are such cunts this week, I guess I’ll wind out in Kuta/Ubud this weekend!” thing or is that for some folks only? Also, do you go to Bali (or it’s neighbouring islands like Lombok) often?

Somewhat unrelated but I remember watching an Australian TV show back then where this one woman (she’s coaching young girls to be stewardesses or some shit) criticized one for her poor performance and said “if you keep this up you might work for Garuda.” I know Garuda is an Indonesian airline, but it’s generally regarded as one of the best (at least one of the better options) airlines around here, so it’s really interesting to know some Aussies feel that way.

Stay healthy Oppar!

Yes it’s very true that a lot of Australians like getting drunk in Bali.  However it’s not so incredibly common where it’s something that you’d just do on a weekend on a whim, unless you were very rich – especially given that the price of any liquor in Bali that isn’t local is outrageously high.  A trip to Bali would generally be planned months in advance, and while getting drunk is definitely part of the plan for a lot of Australians (who generally like to get drunk no matter where they go, we’re a lot worse than South Koreans and roughly on par with Germans for public drunkenness), it’s usually not the entire reason for going, which is more just to have a holiday generally.

I have never been to Bali, I think that I would be ashamed to go.  I know that a lot of Australians over there behave very poorly, act racist, harass the locals etc. and I wouldn’t want to be associated with them.  I’d feel like I’d have to apologise for my existence everywhere I went.  The “Garuda” thing is probably because Australians think they have the world’s best airlines because we don’t really have crashes here and I don’t think Garuda is considered a prestigious airline (in truth I’ve never heard of it before).  The truth is that our airlines buy planes new and once they’re over a certain age we sell them off to other airlines from other countries and that’s the real reason why we have such super safe air travel in this country, it’s not because our pilots are genius or anything.

It’s kinda interesting to see this —

Then I saw this comment: “Taking advantage of the fact that the topic of sex gets a lot of views and generally in certain countries (USA for example) people think that “sex work” is something “normal”, I will leave some facts for you. In no way is this comment directed at people subjected to the horrors of sexual exploitation that occurs within the pornography and prostitution industry, this comment is directed at people who within their bubble of privilege never did a proper research or tried to understand that: 1. The majority of women and girls in prostitution and pornography would like to leave this environment if they were given chances. 2. Most of them suffered some form of sexual abuse in childhood and didnt receive help. 3. The biggest consumers of pornography and prostitution are men. 4. Women and girls are the biggest victims of the pornography industry and prostitution in numbers and levels of violence (verbal, sexual, psychological aggression, etc.). 5. Among the destinations of trafficked children and women (human trafficking) sexual exploitation (pornography and prostitution) comes first. 6. Pornography and prostitution objectify vulnerable minorities (women, poc, poor, disabled, etc.). 7. Aside from all the violence and abuse involved in this industry, pornography affects the brain drastically and also the way the person who watches it treats their sexual partners (and even those who are not sexually involved with them, but who are objectified because of some uniform or disgusting scenario that occurs in pornography). 8. You can hardly know where the consumed pornography comes from, it may have been posted without consent, recorded without consent and even pretending lack of consent (which leads to fetishization of sexual violence). 10. For those who came to see this video because they consume Korean content and like the culture as well, I would recommend studying in depth about the people of the country, like.. literally listening to the majority of South Korean women who in recent years have protested in large numbers (to speak of thousands even) on the streets and on the internet against molkas (if you have the slightest conscience, research about it) and understand why pornography is prohibited in south korea and in so many other countries. 11. Just because in your country people do not seek to know about the effects of pornography, it does not mean that in a country where it is prohibited, people are conservative or closed minded, pornography is violence. 12. If you only listen to the small number of privileged people in this industry who say they like what they do but at the same time you ignore the BIG MAJORITY that is suffering, you are simply privileged enough to do this, while we women from various countries are fighting to save our children and women abused and affected by the sex industry. And lastly, if consent has to be bought, it is not true consent. If sex work is just work, then rape is just a work problem, if sex work is just work, girls are not sexually abused by pedophile buyers, it’s just child labor, etc. There are many reasons to understand the consequences of pornography and prostitution on society, only if you empathize enough to know that what is being sold is not sex but the consent of vulnerable people.”

How would you respond to this? I love how she equates paying for escorts/prostitutes with rape.

Well that comment is complete fucking one-sided horseshit.  Allow me to give you a more nuanced view.

1. This is true in some arms of the industry, and false in others.  I’ve never paid for sex but due to the music business being in such close proximity to the adult entertainment industry, I know and have known a lot of sex workers.  Every prostitute who I’ve ever met, who didn’t want to be a prostitute or sex worker anymore, just simply stopped doing it when the time was right for them.  This whole thing about them being “trapped” is only true in cases where the brothels are run by organised criminal gangs who don’t want the girls to leave.  The solution to gang involvement in prostitution is decriminalisation.  Once brothels are government-regulated, have to comply with health standards and have to file tax returns, watch the criminal gangs move onto something else.  (I realise in other countries it plays out differently and there’s things like human trafficking and child sex rings, obviously I’m 100% against those things, but this statement by the comment author lumps everything into the same basket.)
2. Newsflash – that’s not just a thing in the sex industry.  Child sexual abuse is hugely common (especially in places which are “supposed to be moral” like, you know, church).  I fail to see what the point of mentioning this in this context is anyway.  Is she implying that the women who choose to do sex work are somehow doing it because they’re “damaged” and their judgement is clouded because if so that’s incredibly sexist and insulting.
3. True but frankly so fucking what.  Just because it’s mainly men doesn’t mean that the females who enjoy porn are somehow not relevant, and to imply they are with a statement like this is saying “you’re not the majority therefore you don’t matter” which is a disgusting point of view.  Does this author also think black people’s opinions in America don’t matter, just because there’s more white people?  I wonder.
4. This is a hazy statement, because how are we defining victimisation.  The type of person who wrote this comment would probably define simply being in the industry at all as being a victim.  It all depends on where we decide to move those goalposts.  If we start to define clientele as victims as well (technically one could argue this, and I’ve seen this argument before from anti-porn crusaders that men are also victims – they’ll often make that argument when it suits them), then suddenly there’s more men.
5. True but again this person is lumping in human trafficking with other forms of prostitution and trying to tar everything with the same brush – shady argumentative tactics.
6. They also service those same minorities.  For instance, a lot of very severely disabled people rely on sex workers.  Good luck telling Timmy with no arms that he’s not allowed to look at porn and rub up against something, or have some nice lady in a nurse outfit jack him off.  You can have that conversation with him, not me.
7. This hasn’t been proven, I think it depends on the individual.  I’ve watched thousands of JAVs where consent is notoriously sketchy but it hasn’t affected my outlook on consent whatsoever or changed how I treat my partner.  For someone else it may differ of course, but that’s an issue between them and their brain and moral values.  It’s similar to the “heavy metal causes violence” argument – does heavy metal music really cause violence, or is it actually more of an outlet so violent urges can be released safely?  I’ve seen plenty of fights in pubs and clubs, but not once at a heavy metal gig.  Also keep in mind that lack of consent in porn is basically fantasy and a lot of it is actually aimed towards the female viewer.  A recent survey on Pornhub indicated that while men were the majority of porn consumers, women who consumed porn were far more likely to search up terms like “rape” (twice as popular) and “gangbang” (four times as popular), and if you think that’s just Pornhub, those patterns have been correlated elsewhere.  Does this mean women want to be raped?  Of course not.  However it does indicate a preference for certain types of fantasy and I think there’s nothing wrong with catering to fantasy as long as any content is clearly delineated as such.
8. You also don’t know if the free-range eggs you buy at the supermarket are really free range or not.  Just because there’s a stamp on the box from some free range egg association or whatever the fuck – they could have forged that stamp, how would you know?  Are you going to drive out to the farm and fucking check the hen distribution?  I don’t think so.  This comes down more to an issue with regulation and control, which means there should be more legalisation, not banning.  For instance the JAV industry, as it has grown in popularity, has become much more highly regulated by the government in recent years (after scandals a decade ago threatened to sink it) and as a result the industry has had to lift its game and the treatment of performers has improved.  Kaho Shibuya talks about this.  More regulation and more popularity means more scrutiny and higher standards.  Also see 7. above.
9. There is no Number Nine in this list, clearly an anti T-ara conspiracy, proof that the author of the comment is shady by trying to increment digits falsely as well as neglect T-ara.
10. Molka is a completely different thing to sex work.  I do not support molka.  Why is the comment author trying to conflate them – to help their argument, of course.  It doesn’t.
11. Saying “pornography is violence” is like saying “cookbooks are food poisoning”.  Yes, but only if you eat the book.
12. Again, the “if you’re not the majority you don’t matter” stance from point 3 above is back, which is weird because this person was arguing in favour of minorities in point 6 above.  But if you’re a “minority” like for instance an entirely independent, entirely self-funded, self-producing adult content creator or sex worker, running your own business from your own bedroom on the Internet (which might not even be a minority but anyway), then according to this commentor “fuck you, you’re a minority, your voice doesn’t matter”.  Niiiiiice.  Now I’m not saying prostitution is all perfect and lovely or even a pleasant job – far from it, it’s a job with a lot of risks, that few people want to do or have the mental/physical capacity to safely handle.  However you can say exactly the same thing about coal mining.  Both jobs pay very well per hour in western countries, precisely because they’re jobs that come with unpleasant aspects and many sacrifices, that few people want to do, but that also come with good returns, provide a valuable service, and that some people consider an acceptable means to an end.  People should have the right to choose either path without being demonised.

Anti sex-work is always the Trojan horse of “concern” that conservatives use to ride in on, and they do it that way to get the feminists and social justice types on-side, and you know what they always do second, after getting rid of all the porn and sex workers and getting in bed with feminists?  They get stuck straight into the LGBT community, and try to close down gay/lesbian bars and queer spaces online etc, and they’ll use all the same arguments above to do it, too… and then all those social justice types who greenlit the conservatives turn around and go “oh wait… we just handed these people a whole bunch of political power, but we didn’t expect them to turn around and do this with it… this wasn’t part of the plan.”  But it was, all along.  This is why I am pro-sex work and pro-prostitution, I feel that any other stance is unacceptably pissweak.  The girls (and sometimes guys) who do sex work, on top of everything else they have to deal with (which – let’s be real – is a lot), are at the very front line of battling against creeping conservative bullshit.  I’m also very pro-objectification for these reasons.  When The Boyz fans had a pathetic cry (again) over my interview with Eric’s alleged bully victim, they do what every k-pop fandom does, which is post stuff like this:

Obviously ad hominem attacks like this carry no weight whatsoever, but even if they did, it still wouldn’t matter.  Speaking of which:

Hi Oppar. I want to say that your view on objectification really changes my perspective a lot. Back then I thought that objectification is a bad thing to do, whether it’s about fictional characters or people. As a result, I avoided objectifying to the extreme. However, I couldn’t stop myself from feeling someone else as hot and attractive to the point of thinking about their attractiveness in some leisure time. I also realized that while I sometimes did objectify a person, most of the time I could still recognize them as a person and cared for them. It is more noticeable when it comes to fictional characters, as I can both objectify them (seeing them as hot and can talk about their sexiness all day) and analyse that character a lot (talking about their personality and motivations,…). Reading how you say that we can both objectify someone while also respect them really makes sense to me.

Speaking of objectification, I have heard many people, especially on Twitter, say that we shouldn’t objectify characters. If it’s the past me, I would believe something like that but the me now can’t help but feel ludicurous. I think it’s impossible to not objectify a character. People only think objectification as comment on the characters’ appearance/sex appeal and think activities such as character analysis, kinning (imagine oneself as a character) or praise/criticize characters as not objectification and I’m opposed to such thinking. I believe that all of the activities I mentioned above are all objectification. Character analysis is objectification because we viewed a character as object to be dissected and comment objectively. Kinning is objectification because we use the character as proxy for ourselves to project onto. Praising/criticizing is objectification because we are evaluating the character based on our criteria (we are judging them, and how can judgement not objectification). Of course I don’t think all of these activities as something sinful or bad, I just think people should just recognize that what they preach is too biased and hypocritical. Based on this observation of mine, I realize that objectification is not something that harmful like how the past me and many people make it seem to be

One more question. What is your thought on the notion: “fiction equals reality”? I saw this a lot on Twitter, where many people argue that if we like problematic stuff (such as incest, abusive or pedophilic ships), we support those actions; and we should only like healthy stuffs. I think it’s weird because if you engage youself in fiction too much to the point of believing what’s from fiction is reality, you are being nonsense and unhealthy, and isn’t that contradict to what you believe, that only liking healthy things mean you are a normal and healthy person? So why such believe makes you act so unhealthy and toxic?

The bottom line of human existence is that we are only here, talking to each other through the Internet because of the power of biology that compelled our parents to fuck and then bother to raise us into grown, technologically-conversant people.  We couldn’t exist without this.  Therefore we can see that biology is the primary force, it’s stronger than sociology.  We will never stop objectifying each other, because we are hard-wired to do this.  That doesn’t mean we can’t also take a step back and be reasonable people.  I think it’s healthier to acknowledge what is real, than to try and deny it, just for it to later rear its repressed head in some other uglier and more uncontrollable form.  Just be honest and admit to yourself that you like titties and ass, and then get on about your day.  It’s just not that big of a deal for anybody mature and sensible.

Fictional characters are objectification in their purest form.  A character creator literally creating the “character object” which is the container in which everything else goes.  To ascribe character traits is delusional, because it’s the “creative delusion” that put those traits there in the first place.  I think you understand all of this well and I like your paragraph on this.

Twitter is filled with a lot of people who don’t know how the world works because they don’t really live in it all that much.  If fiction is exactly like reality, what’s the point of even having fiction at all?  Lots of people fantasise about all sorts of things and I think that’s fine as long as they’re not hurting anyone in the real world.  I couldn’t give a shit about the private thoughts of someone inside their own head, or what they draw or write down in the privacy of their own bedrooms or in a fictional setting – none of my business.  It only becomes other people’s business when it starts to hurt other people directly.  For instance an abusive relationship is horrible and hurts another person, I don’t condone that.  However if someone wants to fantasise about being a participant in that situation, I don’t care.  If they want to play-act out their fantasies with a mutually consenting partner (paid for, or not), or write a book about it, then that’s also none of my business, as long as everyone involved in the situation is fine with whatever the arrangement happens to be, then whatever – nothing to do with me.  If you only control one thing in this world, it’s the fantasies and thoughts that live inside your own head – religion and the government hasn’t found a way to truly get in there yet (although you can bet they’d like to).  So while you still have the freedom (for now) to imagine whatever reality you want, why not imagine one where you’re trying not to have gay sex with Yves?

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That’s all for this month’s QRIMOLE!  This series will return next month!  In the meantime don’t forget to email genshin_cs@mihoyo.com and complain about the lack of mouse Y axis invert in Genshin Impact!  Seriously, why aren’t the major gaming publications making a bigger fuss about this?  I don’t want to sound like one of those Gamergate losers banging on about “truth in gaming journalism” as if all gaming writing hasn’t been a massive paid-for press release since the days of the Atari 2600, but when an AAA game comes out without this feature on the PC yet the best writing piece on the gradual de-normalisation of mouse Y axis invert is still the one from the fucking Guardian you sure know that gaming journalism standards are low as fuck.

Oh, and do you have a question that you’d like to see answered in the next episode of QRIMOLE?  If so, use the question box below, or if no box appears, click the Qri on the sidebar to open the box as a separate webpage!  Kpopalypse will return!