QRIMOLE – July 2024

It’s time for QRIMOLE, the series where readers ask Kpopalypse questions! Let’s take a look at the mailbag for the last month!

do you think maybe people are obsessed with vocals in kpop because they want to believe in the lie that it’s a meritocratic system where only ‘talented’ people who deserve to be famous can succeed? ive just been thinking about this recently lol

Yes, that’s a possibility. They might feel like if their bias didn’t have “talent”, they wouldn’t “deserve” to be an idol, which would in turn make the fan stupid for idolising said idol. So their idol better be talented, or else, because the fans don’t want it reflecting badly on them to like the idol. Since selfishness drives a lot of idol fan culture, this makes sense.

I know you don’t like jpop, but

Correct! Next question.

So I’ve recently realized Yves isn’t just “kpop pretty” but is like honestly stupidly hot and upon realizing this I went back to the videos for New and Heart Attack and came away feeling the same about her as I did when those videos came out she’s “kpop pretty” so I can’t figure out what’s changed between then and now because it doesn’t look like she “got prettier” hopefully you can help me with this.

Honestly I think she’s just gotten more attractive as she’s aged, which is definitely a thing that I see across the board with all types of people. Maybe it’s just because I’m an old cunt, but… I just like older people more, in general? It’s like the differences between people get more pronounced when they age, and it’s those differences which make people unique, and I like uniqueness. Yves looks more like Yves now than she did five years ago, her overall amount of Yves has increased.

Hey, if you’ve listened to rising lesbian star Chappell Roan, do you consider it to be new wave? And are there any KPop songs that sound like her songs?

and

thoughts on chappell roan’s good luck babe?

. i don’t know why but it reminds me sooo much of eyedi’s &new.

Thanks for answering the other person’s question for me so I didn’t have to.

The term “new wave” doesn’t have a lot of meaning anymore. It’s a term that made a lot more sense in the 1980s than it does now, with the original context mostly forgotten. Best avoided as a genre term.

Did you hear about how Gfriend’s albums from before they joined Hybe all got removed from Youtube? What do you think could be the reason for that? The music videos are still there, so those great tracks are still available. It just seems so random to remove those albums years after the disbandment.

No idea. Could be in preparation for a physical re-release, or could be some kind of rights transition of music, or maybe HYBE are just cunts I dunno. There’s a lot of different reasons why decisions like this are made, usually it’s something mundane like a rights agreement ending. The lesson is don’t count on your favourite music staying online forever. The cloud is just someone else’s computer.

Which kpop idol out of the ones currently in the industry do you think will be the first to start livestreaming on rumble with Russell Brand and Andrew Tate in a tinfoil hat

Jay Park. He’s been everywhere else!

Do you have any tips for someone who has issues with focusing their attention on a single thing for a significant amount of time? It’s not just caused by the trend of short-form content in the past few years (tho I’m sure it did not help), I’ve been like this my whole life.
I’m asking cause I think you mentioned at some point you struggle with that too. My bad if I misremember, you can ignore this question then.

I thought this advice was great.

I showed this video to my girlfriend (who is WAY more ADHD than I am) and she was like “yep, he gets it – he probably has it too”.

CSR making relatively weaker songs is just the perfect impetus for Gfriend to get back together and remake their debut sound. I swear I’m not hooked on hopium.

I agree, the closest I’ve seen is boy group The Wind but they don’t quite hit for me because they’re not Eunha. Still good songs overall though.

Regarding your weekly round-ups, you always find a lot of songs to compare/contrast to, and the extra non-kpop bands are also good and new to me almost .. always. How do you know so many bands, so much about music history and music in general? Is this just university knowledge, or is it just knowledge over time of being exposed to a lot of different things, etc. I’m asking because I have considerably more knowledge about music genres and history than my friends but obviously you know more than me and I want to achieve something close to your level. How can someone get this power?

If you want to follow my path to music knowledge:

learn classical piano and classical music theory from age 5
listen to radio and music TV all the time as a bored lonely kid
learn guitar at age 13
start a record label at 19, release music even if it sucks
go to music uni pass in top 10% of graduates
go to music grad uni because avoiding real life is fun
be a radio DJ and have access to tons of music
join a bunch of bands and tour around the country when you can
go and see bands a lot
deliberately seek out new music all the time when not doing the above

That’s a lot of effort though. These days the process is actually faster because of the Internet, people can gain knowledge much quicker. The idea of hearing about a band, just being able to type something into a computer and then you can listen to them is amazing. Back when I was young you had to just ‘guess’ what you might like based on the marketing, hence the term ‘punter’ to describe someone showing up to a gig of some artist they might not know. You had to be dedicated to get knowledge. Nowadays the barrier to entry is a lot lower and that’s a great thing, and I’ve met people much younger than me who have knowledge equal to mine because they make use of all the new resources available. Just keep exploring, and if you’re not sure I’ll continue to point you in new directions when I can…

I’m using my summer break to catch up with old IVE content. I watched Starship’s 2022 episode on Game Caterers and Ahn Yujin was the only member who made it to the dance battle final. She was quite good but the two members of Cravity who also made it were significantly better dancers. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed this difference in dancing skills between girl groups and boy groups. It’s generally the same across all companies. Why do you think that is? Do they give the boys more training in dancing or just more interesting choreography? I love watching energetic dancing and I wish we could see more of it from the girls.

I think it’s a societal thing – according to the Korean gender norms girls are supposed to ‘dance pretty’ whereas boys are allowed to take more risks and be bolder. This was one of the reasons I was a big fan of Loona doing all those boy-group dances. I think breaking stupid barriers like this is important.

1. Not a question, but it’s related to my actual question and I think most of your readers will find this link useful as it complements your older posts about the inner workings of the music industry: Next time someone asks you jpop related questions just tell them to read all first three parts of this (part four is sadly unarchived) and come back only after they do so; will save you a lot of time.

2. Since you’re a regular Asianjunkie reader and to contextualize the readers, i’m sure you have seen the articles about Johnny’s Entertainment (aka Johnny’s Associates aka Johnny’s Jimusho aka whatever the fuck they rebranded it now to avoid accountability) and how their founder and godfather figure turned out to be a serial pedophile who abused more than 1000 (!!!!!!!) people (incl teenagers and literal kids) during his 60+ years at the agency’s helm. This was a known secret for decades but it only caused a scandal when the BBC did a documentary called Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop and the international pressure shamed Japanese society into finally doing something about it to save face.

btw the documentary doesn’t say this but the guy was also notorious for refusing to be photographed, and during the last 20 years he only allowed a single picture of him to be used by the media and it was a small photo of him wearing shades and a hat. Even his profile in some Guinness record he got uses that one photo. But this is common with most japanese agency ceos: they hide in the shadows and it’s incredibly hard to even find their names or identities let alone photos, the neojaponisme article talks in depth about that.

Why the fuck is this? kpop is full of crooks and criminals but they plaster their face everywhere and choose to be visible. I just googled who is the CEO of UMG and got an instant answer and photo. What is going on here (unless the actual people calling the shots in those industries are also hidden).

In true jpop fashion the documentary is only available on the BBC’s website, UK region locked (I’m guessing Australia too? idk) because the youtube version lacks english subs for the japanese spoken parts as it was made precisely for the japanese audience to watch

– Have you seen the documentary? What were your thoughts?

– How similar/different it is from kpop and it’s own obvious pedophiles in sight?

I was going to ask if a similar effect could be caused in the South Korean industry if an important international media outlet like the BBC did their own hard hitting investigative expose on any shady figure of the kpop industry but then I remembered how the Burning Sun documentary fizzled out after its release so… disregard this.

Cheers!

I haven’t seen the documentary as I wasn’t aware of its existence (but I will get to it eventually now that you’ve linked it) and I’m only peripherally aware of the whole controversy surrounding Johnnys. I’ve noted Asian Junkie writing about it and it’s good that he’s covered it but I haven’t really dived deep into it – as it’s j-pop it’s as outside of my wheelhouse as coverage of R Kelly or Garry Glitter might be. Pedophiles in the music business is nothing at all new (see Jimmy Saville for instance) so the idea that a high-profile one emerged in Japan wasn’t shocking to me at all. I just saw the articles and thought “okay, another pedo somewhere in the world – noted”. The difference between Japan and Korea in terms of how under the radar these people are is interesting, but I don’t know enough about it to really throw down on why it would be like that in Johnnys’ case and if that’s just an issue with him or if it says something bigger about the societies overall. Obviously I’m aware to some degree about these aspects but not really any more than anyone else. I’m willing to say “other people might know more about me about this thing”. I guess I need to watch the documentary.

Hey, kpopalypse, longtime reader here, although I don’t think I’ve ever sent you a question or commented before. Anyway, I have some venting to do and also want to ask you a practical question as a content creator.

*Block of text incoming*

So, you, as a fellow teacher living on this shit ass planet probably knows, things are hard right now. We’re all getting fucked sideways by this cost of living crisis, but as a teacher I feel that it hurts even more. I mean, all of my friends who don’t work in Education but also have academic degrees make much more than I do, and as a bonus they don’t have to deal with functionally illiterate teenagers who are somehow on their way to college despite having the attention span of a goldfish (and probably their argumentative skills as well).

I can barely pay rent and now I’m also drowning in vet bills (and my poor kitty didn’t make it). Up until recently, gaming was my hobby of choice. I don’t really play online, I’m more of a single-player guy. Give me any of those AAA-100-hour-long extravaganzas or an anime tiddy JRPG and I’m good for a couple of months. However, finding new titles that I enjoy and that can run on my potato PC or my aging PS4 is getting harder and harder and I feel like I have finally been priced out of gaming (no FF16 or Dragon’s Dogma II for me, I guess).

Anyway, after unloading all of that on you (thx for the free therapy provided on QRIMOLE!), I can finally ask you my question, which is pretty practical: Since I can’t enjoy the latest games anymore, I was thinking of replacing gaming with kpop blogging as my hobby of choice. It’s free, it’s fun, it will help me unwind, and it’s also a creative outlet of sorts. Plus, I feel like it’s not a saturated niche, since there are so few spaces that offer unbiased kpop criticism.

However, there are some caveats to blogging in 2024. It’s not something you do within one of the big social media platforms, therefore, in order for you to find an audience, you depend on Google’s search engine. And that’s an absolute dumpster fire right now, it’s just ads and Google’s own auto generated nonsense.

I was thinking that, instead of starting a blog, I could start one of those faceless Youtube channels, because Youtube is more of a passive experience for users, people won’t have to find my content, hopefully the algorithm will hand it to them. I have also dabbled with audio and video editing in the past, so I wouldn’t have to learn much to get the ball rolling. The downside is that audio editing can be fucking boring and I really don’t find my voice that pleasant to listen to (or I’m just really self aware, there’s that).

So, what should I do?

A) Start a blog and risk writing to no one;
B) Put up with audio editing and start a faceless Youtube channel;
C) Rob a bank and buy me a PS5 and a RTX 3060

Thank you!

Replacing gaming with anything creative is definitely a good idea. You’re right that blogging will lead quickly to nowhere. Don’t bother. I know that sounds like odd advice coming from a blogger, but remember that I started a dozen years ago, the Internet landscape was different back then, if I started fresh today I don’t think anyone would be reading just because who the hell is going to even find it or care. The YouTube channel is much more promising purely because there’s a possibility of having your content actually discovered, something that blogging definitely doesn’t have. The best YouTubers reach more people in a day than I do in a year. The YouTube algorithm sucks but at least it’s something. I could give very good bank-robbing advice but my lawyer advises me not to, so I’ll just say that it’s not a great idea but still probably a better option than starting a k-pop blog.

1. Not that great. I can see why it’s a B-side.

2. Yes and you’ll find out about them if you keep reading roundups. Overall though a complete about-face on a song is very rare. Probably the song I’ve done a complete 360 on in recent memory is “Macaroni Cheese”. I mean, it sucks… but I can’t stop listening to it anyway, so I guess I have to admit that I was wrong and they figured out something in that song that I’m yet to.

Kpopalypse, I loved your post about shorter songs, and the point about shorter songs existing to maximise streams, and therefore money, and it got me thinking. What are your thoughts on the amount of pre-releases we get now? I feel like sometimes it’s excessive, a 6 track EP doesn’t need 2-3 pre-releases. For example, SM boygroup Riize recently came out with their debut mini album, and the songs were either previously released as digital singles or released as pre releases. The only track that was “new” on release was the title track. I feel like the companies do it to maximise streams, but in my opinion, part of the charm of an album is the surprise listening to it. What are your thoughts on prereleases?

Just another way to milk more content out of the release cycle of stuff. Companies don’t care about surprising you, they care about selling things – specifically, idols. More things to release means more ways to get that idol in front of sponsors. The mini-album isn’t for you to discover great new music, it’s for you to treasure and keep and fawn over and use to increase your parasocial connection to the idol, that is then on-sold as brand value to a soft drink company.

Hi! So, I’ve been reading this blog since I was a severely lonely and hyper online 14 year old who didn’t really pay attention to anything happening outside South Korea. Now I’m 21, just graduated college, am a little less lonely, and have spent the last few years spending basically all of my free time working door at local shows for the love of it, driving hours to see bands I actually wanna see, and generally being very, very invested in all types of music, especially anything D.I.Y. I’m completely tuned out of kpop on the drama front and only half in touch when it comes to the actual music, but I still love reading your blog every now and then. Alllllll that to say, seeing you mention Zulu (who, God willing, I will finally be seeing live next month) in your post about song lengths threw me for an entire full circle loop. What’s some of your other favorite hardcore right now? Thanks much!

Zulu are awesome, I’m jealous!

Knocked Loose are great. They’re getting quite popular lately, so hopefully my readers already know about them but anyone who hasn’t, thank me next month.

Oh and their song with Poppy that just came out – holy fuck. Neither of them have ever sounded better. She fits their style like a glove, she should just join the band permanently, fuck it.

If you want something more nugu I’m totally addicted to this song by a band called Ingrown. Not sure about their obsession with guns and dirt bikes but these crazy American rednecks sure know how to write some fucking riffs.

By the way, if you search up “Ingrown” on Youtube, make sure you search them up as “Ingrown band”, not just “Ingrown”. Just trust me on this.

I just wanted to ask, what do you think of this song? (lyrics included)

Pretty average musically. The lyrics are giving big “Josh the Nayeon stalker” energy.

Hi Kpopalypse,

Both Blackpink and Babymonster are dubbed as 2NE1 continuity, but I only see similarity (in song structure and hook) to Big Bang’s Bang 3x. I don’t know 2NE1 other than their hits like I Am the best/Fire, but I failed to see the similarity to BP and BM music, unlike BM with BP. Since sometimes you wrote them as 2NE2 and 2NE3 in the weekly recap, could you point out which things from BP and BM that makes them 2NE1?

Thank you Oppar!

The main similarity between all three groups – musically – is structural. YG have a specific pattern that they write most of their girl group songs in these days. It can basically be summed up as:

“verse – prechorus – chorus – verse – prechorus – chorus – hey everyone let’s jump the fucking shark into something totally different and severely underdeveloped that sounds like it could have been a chorus of a completely different song”

You can hear it in 2NE1’s “Cant Nobody”:

As well as “Do You Love Me”:

Although the most famous early example is probably CL’s “The Baddest Female”:

You also hear exactly the same structure in all of Blackpink’s biggest hits, “Kill This Love” makes it probably the most obvious of all of them but it’s far from the only example:

And Babymonster’s “Sheesh” and “Batter Up” also follow the pattern:

There’s other similarities also to do with image and marketing which are fairly obvious and people can figure out those on their own, but if you just want the musical connection, there it is.

Are there good K-Pop songs that incorporate traditional instruments? I feel like it’s such a missed opportunity to bring some Korean culture into its pop.

I’m not so sure if shoving a traditional instrument into a k-pop song is really increasing the “cultural” aspect or not. A lot of amalgamations between traditional and modern sounds feel like superficial and tokenistic attempts to tap into the lucrative “world music” market (and I’m not just talking about within Korea), there’s a reason why I forbid “world music” from my non-Korean Asian k-pop feature in 2024 roundups. But if you want to hear what I think is that sort of thing done the right way, I’d say go for Jambinai:

Jambinai doesn’t feel to me like traditional instruments included for marketing reasons like a lot of groups do. It seems to me that they really utilise the texture of each instrument in context, which often includes playing them in non-traditional ways. More like cultural expression, less like cultural cosplay.

What do you think of RUNext Desperate? (because this song got so much HYPE and they never released it).

just average. Nothing overly wrong with it but it doesn’t really grab me that much either, I was waiting for the big hook that never came. The only thing really notable about it is the song title, I like the honesty of calling an idol pre-debut competition song “Desperate”.

Do you think most K-Pop fans develop an attachment to the first group they experience that causes them to look at said group overly fondly? I got into K-Pop due to Gfriend and then got more attached to K-Pop as a whole due to Dreamcatcher, and I don’t know if I still like both groups so much because they were actually that good.

I’m not completely sure what you’re asking just because I’m a bit confused by your phrasing, but if the question is “do you think people become overly attached to the first really good group they encounter in k-pop, and then as time goes on the nostalgia factor affects this” then I think the answer is yes. I think nostalgia is a really big driver for a lot of people in music. Not me personally, but certainly most people. Most people I know who are my age still listen to the music they liked as teenagers and investigate little if any new stuff. Sorry if I misunderstood the question here.

Hi Kpopalypse, I’m back (in a while) to vent. Primarily my personal drama is over and I just want someone to take my fucks so that I have fewer to give, and a greater amount of caonima energy, which is hard for me to do.

My boyfriend was involved in a sort of MBTI-ish personality culty online group for a while. His family kind of dropped the ball checking in on him while he was going through some mental health problems in his teens, so he became very enmeshed in these online groups. The leader of one group (calling her Kahi) was particularly disgusted by how little his problems were being attended to and kind of became like a surrogate guardian for a while. Neither of them were particularly stable (she’s diagnosed with borderline apparently) and there were a lot of cruel things said on both sides. He was also very eager to impress her and lied a few times about some major things.

Things eventually ended with BF deciding to take some distance from her so things could chill out for a bit. She kept asking when they’d be back in touch and he wasn’t sure, so she decided to cut things off entirely.

When I met my BF we were friends first, and he really had negative ideas from her in his head. He thought that she thought he was hopeless, not talented, not intelligent, and a bunch of other things—he basically imagined criticism from her every day. When disagreeing with him about things related to personal life or personality, sometimes he’d refer to her ideas to make his points. I didn’t really know who she was and wasn’t able to talk him out of feeling crappy about himself, because I hadn’t really proved myself to be more insightful about people than her.

I read up on some of the old forum posts and was like “oh shit, she’s actually pretty smart/has a point.” I wound up reaching out to her basically in an attempt to figure out this part of BF’s past (he didn’t have very clear memories of that part of his life,) why he felt so hung up on her, and whether she was as unstable or insightful as I’d heard. (I did ask BF first if this would be okay. He said it worried him a lot but that I could do what I wanted.) The good news is, he doesn’t feel like she has so much sway in her head any more after hearing about her mistreating me about the exact same ways she mistreated him.

Anyway, me and Kahi chatted in person and online for ~3 months. At first things were pretty awkward but she was willing to take me on as a student of psychology basically. (I wasn’t aware she was viewing it as a teaching dynamic until recently, I thought she just wanted to have some to chat with about ideas.) The most recent fight we had started from me talking about an unrelated philosophical idea relating brains to computers (Turing completeness.) She said brains can’t all be computers, her and my brains couldn’t be the same bc of a dumb comment I made while analyzing a poem, and was frustrated that I didn’t talk to her the way I would a world-class poet. I said that she was being rude and elitist. After about 2 weeks of traveling, I told her I was back in town. She said that she *is* elite, access to her is a privilege, and I’d revoked it by bitching about elitism while knowing well that that was justifiably how she was. We bickered more, she also called me highly prideful for saying I wasn’t going to have a ton of time to hash things out before I moved out of town, and claimed she was changing her mind about my personality type to one which is more arrogant (think Hyomin) to one which is more entitled (think Hwayoung.) She said I only want to be friends with chronically nice people.

I knew she had cut people off initially if she found their ideas ridiculous, or after a long time if they’d done something egregious (like lying to her about something major or yelling at her.) But she decided to stop talking to me because I complained about her being elitist. It felt very sudden.

It’s probably better off I’m not talking to someone like that? BF says he’s not even completely sure that she’ll hold off, but if she does decide to I should probably ignore her going forward. She has a lot of useful things to say and makes me find certain subjects really interesting + feel good about my insights, but she’s also kind of hypersensitive, and was significantly more rude to me the entire time than I was to her in my opinion. (She’d probably disagree on this, saying I was really entitled about her time or didn’t appreciate her artistry or something.) I tried giving her the benefit of the doubt, to figure out if she was triggered/nervous about something I said, and she said I couldn’t even conceive of a world in which she wasn’t writhing with pain over me.

Caveat: Kahi seems particularly stressed out right now, in that she has a crappy living situation, crappy financial situation, few close friends to chat with about interests, and bad mental/physical health. I don’t think she was necessarily in horrific pain from me, but I imagine she’s in pain from the world and lashed out at me. But I also can’t really imagine why she would have reacted so strongly to being called elitist after deriding my poetry (which she hasn’t read) if she wasn’t extremely bothered by it.

I also feel weirdly self-conscious, like I need to determine if I’m being entitled all the time. I’ve never gotten the feedback that I have too much toxic positivity or tone-police too often, so I’m not sure how seriously to take it. But while fighting with her I did feel almost violently judgmental at times, with much more intense standards than I usually have.

I guess my question is whether it sounds like I was unreasonable here (whether or not she was,) whether I portray myself as overly in the right when I’m actually being excessively picky to everyone, and what I should do if she reaches out again.

I’m also probably giving up on personality things and MBTI-cult things for a while, bc if people like her are the best it has to offer (and she IS very smart,) it’s probably not the healthiest environment.

It’s human nature to feel that you are right about stuff, it’s just how our brains work, hence the existence of “am I the asshole” forums etc because people do have genuine difficulty determining. It’s a little difficult for me to tell from this how unreasonable you were being without receiving a ton more detail about the conversations, but given that it’s an MBTI cult or whatever it’s probably detail I don’t care to read anyway. Overall though I think that “I am elite” coming out of anyone’s mouth for any reason is a deal-breaker for any kind of human interaction and I would have cut her off right then and there and not looked back. Friends don’t let friends do MBTI.

What even is grief and mourning oppar?
It’s been over a year since I lost my father. He had been suffering from illness for a long while, so I guess knowing his time was running out dulled the immediate pain I should have been feeling? I certainly wasn’t screaming, crying or beating my fists when I found out. I also had mixed feelings towards him – he had never so much as raised his voice at his kids, but for our mother he had plenty of yelling (and, okay, physical abuse) to give her. And I’m not even going to get into the alcoholism. But what made me even angrier was mum’s insistence that we maintain a relationship with him despite him doing all this to her; I can’t deny I felt a little disgusted at her for defending him and not filing those divorce papers.

With time and age I’ve come to realize that relationships aren’t this black and white, and my mum was a victim too (whether she wants to admit it or not); so I have completely forgiven her, and me and my siblings are all moving forward with our lives.

Well oppar, a year on and the tables have turned in a sickening way; I’ve begun to really miss and cry for my father, with his demons and all. It’s complicated because despite him being so horrible to mum I know that he did love me and my sibs from the bottom of his heart, and I am very much like him in many ways.
I have a feeling it’s suppressed grief rearing its’ head after a year of being pushed down – and the reason I stomped it all inside me was to placate my mother. Immediately after dad’s funeral my siblings went off to the different cities they work in so I was the only child living with her, and I went full scorched earth on my dead dad’s character and personality, because I wanted her to free herself from the mental weight of being married to her abuser. Obviously it’s not a one-day job, so this slander ran for months and months.

And now that my mother finally seems to be freeing herself from her mental cage, it looks like I’ve walked right in. I still live with her because I’m saving up to move out, but I’m determined not to cry in front of my mum because she is so emotionally fragile that one admission of vulnerability means she will walk back into the trap of redeeming him again – and if she does that, there’s no telling how horribly she’ll deterioriate. Right now, she seems to be empowered by me validating the small voice in the back of her head, the one that told her she didn’t deserve to be treated so horribly by him, and I shudder to think of what will happen once she sees a glitch in the matrix, so to speak. (Sadly, speaking to her honestly is not an option. She’s just not up to it mentally, believe me I’ve tried)

But now what do I do with all these feelings I have oppar? Crying at night isn’t helping. Should I rent an Airbnb to cry in? Sob in public and risk the mockery? I don’t know. My siblings are nice enough to listen to me ramble, but they already did their grieving and I suspect they’re a bit tired of me being late to the party.

Two things can be true at once – your dad may have been an abusive asshole and also someone capable of showing love and being a good father (selectively ahem). Of course this doesn’t make knowing how to feel about him being gone any easier. It might be worth considering therapy, if it’s within your budget. Just because a therapist is paid to sit there and listen to you vent about your problems and try to be empathetic and helpful, and as they’re a trained  professional they’re probably not going to advise you to do anything really stupid (as a random k-pop writer might, out of ignorance). If therapy isn’t affordable, expressing yourself artistically might be a valid alternative to just crying a lot. But still, allow yourself to cry as well, if you need to. Sometimes you just got to get it out until it’s not in you anymore.

So, ARMYs are the biggest fandom, and their size, along with their primary demographic of children to young teens, means they’re particularly toxic, basically the most toxic fandom in the entire K-Pop industry. You’ve been around for a long time. Have there been as toxic fandoms before in K-Pop? You also know the wider music industry, and I’m sure ARMYs aren’t the most toxic all-around. What are some examples of how toxic fandoms can get?

ELFs (Super Junior fans) were notoriously toxic back when Super Junior were younger, and allegedly instigated the notorious SNSD “black ocean“. And of course who could forget IU “visiting the sick”. I think because SM had the biggest hype machine they also had the craziest fandoms.

“It’s funny that one thing Bravesound were really known for back then was writing songs with little variation throughout, a vast contrast to today’s k-pop where everything has a pre-chorus drop and five change-ups nobody asked for.”
Also, Bravesound made great songs even if you knew what you’d get when seeing their name on a song’s credits. When I order steak, please give me steak. Why is that so hard nowadays?

Yes something has been lost lately with regards to k-pop songwriting. But don’t worry, everything is cyclical. The simpler songs will come back.

Exo CBX proves that while the companies themselves are the worst part of Kpop, the fans are definitely up there right next to them. The companies get away with all their shady shit because the fans will fucking eat it all up and financially support them all the way there, exploiting all the artists along the way.

This is true, but it’s also not a question, so therefore JAV of the month is URKK-094.

Sorry if this is already answered, but does your partner know you watch porn? If they do, what do they think of it? Do they do it too?

Of course she knows. I’m at least as open with her as I am with all of you. I’m a big believer in “people should know what they’re signing up for” which is why I write about k-pop in the way that I do. That philosophy of full disclosure also extends to my personal relationships. I’d be a hypocrite if I hid my smut-watching habits from my partner. She knows I’m a pervert but mainly just thinks porn is comical… and let’s face it, she’s right – a lot of it is. At the end of the day it’s entertainment, and a lot of relationships get damaged by people taking porn too seriously, laughing at it is the right attitude. But she does also like it when I write about boobs on this site. Everyone likes to perv sometimes, at something, it’s just how we’re wired as human beings, to look at other humans. To deny it is to deny your own humanity.

As the CXB and SM stuff heats up again, do you have any idea why Loona fans were able to actually come together and boycott hard enough for the group to get out/the Loona lawsuits actually worked? Is it just that BBC doesn’t have the political clout that SM has? Or that EXO fans don’t care that much about the actual members? Or is it that BBC was actually doing more illegal things than other agencies, because it all looks like the same from here? My only thought is that Loona has mostly international fans so the media play doesn’t work as well, but tbh based on kpop fan interactions in general I’m doubtful to assign some sort of higher media literacy level to international fans.

I think it’s partly Loona’s fanbase mainly being overseas and fans from countries outside of Asia having different expectations of how idols should be treated – combined with Blockberry being far less artful than a big-three label at covering up issues. SM have been around for decades and know how to handle their crazy fandoms a bit more effectively. They’re excellent at sweeping problems and issues under the rug, are very familiar with timing release cycles in ways to help fans forget the problems, etc.

What would you consider actually good songs by MAMAMOO? (Other than Colors, duh)

Piano Man!

Watch me write a fanfiction about Mamamoo while listening to it. Do it, caonima.

Yo, not sure if this got through on the nugu alert comments, so I’ll QRIMOLE it:

Your request was noted. If you ever submit something and just get a wall of silence back, it means that the idea made it to a list somewhere and it will possibly emerge later. I’m overdue for a girl-group focused Nugu Alert, so unless they start skyrocketing in views you can expect to see your contribution on a Nugu Alert in the near future!

Hi! I have some questions about office politics: please don’t publish everything in the brackets though:

[a whole bunch of very interesting stuff deleted at reader request]

That’s it, sorry for the long text. Wishing the best for you and thanks as always for your superb writing. I’m already halfways through Love Carousel and loving every word as usual.
Cheers!

Navigating office politics – I always find it hard! I’m pretty antisocial so I struggle here. The best advice I can give is don’t neglect the social side completely i.e if there’s a work social gathering, go to it. Being seen as a team player both in work and leisure is helpful. If you’re not at the social gatherings, you’ll become the person that they talk about at the social gatherings.

Setting limits – doesn’t mean having a formal conversation saying “here are my limits” it just means that if you get overloaded with work prioritise it and set aside the unimportant/less urgent stuff for later. You can’t do everything, so don’t. Do the urgent stuff now and the other stuff when you can.

Being a “hard worker” and just getting more work for it – it’s fine. I mean 1. they are paying you and 2. work makes the time go quicker. Many years ago I had a job that I hated, and I realised that “between time x when I start work and time y that I finish work, I’m always going to have a bad time, so I might as well do the most/best work that I can because I’ll dislike it whether I work hard or not – so why not work hard and then at least the boss will like me”. That attitude changed my work life at that particular job infinitely for the better: suddenly time went faster, other workers respected me more plus the boss was always happier to see me.

Scolding others – I’m the kind of person who refuses to raise my voice and yell at people – I just won’t do it, ever. I’ll just bluntly and matter-of-factly tell them that they’re doing something wrong/badly… along with (and this is key) how to improve and meet the requirements. It’s not about exerting power vs being a doormat – it’s about motivating people to get results.

Reading through your latest roundup and you mentioned that heavy metal as a genre is known for having really shitty music videos, I’m a big fan of japanese heavy metal and I can confirm that this is absolutely true, but why is that the case lol is the video quality directly proportional to the amount of shredding going on in each song or what. It makes very hard to recommend songs to normie friends because all they end up doing is making fun of the ultra low budgets.
I feel like only Ningen Isu and Lovebites have been able to escape the music video curse

I think it’s just that for heavy metal bands, they know they’re not going to “make it on the pop charts” or whatever, so videos aren’t really a priority for a lot of them. So when they do make one they don’t tend to spend a lot of money to make it amazing, because unlike pop music the video is not going to be a huge drawcard that gets them a big audience. Heavy metal fans have never really cared a LOT about music videos and a lot of the most highly-regarded bands have few or no music videos relative to the amount of product they’ve released.

best post-loona song including the bsides from recent releases?

On June 22, both Taylor Swift and IU will have concerts in London. The difference is, while Taylor will be singing in a sold out Wembley Stadium, IU will be performing in a half filled concert hall with a capacity of few thousands people. Why do Kpop soloists utterly fail at appealing to western audiences? I mean, groups can do that, so, it is not a question of cultural distance. Is it simply due to a lack of talent? Maybe a case where all the talents go to the groups, and only the leftovers continue as soloists, hence the mediocrity?

IU is just not that famous outside of Asia and k-pop fans. The average person in the UK doesn’t know who IU is, she’s not a household name there like Taylor is, and she’s not even at the top of the k-pop heap popularity wise like say Blackpink or BTS. Honestly a half-full few-thousand capacity venue is a pretty damn good showing for a country where most people don’t give a shit.

Have you seen the most recent Viviz dance practice? Actually, I don’t care. I’m linking it anyway for the objectification survey.

Everyone don’t forget that the Kpopalypse objectification survey will start sometime next week!

Hi oppar,

Yes this is about the same guy with insecurities that I talked about in a retrospring question

This is Part 2, a final part will be submitted separately.

This question was before I began to ignore him. I suppose it is a prologue lmao.

One night, we were all sitting out in the hotel lounge area and playing games, etc. We were all talking about which pets were preferred — cats or dogs.
The guy in the group kept saying he was “bipetsexual”, but in my eagerness (as one of many bisexual caominas) I thought he was saying he was bisexual and this “bipetsexual”. So I interrupted him and asked, “Oh! You’re bisexual?” I was hoping we could be bi buds, i don’t know.

Unfortunately he found this very offensive. First he thought I was accusing him of being a manwhore, I clarified I was not. I got fed up and told him straight “don’t take what I say so seriously.” This did not work either. He started saying homophobic things while we were gathered there — which thankfully another woman in the group called out and he stopped immediately.

A few days later he moved on to assuming that I thought he was effeminate, which he was not either.
Even on the last day of the trip like a week later as we were all hugging goodbye he made another comment about it.

kpopalypse, as a straight man who routinely is accused falsely of homosexuality, what was going on in this guy’s mind?

Fucked if I know. “Bipetsexual” isn’t a real thing, so he’s clearly making something up inside his own head but I have no idea what. I don’t think he even wants to tell you.

So after the bisexuality “incident” and me subsequently ignoring him things got worse and worse. Even though I wasn’t interested in talking to him he was weirdly persistent in trying to talk to me. It was different than before — now he was overly nervous around me. He would speak so fast I couldn’t understand what he was saying, avoid eye contact, etc. When he did try to talk he would stare at me with noticeably sad, intense eyes. It made me feel sad and uncomfortable.

When I finally attempted to make up with him by the end of the trip I noticed his arm was literally shaking when he reached out to give me a fist bump. I get shaky sometimes when I’m around people I find very attractive or if I’m really angry, but the conversation was calm.

It was so weird. Like he didn’t seem like the type to scare easily? Or be scared by a 22 year old woman. I definitely messed up somehow but is this something I can fix with an apology? Did I permanently traumatize this man??

I think he was already traumatised before you even started interacting with him. I would not contact him ever again if I were you, it’s only going to lead to more drama and confusion (and QRIMOLE questions) in your life. He needs some kind of assistance I think, but not from you.

What do you think of this? I mean, you probably won’t like it, but since you reviewed Good Bones, it’s only fair…

And THIS is why I really do not like expanding the criteria of roundup beyond something very, very strict. I get endless “you finally looked at x so now you can look at y” questions as a result, and honestly out of the hundreds of submissions I get each week only about 30% of it ever actually makes it into roundup. I’m already throwing out a lot of stuff that is completely 100% eligible for inclusion just because I don’t have the time to look at it, so I’m super-not-keen to include things on the very fringe of eligibility. Not even going to give an opinion on it, but if I did put this in roundup I’d probably just talk about the clothing or something.

Also, also… how’s your workout routine going?

Good! I haven’t lost weight, or gained weight, but I’ve definitely gained a lot of strength since I started, and that’s helped with some other physical problems that I’ve had. I don’t look overly different but I sure feel different.

I’m sure you’ve heard the song & seen the video for “Take My Chance” by Doll$Box, yeah? I searched for it on the site & nothing came up, so I’m mentioning it here just in case it’s been under your radar. It’s got everything you could want out of life: an all Japanese girl band in maid outfits playing metal, a lead guitar shredding while making kawai smiles, and a drummer channeling Pazuzu,

I wasn’t aware of it. It’s got everything I want out of life… except a good song. The songwriting is really missing from this. There are a lot of bands who do this sound better.

Thoughts on ARTMS B-sides? Were you ever a Loona person, or nah?

Hope you and your cat are doing okay.

idgaf about B-sides much. If the company wants me to care, they can put it on the A-side.

Loona had a pretty good run pre-debut, and a slightly less-good run post-debut with a few standouts.

Cat is good! Had some health scares last month but she’s recovered nicely, thanks to those who helped! Confirmation of good cat:

How to pronounce qrimole

The way you would normally pronounce Qri from T-ara, and then “mole” on the end, as in a mole on your nose.

Have you watched HYEMILEEYECHAEPA? I just binged all 12 eps in 3 days (dailymotion has the complete episodes with English subs).

It’s Hyeri, Miyeon, Leejung Yena, Chaewon, and Patricia in an unfurnished house. They have to do complete silly quests or answer kpop trivia to earn money to buy food, furniture, towels, toilet paper, everything.

It’s the most adorable show I’ve ever seen.

Haven’t seen.

If they get everything wrong do they starve and die? Seems kind of cruel to be honest.

In the Philippines right now, Kpop-influenced Ppop is taking off, with groups like BINI and SB19 growing in popularity both inside and outside the country.

I’d like to ask on what you think of the music they’re producing rn, with BINI’s Salamin Salamin being the biggest song I can think of as an example:

Very, very weak, honestly. Again, they’re getting the image right more or less, but the songwriting just isn’t there. Not that it’s there in a lot of k-pop songs these days either mind you, but k-pop sometimes gets it right. On a positive note I’m sure that these Philippines groups get tortured a fair bit less so it’s proof that you don’t need all that “extreme training” bullshit that the Korean scene is obsessed with.

I’m curious if you think it’s okay for fans to “tour” companies. I came across a post yesterday where someone was taking pictures of a company building, and somehow the person got inside the building while being yelled at, presumably, by security. According to the OP, he caught sight of an idol and called her name, only for the idol to hide behind a door, terrified. Now, that post could be fake, but either way, I really do think companies should be off-limits. It’s not a tourist site, really, it’s a workplace for idols. I might take a picture of the building from across the street or something, but I guess asking other fans to respect boundaries is like… idk, some metaphor I can’t think of right now.

It kind of sucks. Actually companies should stop being so secretive and instead capitalise on the global interest in the kpops and offer an official guided tour that you can sign up for, where people could actually book and take a look at the studios, inspect the fridges, see the training regimen. Open book policy means k-pop would be trusted more, people would know more about how it works, and the agencies could charge for the tour and make enough money to add some special sauce to those celery sticks. Wouldn’t that be nice.

what would you do if you were south korean and had a child on their early teens who’s really passionate about singing dancing and stuff, they know that the only way of making it big on their country is by being a kpop, the child does a secret audition on… let’s say, sm entertainment and gets scouted, you have all of your knowledge about the industry intact. would you support your child, even knowing that they don’t know any better and will be faced soon with the horrors of the industry, which will leave eternal mental scars on them? or would you pull the plug immediately, which may cause a long lasting negative impact on your relationship with the kid because you ruined their dream? this question is very trolley problem-like but it’s actually kinda happening to someone i know and they’re very distressed, need to gather opinions on what’s worse (the kpop context is fake and no one involved is south korean! only the dilemma is similar)

I’d just make sure that they were aware of how things are. That’s a big reason for why I write the way I do, that I’m amazed so many people miss. The k-pop industry isn’t for everyone and it is very harsh in many ways, it definitely involves lots of luck, plus there are lots of dangers to be aware of, but it’s also true that certain people thrive in it and do really well. You just have to be fully informed, weigh it up and make your own decision about if it’s something for you and how deeply/where you want to be involved. That’s the main reason why this site exists, and every single piece of content on this site, from the games, to QRIMOLE, to the books, to the music theory stuff, to the reviews, to the humour, to yes even the fap posts (because that’s a part of it that people need to be aware of too), all comes back down to this central point. I’m not saying to people “the industry is good, join it” or “the industry is bad, don’t support it”, I’m saying “here are the things you need to know about how the industry really is, armed with this knowledge you can now make your own decisions about how involved in it you want to be, as either a fan or a participant”. Wouldn’t it be nice if more people were looking out for you how Kpopalypse is. And some people would convince you that I’m the bad guy, fancy that.

That’s all for this episode of QRIMOLE! This series will return next month!

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!