It’s time for QRIMOLE, the series where readers ask Kpopalypse questions! Let’s take a look at the mailbag for the last month!
Thanks to your video on how kpop makes money and post about kpop teasers I understand more how kpop makes money. Kiiikiiii didn’t sell well their EP. Anyway I noticed how their photoshoots, teaser and MVs were clearly selling the members as good advertisement products and thought “they’ll get sponsors for sure”. Do charts and selling are relevant? Because music is not the real product of kpop right?
Charts and sales are relevant, but not as the endgame, they’re a means to an end. A more popular song does mean more sales, which is nice, but often after expenses those sales don’t mean much. However a popular song that sells a lot is also a way to say to advertisers “hey look at this song by this group and how well it’s doing, if you were to advertise with us, you’d get put in front of a lot of eyes, plus we have a bunch of crazy fans who will buy anything with their idol’s name on it”.
well, does the message at the end change your mind?
No. Exercise and sport are not the same thing. You might live longer, or you might suffer a catastrophic sporting injury and live shorter. Or longer but with more pain. Kids, don’t do sport. Sport – not even once.
Dear Kpopalypse,
I guess people ask you for life advice because the anonymity makes it easier to be honest. I think also, that you tend to have unique takes and will look at the situation from afar, since there’s nothing in it for you to be petty when taking sides. Anyway, I guess I have a few questions.
1) Would you say the relationship between you and your readers is a paranormal one? Or is that a case by case judgement on the reader’s choices and behavior, since — if I correctly assume — you’re not fishing for a paranormal relationship and not marketing anything.
2) This is where questions get personal. I guess like, is there something wrong with like nightly pillow play? Like I hate myself for it, but I hate a lot of things about myself. I feel like I’m internalizing purity standards for women (me) but I mostly see myself as some weird gremlin anyway. I’m like very quiet about it, and never make a sound while doing it. Never mentioned it to anyone else. Don’t even want to mention it to my therapist. You can redacted this question. Just do you have insight on the urge and like should I stop and do you have recommendations on how to stop?
3) Thoughts on age gaps? I feel like queer people in particular don’t like them, and I wonder if there’s something off with me because I do. Like I assumed it’s because there’s a general desire for equality which is not nearly as pronounced in heternormative relationships since that never used to be the norm.
4) Do you have content of your cat? Also, my roommate is homophobic but calls me kitty and other things. That’s not a question, just a note.
5) For context, I hadn’t been religious before now, though I had been baptized catholic. I have been attending a religious youth group for now while in college — like just over a year — that’s Christian. I went once and then I just kept going for some reason.
The people seem nice, and the messaging loving, and I like reading the Bible. It’s generally interesting. I always thought that I should learn about something before I reject it anyway.
….Yet I also feel like a black sheep there. It’s as if those messages wouldn’t apply to me if they knew how I really was and if I felt I couldn’t change. Like every sin is forgiveable except for mine. I doubt that everyone there would be like that and outcast me, but I definetly think a lot of people would just “accidentally” make me feel unwelcome if I were honest about who I am.
I feel like I can’t back away, especially since my parents know, and I think my mother would be disappointed in me if I suddenly lost interest in going (though I also think she’d astrange me soon anyway). Point being, I don’t know how to deal at times with what feels like a weird waiting game until an implosion of my life where I’m on my own. I feel like my standards are all screwed up to the point where I don’t quite fit in anywhere.
I apply conservative standards to others (particularly women) yet see myself outside of them because I’m constantly looking to be seen as some imposing equal with men. This feels incompatible with other aspects of my life and kind of ridiculous at times (especially because I’m only 20).. Point being, I can’t control my head and I’m not sure what to do with myself.
I think some of the obvious answers are to just focus on my college degree in the between time. And, I have a feeling you see religion overall as a cult like sportball. But other than that, should I be concerning about putting on different faces for different groups of people in my life? It’s both manipulative and screwed up, but also feels like the norm at this point for many people (ie internet). Ties will eventually be cut. When should they be cut? When I’m fiancially stable? When I feel like I can just dissappear? When I’ve just had enough of it?
Anyway, this is an extremely long text vomit.
1. Yes, I guess so? I assume you mean “parasocial” here, as “paranormal” means related to the spirit world etc. Perhaps after I die I can continue to write QRIMOLE and then it wil be paranormal. But yeah I’m don’t exactly know where the lines are drawn around what “parasocial” is and isn’t.
2. It’s completely normal and there’s no reason why you should stop. In fact I’d even argue that it’s healthy and you should continue with it. If you don’t experiment and work out what you like, how the hell are you ever going to teach anyone else? I chose not to redact your question because there is literally no way that I could answer it without every single reader being able to guess with 100% accuracy what the question is anyway, so there seemed to be little point.
3. I don’t care about age gaps, to me that’s just social media wing-flapping. The biggest age gap I’ve ever done is 14 years difference – and I’ve done that age gap in both directions. Maybe more than that in either direction gets a bit awkward because the generational distance might get a bit weird at that point… but then I’ve never been there so I don’t know. But I’ve met other people who it works for. I don’t judge other people’s relationships as long as they’re happy and nobody is committing any crimes.
4. Yes.
5. There’s nothing wrong with just using church or any religious activity as a social group, and you’re under no obligation to reveal anything about yourself that you don’t want to reveal. When I was younger I played in a church band for a while, just because I wanted live gigging experience, and I got to know some of the people there through that. They were quite accepting of someone new in their social group. Of course after a while the “are you saved yet” questions started and that became irritating, but the gig was fun while it lasted, it wasn’t an “issue”, because I just didn’t tell them anything other than “not yet”.
do you know of anyone in your country who cares about things like this? apparently americans will otracise ppl over the colour of their SMS text boxes, even viewing it as a dating red flag. I.e. Apple Iphone SMS app iMessage will send text messages in one colour, but those sent from Android phones will display in a different colour.
Never heard of this. Although I have heard that in Korea iPhones are connected with higher status and being rich, which has reportedly had the interesting effects of Korean men avoiding women with iPhones because they think they might be gold-diggers. Personally if I was dating I’d consider anything that would cause superficial people to weed me out of their selection process to be a good thing. If I had an iPhone I’d probably try to see if I could find a way to make itself present as “not an iPhone” just so they would blacklist me.
rocks hard? synths are similar to Kep1er’s “Yum” but seems bland on the vocal melodies.
You either get me throwing down on every k-pop b-side album track ever one by one in QRIMOLE, or you get album reviews. Not both. Your video has been replaced with a placeholder. Other questions like this have been ignored.
oppar this ask prompted me to ask you something that i’ve been thinking about for quite a while. do you think there are more gay kpop idols (especially among guys) than before?
boys planet was pretty famously gay, with the contestants very openly thirsting over each other, falling in love (zhang hao and sung hanbin, who debuted in zerobaseone and were very clearly the hanalin of their group), and generally being pretty damn gay (some called each other unnie – gay korean men often call each other unnie, like english-speaking gay men call each other sister – some had hobbies like waacking and voguing – very gay dance forms).
however, compare to produce 101 season 2 – the first season with guys. no thirst for one another. no calling one another unnie. the guys went nuts over female idols coming in as mcs or special guests, like boa and hyuna. the most popular boys planet ship (zhang hao and sung hanbin, or haobin) shared a neck kiss in the finale. the most popular produce 101 s2 ship (ong seongwu and kang daniel, or ongniel) just hung out a lot together (didn’t stop fans from shipping them as hard as they would go on to ship haobin!). in produce 101 s2 there was one who specialised in waacking – but he was the only one and didn’t gain much buzz for it. one of the “fruitier” contestants, lee daehwi, has gone on to repeatedly say he’s not interested in men – and really, apart from looking like a twink, there’s nothing he’s said or done that would indicate he likes guys.
so yeah, is kpop gayer than it used to be? or is it just as gay as ever, only that idols aren’t hiding it anymore? i think it’s a bit of both – especially considering that korean straight boys aren’t that into kpop anymore and probably give more fucks about korean sportballers. at least, earlier they’d spend their teen days probably stanning some girl group, which would maybe blossom into an interest in kpop as a career. now girl group fandoms too are majorly female-driven, boys only gaf when they’re in the military and need some hot women to fap to. gay boys, korean and otherwise, still get into kpop, they like the boy groups cause they’re hot and they like the girl groups the way older gay men stan pop divas.
or maybe i’m wrong lol idk. what do you think?
I think Korean boy pop is (literally) gay and has always been pretty gay. Yes the amount that they’re allowed to talk about it has changed, and the amount that agecies will lean into Business Gay Performance has varied over time, but I’d say that gay relationships would be exceptionally common and I doubt it has ever changed a great deal. (I tried to show this in the Shin Hana books with all the hetereo or bi girls crushing on various guys only to find out that all the non-creepy ones that they actually wanted to be with were mainly just gay for each other.) The reasons why are fairly obvious when you think about them – a career in dance-based pop music is more attractive to gay men than straight men, who consider such things a bit taboo or at least icky and would rather do the sportball (or if they do the k-pop, they would be “tough” rappers). Pretty much every single male I’ve ever met who does choreo for a living, or tours in a group where they’re required to be dancing to pop music etc, is either gay or bi and very “out” with it, too. That’s not to say there are no straight men but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if straight men were the minority in boy-pop groups.
Also, the idol lifestyle of same-sex dorming is a lot more appealing if you’re same-sex attracted. Just putting that out there.
how you feel about performance arts that are reliant on athletic elements like figure skating, synchronised swimming and pro wrestling? (the medium of pro wrestling is really soap operas for 12 year olds.)
I don’t really care about it, as it’s not music related. I can certainly admire the physicality that goes into it, figure skating is more appealing than sportball for sure, but I find it impossible to deeply care about either. Okay, so you can spin on the ice, gosh that’s impressive, I’m happy for you, not really that relevant to my life though.
I looked up this Andrew guy and apparently he was quite handsome in the 1980s, seen as a war hero from serving in the Falklands War. He was even labelled “the playboy prince”. Clearly he would’ve had no issue picking up women, so why do you think he was a “repeat customer” of Epstein’s services? I’m thinking maybe convenience and discretion?
Probably that, and I guess he just had certain tastes that were catered to. All these royal motherfuckers are dirty, imagine being born into royalty and how much that would fuck your head up. It’s a miracle that any of them at all aren’t pedophiles. British royal family history is quite a read even if you go way back, they were always doing some crazy shit. He probably saw the Epstein stuff as just another entitlement.
do you think that financial investments needed for virtual idols would be lower than those of in person idols? (i’m talking ones with ppl behind the avatars, not 100% AI BS)
I’m going to assume that something like this production is on the higher end? You can tell from the MV that they’re using mo cap performing the songs. I.e. the fluidity of the character movement.
i guess a lower rent production might just render some bullshit in Unreal Engine and copy-paste lots of stuff and call it a day. like the Isegye Idol would be the equivalent to a 2nd gen SM Ent box MV and low rent would be a Yogmaland on-location shoot MV (I had an example in mind from December, but can’t remember what it was. pretty sure you cut it from round-up for being or whatever, so I can’t go back and reference.)
While I know a lot about music production and also a fair bit about what goes into the creation of pop artists logistically, I have no idea around the process of making mo-cap a thing, so I don’t really have any way to accurately answer this. Probably only someone working inside these labels who have launched both normal and virtual idols AND who has seen the books for both can answer this with any more than guesswork. So, not too many people on this planet.
is the guitar solo in this song ‘heavily inspired’ by the one from free bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd?
Well, 70s style rock guitar solos are 70s style rock guitar solos. They’re all more or less like this. I can’t even remember exactly how the “Freebird” one goes but that’s probably because nobody in Australia listens to Lynyrd Skynyrd. That’s definitely a group that doesn’t translate very well over here.
can you plz show a few examples of where you think oh serah from synsnake has been styled well?
Pretty much almost all the time. But I think these two videos are the best.
were your eh responses in the ask short questions thingy inspired by this recurring character from early 2000’s sketch comedy show, Little Britain?
{link removed because…. eh}
No, they were inspired by people asking questions I don’t have strong opinions about or anything to contribute to. I have never seen Little Britain.
is your dismissive attitude when your readers bring up Fromis_9 just you memeing and/or trolling?
No, I just don’t really give a fuck. Although a few people have really latched onto sharing Fromis content with me lately so maybe I’ll start trolling them in the future if they keep making me attempt to care, but for now you’re just getting my honest opinions about how little I give a fuck.
I recently took dance classes about 5x/week for 2 months, from a pretty basic starting point. Had to quit after starting a new job, but I still try to keep up with it once or twice a month.
Anyway, after this it felt like my ability to “see” dance as a skill improved rapidly. Some kpop dancers who I always thought of as good began to pop out as “really good,” not just in the sense of looking impressive but “wow that’s really coordinated, I have no clue how I’d approach making it look like that.” ” But at the same time, some kpop dancers (mostly from older generations) began standing out to me as pretty awkward at times. They can do all the moves at the right moments, and they’re all likely still better than me. But in the past where I would have thought “looks cool” I start to notice flaws.
This new way of seeing dance also applies to myself! So when I participate in dance workshops, I never thought I was great, but I’m way more bothered by all the little details that are out-of-line with how I want it to look.
So my question is, have you noticed this sort of “suddenly people are worse/better at this than I expected” after working particularly hard at a new skill?
PS (not a question): I’m also a singer and I do feel I tend to notice when kpop vocalists are good or not, but at the same time nearly all vocals are “processed” to some degree, so it feels a bit like reacting to an attractive model that’s clearly been heavily airbrushed and shopped. Cool to take in but doesn’t really mean anything “real.” I do feel like I can tell if somebody is a mediocre singer even though processing for the most part, but maybe I’m delusional? You just don’t hear the same kind of phrasing and vocal control.
I heard Swan sing in a way that really seemed live lately (or at least recorded live), and while my expectations were already forgiving it shocked me just how much worse she sounded. It was a bit embarrassing to experience honestly, even though I would much rather experience that on the regular than extremely processed fake vocals. Swan is GREAT by kpop standards, I always assumed better than me, but after hearing her live I’m not so sure about it any more! It makes me wonder if all pop vocalists I aspired to sound like are getting tons of heavy lifting from other things. That’s also partly why I felt less self-conscious singing classical music: even if the end result isn’t attainable by me, it is by SOMEbody. Almost like undoing dysmorphia about your voice? Do you think that high standards about vocals can affect people’s self-esteem and perception of reality in the same way faking one’s appearance can?
Last question first: yes. And this is one reason why I’ve done posts about vocals. Not for the “my bias is better than your bias” crap that fuels empty-headed fandoms, but so people who care about music and are actually trying to sing for real know that the k-pop standard is an artificial standard, and that they shouldn’t beat themselves up for not being able to reach it.
Phrasing and vocal control are not things you can judge on a studio performance, because they are often “punched in” (recorded in fragments and then the most perfect fragments are stitched together). If something doesn’t sound right, the engineer can go over it again and again, piece by piece, for as long as it takes, to make it sound fluid and “how it should”. And that’s whether they’re using other types of processing or not (although they are).
If you’re not familiar with punch-ins, here’s a video on how the recording technique has changed rap music creation:
And here’s how to actually do it in a singing vocal context:
You can bet that inexperienced k-pop singers are recorded this way, often.
I really notice people being good or bad at music but I’ve always noticed that. Writing novels more recently has probably made me a bit more prone to noticing things in a novel that I don’t like as well as appreciating what I do like.
how much clothing enhancement are we likely seeing here?
AOC has always been pretty consistent and easily out-performs most k-pops with just standard undergarments.
Don’t forget to vote in 2028, Americans! (My own country doesn’t need a reminder as voting is compulsory here)
why is it more annoying for a song to have amazing verses and a weak chorus rather than the other way around? i can tolerate weak verses when the chorus is super strong, but if the verses are really good and the chorus is a bit lacklustre, it makes me like the song less…..
Well songs are structured so the chorus is like the “payoff” and the chorus is also repeated more. So it’s kind of a listener’s expectation that the chorus is the best part of the song, so when that doesn’t happen, it’s probably more of a letdown than if the verse sucks.
This tweet might attract hordes of hyveminded fandumbs so I’m copying the text here in case they delete it: “It’s amazing how every k-pop song is created by like 20 writers & producers + AI, is explicitly designed with mass appeal in mind & so many of the big hits have terrible music w sub-nursery-rhyme lyrics. Maybe the lowest quality form of internationally popular music overall. (a quoted clip of LSF’s Spaghetti)”
1) Isn’t that just the nature of big hits everywhere though? If something is able to successfully gain mass popularity, it’s because they have appealed to some lowest common denominator for maximum palatability. And it’s no small feat to identify the right elements plus engineer the perfect amount of notoriety vs. obsession – all production companies try and try to do so. That’s why in all forms of art, the taste of the masses vs. that of practitioners and critics tend to differ… or maybe that no longer applies in this era where critics with precarious job security tend to bow down to whatever won’t get them blocked from PR access?
2) Is kpop actually “low quality” music? I have very little clue how to assess music quality aside from “I likey likey dis” and that’s on the extreme spectrum of subjectivity. How would you assess music quality in a more objective manner? As in, what even are the step-by-steps of doing so?
3) Wait where did your “I likey likey dis I likey likey dat I like dis like dat yeah” award titles even come from LOL I always assumed it was a kpop song but google search gave me nothing
1. It’s a lot harder to make a successful pop song than people think. If you search online there’s tons of “oh it’s so easy to make pop music, ha ha” videos etc but the fact is that if it was that fucking easy we’d all be mega rich recording artists, but we’re not. It’s actually a difficult craft to get right. Many people try their whole lives and never get there even once.
2. Yes it’s fucking shit of course it is Quality in music can’t truly be subjectively determined, because different brains hear music differently, and while there are some patterns and commonalities, there’s no true standard for this that is unified across all brains regardless of culture, upbringing etc. That’s why my favourites lists are “Kpopalypse’s favourites” and not “The best”. However with tools like music theory, audio engineering knowledge etc, we can come to understandings about why certain types of music works for certain types of people looking for a certain type of musical experience. Still a lot of variation here though. This delves into the realm of psychoacoustics, something I’ll do a music theory post on eventually.
3. Kpopalypse award titles, in order:
1, 2, 3 – the rap in T-ara’s “Roly Poly”
4 – the chorus of T-ara’s “Yayaya”
5 – the first post-chorus break in T-ara’s “Cry Cry”
6 – the rap in T-ara’s “Yayaya”
7 – no specific song here, just highlighting T-ara as the group that paved the way for groups being hated for no reason
8 – T-ara’s “Bo Peep Bo Peep”
Now that it’s been around 2 months since 2026 started, what musical trends are you seeing in Kpop that you’re interested/hating so far/hoping to see more of?
Positives and negatives:
+ 2020-era Blackpink “in your area” slow-beat songs are now as dead as dead, quick tempos across the board
+ rock and synthpop still big… for now (this will change soon though)
+ less rap, more singing probably thanks to Kpop Demon Hunters
+ songs have never been shorter in k-pop, almost down to 1950s pop song lengths
+ some different sounds being tried, backing tracks S+ tier right now even if…
– …melody and harmony writing is poor/underwritten even for AAA groups
– change-ups and beat dropouts everywhere, still wrecking a lot of songs
– Christian horse girl music nowhere to be found (at least not from girls anyway)
– too much posing out trying to look cool with high fashion/swearing/guns (yawn)
– no hint of a consistent successor to Orange Caramel/Crayon Pop style fun vibes
– XG are great but their high-quality rap hasn’t been influential on k-pop as a whole
– no very active songwriters with immediately distinctive styles (Brave Bros/Sweetune/Tiger)
seriously though, going back to the USA health minister or whatever, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he’s pushed to ban certain artificial food dyes, many of which are already banned in parts of Europe and Canada. why do you think he’s gotten resistance on these efforts? just ppl’s general blind hatred of anything related to trump? could it be smear campaigns by food industry lobbyists?
Fucked if I know, your guess is as good as mine. Probably a better question for an American to answer. American food culture is a bit of a mystery to me, I only found out what Outback Steakhouse was last year.
Any truth to this comedy sketch? {drummers being noisy at soundcheck}
See here.
Did you use Discord much? They’re gonna default everybody to teen accounts and then need a face scan or photo age ID to unrestrict it.
Assuming that this Is in response to recent local social media access laws in certain countries, are say the Australian and UK markets really that lucrative that they’d want to stay in them? When some USA states introduced similar such age ID laws, Pornhub just geoblocked rather than deal with the BS.
After big backlash, like ppl cancelling premium subs, they issued a statement saying “for many of you it won’t apply, based on your activities”. Implying that they created a shadow profile on your from reading your messages, which isn’t a good look either. If someone was like a 30 something nerd who used Discord to say discuss collecting toys based on children aimed IP, they’d probably be fucked. (under the assumption they think that person is a child.)
(Discord might’ve backtracked hard by the time the Qrimole gets published in a few weeks, we’ll see.)
I won’t age-verify using my ID with any online service ever. I guarantee I won’t be using Discord if this goes through, not that I use it anyway these days. My Instagram recently got nuked by “external forces” and to get it back I have to age-verify with a selfie/ID and I won’t do that either so bye bye Instagram I guess.
We’ve spent decades listening to Internet safety experts tell us “don’t share your personal info online” and now suddenly everyone wants our personal info and wants us to be okay with it, and will delete it as soon as they’ve done with the verification process, pinky swear. Then a few weeks later these Internet entities get hacked and everything gets leaked and it’s discovered that they were keeping all your data and documents and had no intention of ever disposing of any of it.
None of this does what it’s supposed to do anyway, which is supposedly to protect children. Child predators don’t hang out on adult porn sites, dating sites and adult Discords, they hang out in kid-friendly spaces. If governments want to protect children, age verification needs to work the opposite of how it does now. Instead of making people prove they’re an adult to use adult social networks, they should make people prove they’re under thirteen to use Roblox.
accurate deciption of entertainment industry contracts or no?
No. Hanlon’s Razor applies.
oppar i need a reality check:
i am a lesbian and i am currently dating someone, our first date felt like a dream, we have things in common, are compatible. {a bunch of stuff redacted at reader request – in fact I redacted even more than the reader asked me to, for her safety} so far everything is good.
there’s only one issue which is: me. yes me. i am lookist and shallow and now that the initial infatuation has worn out I don’t find her as nearly as attractive as i initially thought. i feel like i am the worst person ever and i might actually be. yes i am conscious of the inherent misogyny of beauty standards. yes i know that beauty is transient, and that looks really shouldn’t matter in a good partner, that i myself one day will be an old lady or i could have a car accident tomorrow and come out looking like a ww1 veteran with a chunk of my face gone and limbs missing. maybe being into kpop all these years rot my mind and exacerbated my body issues in ways i never expected.
what’s worse is that a while ago i also dated somebody who gave me a similar ick, despite the two of us also being compatible. i feel like i am missing out on good, healthy partners for being shallow and i fucking hate it.
so, oppar: how do i get over this insane self-inflicted bullshit and start appreciating and being grateful for the genuinely fucking good partner life has given me?
People tend to present the best of themselves at the start of a relationship, for obvious reasons. This applies to both looks and other things. Then after a while you progress to the “comfortable” stage of the relationship where you don’t care too much if there’s period stains on the sheets or if you fart in the same room, and you’ll get to see your partner when they’re not presenting as well. I think you struggling with this is a maturity problem and you will probably get over it in time if you stay together with this person, because we’re all ugly meat sacks at the end of the day. I also think that looks are important in the sense that you should appreciate them while you got them, so why not go on some dates where you can replicate the kind of effort you made when you first started the relationship. Just to remind yourself that they (and you) still got it. Doesn’t have to be all the time but maybe a little reminder would help.
will courtney love get in trouble now or no? {new forensic investigation suggesting Kurt Cobain was murdered}
I would have been skeptical if only the Daily Mail was reporting it, but other sites have the info too so maybe there’s something to it. Perhaps El Duce was right?
apparently this girl, Youngbin, is in JYP but nobody knows about her?! why do these agencies spend millions training, housing, etc and then producing music for these artists and debuting only not to promote them? i mean sunk cost fallacy is definitely a thing that they consider, surely?
There’s always reasons. Nobody wants to produce a flop. Youngbin had her own high budget video, JYP put money down but clearly she didn’t hit with audiences. This is what I was talking about before when I was saying that making pop music is hard. It’s tricky to know what the public will like. K-pop fans don’t help, they will “yass queen” everything in sight because papa label boss told them to, but that doesn’t indicate whether the general public will care. It’s easy to be wise in retrospect, but trying to figure out what will go over with the public by the time a product comes to fruition, that’s hard. It’s even harder to determine what will work when what a vocal minority of the public say they want often actually isn’t what the general public really want. Everyone’s screaming for the new IU but companies have debuted several new potential IUs over the last decade and they’ve all sunk like a stone. People often talk about what they think they should want, but their real tastes are often different.
is there any song where you feel like the sounds and music itself are complete trash but the lyrics are so good that it saves it
Heena’s beats are just that generic nu school rap thing but the lyrics are so much that they just take over.
@0:43 and @0:49 bad looks for them?
This question is mainly a bad look for you. I get bombarded with about 50 variations of this question each week on ask.oppar and also livestreams, so let’s get some variety going and keep this type of question off QRIMOLE for good. Other questions of this type have been ignored.
Hello! I’m a longtime reader and a first time sender here.
Great so since you’re a longtime reader, I know that I can count on you to know exactly what questions to avoid asking and this first question of yours will be a banger. Carry on.
I know you despise jpop and most japanese music scenes
Not most. Only j-pop. Japan is way ahead of the curve on many other music styles.
buuuuut
oh here we go
I really wanted to hear your thoughts on this part (0:40 – 0:47) of this song because something about that part is very catchy to me, especially how the guitar sounds. Is there a deeper meaning or have I just not been listening to much music. (I am not very knowledgeable about instruments or the vocabulary related to them ^^)
The song is pretty troll-y so do ignore what he is singing about. It’s just a gag on how high the singer’s voice is.
I know you don’t care much for the japanese music scene, but there is a very interesting subsection that this song originates from, they’re called utaites (aka singers, literally translated) that just self-produce their own music and sing covers of popular japanese songs or vocaloid songs (these covers are tagged under something like “I tried to sing”). Most of them are very capable guitarists or musicians who end up trying their own hand at singing to varying degrees of greatness.
I’ve always found it fascinating how some people’s passion can lead to success, like some of these self-made singers end up selling out in concert halls most kpop acts dream of having shows there.
Okay so I didn’t completely hate that song. The lyrical theme saves it, it’s done really well, I thought the lyrics were really touching actually. The music’s very well played but the melody is written in that usual twee irritating j-pop way so that’s a shame. Kind of fucks everything up, what a pity. A country other than Japan, given a concept like this, could have done much better, because they wouldn’t have gone for those type of melodic choices that always ruin everything in j-pop. So this song while having some redeeming features ultimately doesn’t escape the “all j-pop is shit” rule. Oh well. The part you like, I can only guess that maybe why you like it is that it has two melodies at once, one in the vocal and another in the guitar part that comes in during that section. Whether you like it because you like countermelodies in general, or guitar in general, or a bit of both, I’m unsure. I suggest perhaps listen to some Bach and also listen to Cotoba and see which one you like more.
why do music videos these days look so uncanny? did everyone just started investing more money in them? ai powered editing software? im sorry if im not being specific bout why it bugs me, but it just seems weird to look at.
It’s AI. The golden age of k-pop video making is over. We’re now in the AI slop era. It’ll probably never be as good as it was 10-15 years ago because given a choice between expensive set dressing, hand-crafted CGI or throwing a prompt into a machine, for stingy k-pop agencies the Machine Mother is going to win out every time just due to cost factor. Profit margins are tight and many k-pop groups never break even, so the motivation for companies to cut corners is massive and will certainly win out most of the time over “artistic merit” because this is k-pop which is all about milking money from dumb-dumbs to please sponsors and not about the arts.
You seem to hate the Kurzweil keyboard products, can you save me from potentially making a bad decision here?
I like the look of kurzweil k2700 as it ticks many boxes for me (full poly after touch , expression ribbons, nice feeling keys, daw integration, good synth options, and flexibility to use as a stage piano, cheaper than Nord). Not many keyboards tick all these boxes simultaneously it seems.
But something was nagging my mind, that kurzweil have issues, and I remember this came from the blog.
Why do they suck so much? Did you have a bad experience with them? Is it just keyboards from a specific era/specific models to look out for? The 90s models seem to be well loved from the past, might’ve have changed? you said in a roundup you had a lot of thoughts on this, so was hoping you’d help please
NO DON’T DO IT KURZWEILS SUCK
Okay so here is why, and I’m only half-remembering this story so apologies to the person who this is about if you’re reading and discover that this anecdote is slightly factually incorrect, but I think I at least remember the key points. So: I know someone who plays keyboard on live stages a lot, and I mean a lot. Almost every weekend he’s out playing somewhere, or if he isn’t then he’s often in his home studio doing something keyboard related. For a while about eight years ago perhaps he had a Kurzweil as part of his multiple-keyboard touring setup. Can’t remember if it was the K2700 or another model, but it looked similar. It forever had problems with the output jacks, his signal would cut out all the time and each time he got it repaired the problem was traced to these jacks. The other keyboards he had (Korg) didn’t have this issue. After multiple repairs he tried to get an answer out of either the authorised repairers or Kurzweil directly about why this was a repeated problem and the response he got was along the lines of “it’s a known issue, the input jacks on your keyboard are not built for the stress of repeated use”. In other words he was just using his keyboard normally too much and it couldn’t handle the constant plugging in and out that it had to endure at each tour stop. This wasn’t some budget piece of shit, this was a pro-level touring keyboard workstation worth big money, so like… what the fuck? It’s literally not built to a standard to handle the very job that it’s supposed to do? Fuck Kurzweil. Exception – if it lives permanently at home and you leave it permanently set up and plugged in and never go anywhere with it, and therefore you won’t be repeatedly plugging things in and out of the jacks, then perhaps the benefits outweigh the shocking lack of durability. Maybe other models they do are better too but personally I wouldn’t risk it. He uses an all-Korg rig now. Personally if I were to tour around with keyboards a lot I’d choose Rolands because they’re easy to use for a workstation dumb-dumb like me and their reliability is exceptional. Both those brands come in well under Nord for price tag, with comparable sound quality. There are probably other good options too.
is this mostly an american thing, getting hung up on cosmetic identity like this?
my parents are asian immigrants to NZ and i’ve never done any meditations on their motherland, what it means to be of cultural identity X in different country Y, etc. the only times my parents would even spoke their language was when they would have fight.
I think perhaps it might be, I don’t know. My parents were immigrants and I never thought about it much either. I’m always puzzled that identity concerns get so much airtime these days. Identity is always the least interesting thing about a person. I couldn’t care less what someone is, that means absolutely nothing to me – what I care about is what they do. Arden Cho being Korean-American or whatever is of no interest to me. Arden Cho singing a song, that might be of more interest, if it’s a good song, or a good performance, or whatever. Don’t be proud of who you are at birth, that’s just an accident that you had nothing to do with, instead be proud of what you do and your achievements in life (assuming that you are in fact doing good things, if you’re a mass murderer or something just disregard all this I guess).
Is it different in Korea? The oldest sibling is favoured? Asking because the cultural cliche in the Anglosphere is that eldest child gets harsher treatment but subsequent children are spoiled.
(context of clip: Itzy Chaeryeong is middle child. Soloist Chaeyeon is eldest. Sit down variety show where they’re interacting with their mother.)
In Korea, heirarchy by age is a thing, so respect defers to the eldest. That’s not just restricted to family settings. Happens in k-pop groups too where the maknae cops all the shit and has to do the unplasant dorm chores. Mind you I’d hardly say I’m an expert on these cultural aspects. This is the sort of thing you’d be better off asking a Korean about.
I feel like there’s context missing from this news quote or something was lost in translation? {Kiiikiii song being the girls’ “last chance”} I find this “news” claim a bit hard to believe since Starship has the money in the bank to keep a loss leader going with a nugu group for more than a year, surely?
(I tried asking Grok for a source but they couldn’t find one. Maybe the original tweet was a Gen AI hullucination?)
I don’t know. Could be true that the girls felt that way, as groups do have a finite amount of time to make an impact, and remember that the girls are probably getting crazy negative reinforcement if the things I’ve been told about Starship are true. I’m not in the loop on how this group are performing though. I don’t really track popularity closely, and ultimately I don’t care that much what groups are popular or not. Obviously I hope every group does well for the artists’ sake, but not every group can do well because that’s just the reality of the economics of music, so I’m not very invested in weighing the commercial aspects of different groups. I’m more interested in artist advocacy in terms of human rights than corporate business decisions, and I only highlight the corporate stuff sometimes because I’m trying to give a window into things that are relevant for artist advocacy (i.e how much you can expect to be fucked over as a group member, that sort of thing).
do u kno kalafina? they sound metal-ish to my ears in their harmonies / melodies – like a more orchestral, slower unlucky morpheus (or maybe i just have bad taste and like jpop lol). or maybe neoclassical is the right word? i like unlucky morpheus because of their baroque harmonies. if u dont kno who they are dw about it, i wont hurt ur ears by forcing u to listen to jpop
I’m not wild about them, but they’re okay. They avoid the “j-pop being shit” thing by being neoclassical metal instead, but I find their vocal harmonies are grating after a while and I don’t think it’s the best match for metal, because three vocalists all going at it is a lot of sonic space to make those voices equally clear and you have to cut into the instruments a bit too much to make that happen. I’d rather have one vocalist and twin guitars trading solos like Lovebites.
you’ve said that song lengths tend to trend like a river ebbing and flowing, but do you have any insight into the current state of the Japanese music market? Lately largely stopped do the whole “short ver” MV thing that existed cuz they wanted to sell albums packaged DVDs domestically. (like 15 years later, finally taking cues from kpop. i.e. spreading soft power by giving stuff away for free globally) So are the songs still like 5 mins or longer?
Just music fashion. Japan is still a relatively insular market and it has its own music fashion that sometimes matches up to global trends and sometimes does not. Other than that I’m not Jpopalypse so I don’t have any special knowledge on this one.
I have no clue how my life has led me to ask for advice in psychological warfare mindgames from a Kpop blogger but here we are….
Think about how confused I must about how I got here. Anyway, carry on…
Though it’s not really as much about getting the upper hand as it is about keeping my calm and not feeling like I’m on the defensive. So today a coworker asked me for a task deliverable. I told him I’d give it after I sent in 2 other tasks (which other people had asked for). He was pissed and said “but Anon, I asked you for this on Friday, the client said this in the meeting” and then went “why is it that you always need extra feedback after each call”? Now that part instantly sort of made me feel oversensitive because A) Ever since company policy banned call recordings on Teams I’ve had to scramble a bit, and honestly I just hate this one client and everyone hates working for them too
B) I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it at all. I just said 2 other tasks would take precedence, because those were asked of me in the morning meeting (which he barely attends) which our team seemingly had agreed to follow (as in, if a task isn’t agreed upon in the morning meeting it won’t get priority)
Now I could have said all this in point B, but I was already rattled because I’m scared this will result in another internal escalation for “rude and standoffish behaviour” and I don’t want to lose my job, so I said “don’t worry those tasks won’t take much time” and stared at my monitor till I could calm myself down and not burst into tears like a big baby.
Anyway that’s why I brought up warfare: I’m already feeling volatile because they run to my department head at every opportunity to complain, and while my boss is generally very understanding of me, you can see how just having multiple complaints can look bad, right? I could go ahead and do the same but honestly, his boss doesn’t care that much to bring it up to him, and I just know that he and the rest of his team will band together to close ranks on me.
I can’t afford to lose my job in this economy, so what on earth do I do to grab some semblance of power back so I don’t feel like shit at a throwaway remark?
Tell your superiors exactly what is going on. It might be a bit to put into words so plan out what you want to say (to a small degree) before you say it, i.e just dot points, not a speech. When you talk to your superiors be totally honest but also try not to be dramatic about it, try to play down the drama aspect of it and play up the work productivity aspect of it. i.e less “I’m so upset that this is happening” and more “I feel like this approach is causing conflict and isn’t making us work cohesively as a team, is there a way we can address this to help us get better results for our clients”. They can’t exactly fire you for caring about the work performance… well, they could, but it’s a much bigger stretch plus it’s a bad look for them and now it’s them who are risking their jobs…
So my bias group disbanded last year, and although 5 of the members have released solo or unit music, and although I swore I would support them in anything they do and stay a fan… I have been underwhelmed at their output post-disbandment. I really like each of the members, but I’m a fan of the group, and I barely listen to their individual releases. I feel *guilty* because of this. Do you find in your experience that this happens a lot with kpop fans? Not the guilt, but being ride or die for a group and when they go their separate ways and release individual music, that ride or die is suddenly meh?
I think it’s very common and I think it happens because a lot of the time the members working solo don’t have all the tools of the marketing machine going full-tilt behind them to support the solo work. Yes sometimes they do, but a group split five ways, even assuming they didn’t all go to smaller labels, they can’t ALL get the big marketing push as individuals, there just isn’t the resources for the agency to quintuple their hype output. So decisions are made on what’s viable to promote and what can be left to struggle on its own accord a bit. And with less marketing activity comes less fans.
japanese girls with online sex worker accounts like onlyfans don’t count as javs? why not?
In some circumstances they indeed might but I’m not going to pay for their OnlyFans or whatever the Japanese version is just to check it. If they’re not doing JAVs where I can see them, as far as I’m concerned they’re not doing JAVs, because they might as well not be doing JAVs from my perspective. If a tree falls in the forest and gives a lumberjack an orgasm while he’s fucking another lumberjack in a gay porn in the woods and then he keeps the video for himself, did it really happen?
Would you say IVE is your favorite girl group right now? I’ve never seen that much net positives for a group with that many releases so far. Even the “mid” songs (ie: the new ones) are more of a hit that outright shitting on them.
Out of currently active idol groups I’d say IVE (and I wouldn’t even call “Bang Bang” mid, it’s actually excellent it just also has flaws) but also H1-key. They don’t have quite as many absolute amazing songs as IVE, but what they do have is a very consistent sound across all releases and no failures whatsoever. You can tell that I really like H1-key because it’s only occured to me just now after many years of writing about them to call them “H-one-key”, because I’ve been so distracted by them not sucking.
thoughts on thread of “evidences“? {thread about HYBE being naughty naughty boys and girls basically}
I think I’d have to make QRIMOLE a once-annual event to be able to digest everything in that thread! But I don’t need an epic-mega thread of meganess to know that HYBE are dirty, common-sense will tell me that alone.
could plz explain wtf is “math rock”? thx.
Really just anything with complex arrangements, but the term has no fixed meaning. I’ve heard everything from Dream Theater to Throwing Muses be described as “math rock” so it’s really one of those bullshit terms like “world music” or “city pop” or “hyperpop” that has no coherent definition and is deliberately defined somewhat nebulously so nerds can start conversations at dinner parties about what the genre is or isn’t and hopefully get laid by the end of the night. Which is why people will cape for the existence of these genres so hard, you’re cutting into their potential sex partner-acquiring powers.
as an expert on music industry machinations, what’s your analysis of this situation:
Idol life sucks but it sucks more when people are dicks.
which do you prefer and why, iggy and the stooges or iggy azeali?
Well Iggy Azaelea is certainly more my type than Iggy Pop. Although Iggy Pop does have better dancing. As for music it’s about even.
Hello, a while back you recommended a Korean ballad. I remembered it suddenly but for the life of me I cannot recall song or title. It had an animated MV and maybe the word Rings in the actual song? I think it was a sad love song as well? This is such a poor description but I thought I would see if anyone happened to remember that song. Thank you.
I think you’re probably thinking of the second song in this post.
is there a music/songwriting term for ‘suppressing the final syllable with the start of the chorus’? for example, in this charli xcx song (0:32), when she is singing ‘i’ll bleed even…’, she skips ‘red’ and the chorus starts
Well the final syllable isn’t supressed, it’s just that the chorus comes in over the top of it so it’s harder to hear and sort of trails off. This is basically a punch-in but with deliberate overlap (see answer about punch-ins above).
Hello sir oppar, this is not in your main line of interests but I’m lumbering you with it anyway heh
Are there are any identifiable one-hit wonders in Kpop? I was thinking about this recently, and I came to a realisation that Kpop by its very nature, with its company-sanctioned obsessive following of idols, seems to insulate Kpop acts from having only one hit, and in the process maybe one or two more big songs will ensue.
It seems the nugus stay nugus, the A-list remains A-list, and everything in between coasts as generically mid-tier without ever breaking through. Weki Meki never really got anywhere.
I have maybe a couple girl groups in mind that certainly COULD have been one-hit wonders, but the Korean public stayed invested for long enough that said groups could last a good few years in the industry(without being paid of course). We are then left with maybe a few splinter cases of Kpop one-hit wonders, there’s maybe three or four of them compared to an entire sea of one-hit wonders from the west. Is there anything I’m missing here? What is it about the Kpop industry that makes it harder for nugus to ever rise in popularity? You would think with the dominance the biggest companies are able to hold that no one else exists in Kpop, with the complete lack of visibility smaller-tier groups receive.
In your opinion, does my theory (that the sheer force of Kpop stans’ loyalty keeps acts afloat) hold any weight? Why does everyone semi-famous have at least two hits, how do nugus have no discernible way of making a lasting career, and how are Blackpink and Twice still the biggest names after ten years?
I think the bigger companies have learned how to harness brand loyalty. Because the idol is the product and the song is not the product, “one hit wonders” have no meaning. Of course a big group will remain big if the idols within it remain big, because everything saleable is driven from the idol, not the music (see video at the top of this post about how idols make money). The music just doesn’t matter all that much. It’s not what is being sold. So the companies that have acts who survive and thrive are the ones who know how to build and maintain brands. Tough for a new company, easier for a well-established company with an existing foothold and existing relationships which support that branding.
Do you dislike vocalfagging/put an emphasis on too much vocal being bad due to voice not being your favorite instrument to listen to/play? I could be wrong about this, but my impression is that a very heavy guitar song with lots of showoffy sections is generally enjoyable to you (including technical solos) where lots of technical vocal solos generally wouldn’t be. And this confuses me a bit, because why would one instrument be intrinsically more suited to pop music than another?
So #1, are you sensitive to vocalfagging due to personal presence mainly or is there genuinely something that’s worse when singers show off compared to drummers, guitarists, trumpet-players, etc?
#2 can you think of examples where something was ruined by too much instrumental? Not too much restraint but too much showing off by a non-singer specifically.
Not even personal preference, probably just the way that SUCH a big deal is made out of Korean singers and their vocal ability (whether they can sing or not) whereas musical ability by instrumentalists on the backing track, production smarts, and other areas that require plenty of skill and craft outside of the realm of (the often heavily edited or faked) vocals are consistently almost completely ignored. Even dance skills seem to be an extremely distant second to vocals, completely puzzling in a scene that prioritises dance so highly but where vocals are so easily electronically compensated for in most settings that they’re pretty much optional.
There’s an entire genre of this type of music, it’s called jazz. Literally the most popular jazz instrumental song structure is an A-B-A form where A is the “head” (the theme), and B is extended solo excursions based loosely on the theme for every single instrument where they all get precisely equal time to show off (and it often has to be equal or someone with a big ego will cry) and wank themselves to death. Outside of jazz, Cream were a useless 1960s group where everyone was just trying to outplay each other instead of just playing the fucking songs, using the songs as a vehicle to wank off, naturally they didn’t last long and imploded under the weight of their own egos. There are other examples but these ones spring to mind as ones where the technique is absolutely getting in the way of the music.
Hey I’m the person who was looking for my first job and getting stressed over it. I started working in customer service for a casino. I hate it there. It’s only been A WEEK. I’m still in training, haven’t even dealt with any real customers yet ffs. I’ll try to keep it vague but here’s the gist of it. I’ve always been passively suicidal but it’s worsening. It’s not my colleagues, it’s the customers bc holy shit gamblers are worse than crackheads. Didn’t know how bad it was before this. I thought I could stay cool and detached and instead it’s like, there’s this guy with 5 different credit cards and he’s trying to use his family’s too without their knowledge and I’m going to have to tell him “sir, using a card that’s not yours is against company policy” as though it’s super normal and not at all gross,
I’m so lost on this. I can’t walk out bc my parents would be so mad. Do you think I can stick it out for a bit. Should I try to bomb the final test so they’d consider firing me
There’s losers in life in all walks of life, and working at a casino gives you a front row seat. Don’t kill yourself over some shitty job ffs, there are tons of other jobs out there you can get. If the guy with five credit cards and a basically doomed existence can find a way to live another day (for now), so can you. Just complete your training, do the work, collect that bag, and start thinking about what sort of jobs you’d actually like to do and start searching for one of those. In the meantime having money isn’t a bad thing and having a sucky job… well, actually I’ve met quite a few people who work in casinos (as I’ve played quite a few casino theaters – good gigs when you can get them) and they all hate their jobs hahaha. You can stick it out, just don’t get trapped (unless you suddenly start loving it for some weird reason). And for everyone else, don’t gamble, the house always wins.
BOOK QUESTIONS
If you use the rating scales from this website (Book rating, content key, heat levels) what would you describe the rating of your new book? I would like to be prepared before deciding whether to read it.
So many acronyms on this website, I pity any poor reader trying to memorise this convoluted system of content-nannying. Anyway, just assume the most extreme ratings in all categories, far more so than in previous books I’ve written. If you think that extreme content would stop you from being able to read my new book, then you’re probably right and you probably shouldn’t read it. If you think parts of the book will upset you, they probably will. I’m deliberately writing it as an antithesis to other k-pop books that are out there, so you can safely assume that where they tread softly, I do not. Having said that it’s not an “erotica” either, and anyone specifically reading it to enjoy explicit sexual content and for no other reason should probably also not read the book, because I really doubt those people will find much of the book’s more sexual content very enjoyable in that kind of way. Which I guess means that the book should be read by basically no-one. I’m absolutely fine with this, I don’t write for popularity, I write to be a caonima. You are all welcome to come along for the ride, but I’ll totally understand anyone who would rather not and I wouldn’t recommend that you do so if you are particularly sensitive or concerned.
Also I’m really NOT a fan of book ratings that spoiler or spoonfeed large chunks of content or endings. HEA? HFN? Whatever happened to just reading a fucking book and then you find out what happens? Literary culture is dead in 2026.
i think christians tend to get a fairly bad wrap? most of the ones i’ve met are pretty moderate, chill people. maybe there’s just bad optics from ridiculous denominations like american evangelicals being in a lot of american movies and tv shows?
This isn’t a book question but I’ll put it here because it’s a Christian question, and my main character is Christian. That’s a choice I made more for “dynamic contrast” reasons than anything else. I’m not trying to insult the religion through the character, but rather provide a contrast between the Christian worldview and the types of things that might go on at a certain agency involved in certain things. However nor am I suggesting the opposite, that Christianity is an acceptable “redemption” from those things. While I do think the Christian religion, like all religions, is both incorrect and ridiculous, I don’t hate anyone for believing in it, and I do know several people who are quite sensible in their actions even though they are religious. I think tolerance is a good thing to exercise, for both religious people, and others. Sadly, like with many things, the most extreme and intolerant 1% seem to attract all the attention. But the average religious person is just any other person and we all mostly more or less want the same things in life, regardless of what we believe. People just want to live their lives and if they’re not fucking with the lives of others in the process, that should be okay.
Seems a lot more active in this proverbial boy’s life than Hana’s mother. Hana was mostly neglected, right? Would Hana have preferred it if her mother didn’t just ignore her?
That video is far too traumatising and real to be even remotely funny to me.
Hana resisted control hence the rift between her and her mother being already present even before the real-time events of the “Show Me Love” book series began.
(@2:10) wow, this old hollywood story about what happened to under-aged judy garland sounds wild. did your shin hana books see inspiration from hollywood anecdotes too?
No. There’s enough dirty shit in Korea happening to fuel those books, Hollywood wasn’t needed My imagination as a writer is just so good that I was able to dream up inspirational stories about love, success, and the joy of the Korean pop system with no effort whatsoever. Gosh it’s great being so talented!
NERD SHIT
(@2:46) do you sense any malice or racism with the USA and Australia characters shown here?
No, both seem realistic. Although the American is missing a gun, but I suppose that might make it an unfair fight.
What’s your take on the “yellow paint debate” in level design over maybe the last decade? It’s a method used by developers to communicate to players where to go next, what parts of the environment is interactable, etc. It’s seemingly become more prominent as the graphical detail in level environments has become so high quality/dense, that the devs feel the need to point out what’s interactable, eg ledges in a rock climbing section. Some people view it as immersion breaking, low effort , tacky and patronising. There are games that are subtle about communicating such cues to players: eg the below “Know Your Meme” video brought up first person parkour game, Mirror’s Edge, which had optional red highlights for interactable environment bits.
People deep down the Internet gamer culture rabbit hole don’t realise that they’re a slim margin of actual gamers, and that the vast majority of players fit the “casual” bracket and find “yellow paint” style techniques quite useful. Half Life 2’s audio commentary talks at length about these techniques and how they’re used in that game (relatively subtly), and honestly as someone who’s been gaming all my life I found the usage there so subtle that I often still had no idea where the hell to go sometimes. That could just be my colour-blindness though – signalling with colour may actually be pretty useless for me. I played Mirror’s Edge and struggled there too, thanks cunts for “highlighting” the important interactive parts of objects in the colour that I can see the least well. But I can’t think of a single game where I found this usage condescending or annoying (except The Stanley Parable, where it’s of course supposed to be).
Your thoughts on this news? I’ve heard that companies wanting to do mass layoffs to save money will often end their “work from home” policies specifically to get people to quit on their own. I’m going to assume that the Code of Conduct violation was airing company dirty laundry publicly? What you do think it was?
“Ubisoft has dismissed a senior developer from its Montreal studio shortly after he publicly criticized the company plan to end remote work. The decision follows an earlier unpaid suspension tied to the same dispute.”
{deleted rest of article text but you get the idea}
Work from home is here to stay, and while it’s obviously not compatible with some industries, any company that doesn’t implement working from home where they can is frankly idiotic. Sure it’s a no-brainer that workers prefer working from home because everyone hates commuting and having the boss peering over their shoulder, but there’s actually far more wins in it for the company than its employees. The sky-high price of corporate rents alone justifies working from home from a top-down perspective. Then there’s all the managerial benefits, like the ease of filling absences (a lot easier and quicker for person A to fill person B’s shift when they can just log into work from their bedroom instead of doing a commute), the fact that workers from home tend to call in sick a lot less in the first instance, the work not being reliant on a centralised connection (so in a power outage or other disaster that affects the workplace, some work can continue), home workers paying their own utilities costs, and so on. People will of course go towards companies that offer it, so yes clamping down on working from home is a way to downsize. The flip side is that startups and quickly expanding companies will often promote their “work from home friendly” stance in their job ads to attract top talent. But it’s in the landscape of work now and it’s not going anywhere, don’t believe anything anyone says about it ever going away, if anything it will continue to increase as technology increases. Who knows what this person did to piss off the company, given that it’s UbiSoft I think “being a normal human being” would suffice.
Overwatch 2 was renamed to Overwatch. Thoughts?
Overwatch 2 always was Overwatch, because Overwatch was sunset as soon as Overwatch 2 appeared. Much like the transition from CS:GO to Counter Strike 2, excert that Valve were much smarter and more honest about the transition and let players keep their old cosmetics.
what’s your opinion of the combat design shown here? does it seem fresh to you at all?
No. I’m sure I’ve seen similar things done before, although can’t remember where exactly. I would find this a chore to play. Hell, it’s a chore to even look at, or answer a question about.
which version do you prefer and why? 2006 version or 2026 version?
Don’t even know what this is, don’t care.
which one of these do you like the best?
None of them look sufficiently different from each other for me to have strong opinions on any of it.
Your thoughts on this?
Alleged email from Jeffrey Epstein to former Activision Blizzard CEO, Bobby Kotick. Epstein’s idea was to co-opt the existing video game industry and to use it to teach children things, since “edutainment games are for pussies”. He calls it “education subversion”.
In reply: Kotick seems to like the idea, but wants to use it to earn prizes instead. Eg in game micro-transactions.
Inventor Pablos Holman says in reply to Epstein that Kotick wants to use Epstein’s “X prize” idea and use it indoctrinate kids into an economy. Eg through micro-transactions.
These old fucks are underestimating kids’ ability to detect education hiding as some other bullshit. Every schoolkid has a spider sense for anything with a whiff of “educational intent” and will recoil from it instantly. As for microtransactions, I don’t see how this is a bit different to what has already happened without Epstein’s direct involvement.
does this summarise you?
I didn’t watch this video because I already know inverted y axis is the One True Way and all non-inverters are heathens who are dumbing down media and are responsible for the degradation of society.
What’s your opinion of the hardcore mode discussed here?
(Context: The game is a strictly first person view RPG set in 15th century Bohemia (Czech) , with focus on real world simulation mechanics.)
Don’t really care just for me personally as I’ll definitely never play this. This type of game is just way too much time investment, plus I’ve seen and done all of this before in other games, more or less. I suppose just generally though for people who do have time for long-ass RPGs, why not. It’s good to have options and I do like hardcore modes in games where they appear.
Apparently gaming is having trouble competing for young people’s attention against porn, gambling, crypto and memes. Why do you think this is? People having shorter attention spans?
Just technology changing and the other options getting more advanced. Twenty years ago gaming was one of the only cool things you could actually do on your computer that was just directly fun and all the other stuff wasn’t as advanced. Also it doesn’t help that so many new games suck.
your opinion on this?
Postal spin-off game, tonally harkening back to the 1997 roots before the series became jokey/satirical. looks like the protagonist is someone who’s loved ones were killed by Postal Guy during a killing rampage.
Could work. I like the idea of an FPS with an actual motivation that isn’t “saving the world” for the 235987th time. Although knowing my luck, I’ll get one chapter into this game and it’ll do a “Garrett” style switcheroo where it’ll be discovered that the Postal Guy is building a mind control device to turn everyone in the world into the Postal Guy and destroy the world and only you can save the world no wonder nobody plays games anymore zzzzzzzzzzz….
ONLY ONE “NOT QUESTION” THIS WEEK I’M IMPRESSED
{THREE links removed for the good of humanity}
Why do they make themselves look so cool but then the music is just nothing burger I dont know how to explain it but its so…………..Nada, zero, like white noise
It’s bad enough that you linked one horrible Beyonce clone song at me, but three? How much time and mental fortitude do you think I have? Just stop doing that. Not even going to say the name of the artist, let alone keep the links intact. Let’s not give trash like this any promo. On top of that, this isn’t even a question, so JAV of the Month for March is MIDA-506.
BEST QUESTION
Kpopalypse does not love the way, you love the chase
But, in seriousness, I’m going to be annoying and invade your DMs to interrogate you.
I’ve been considering the commonality of “street harassment themes” in videos and why (as a woman who lives in a major American city and does occasionally get street harassed,) these videos don’t thematically bother me or really strike me as the same thing at all.
One thing I’ve noticed is that over time I feel like you get a lot of people in streams in particular who sort of mimetically repeat your opinions. If it’s a style of song you usually like they tend to say it’s a banger, if it’s a snoozy ballad they tend to go off about how boring it is. Similarly more and more engaged fans seem to share your taste in which idols are hot/boring. I’ve been following since around 2019 (not that long on the scale you’ve been active) but I feel like the group of people invading your DMs to talk about how trash your music taste is or how you’re a horrible immoral person is… if not ever going to be over, no longer as vocal. Nor am I claiming that your fans are brown-nosers or that you’re doing anything to promote that – I actually think you’re very consistent in promoting and accepting disagreement. I think that’s just the nature of online followings these days, that they tend to homogenize out of some degree of “makes it easier to maintain interest” and a bit of parasocial anxiety about annoying someone they follow. (And yes I’m also aware that some people reasonably disagree. But one major thing I noticed was that the person who accused you of hating on Le Sserafim unfairly pretty immediately backed down saying they saw your point, and you got several other people immediately backing you up. I don’t recall that happening several years ago.)
So overall, the “street harassment videos theme” is something I’ve seen as pretty unique to/original to you. Other people have made fun of it but more in “those guys are thirsty lol” than “dude she clearly wants to be left alone” terms. But you’re the first I’ve seen pointing out street harassment as a theme, and I’ve noticed that your followers point it out too when that’s basically *never* something I saw discussed in the kpop community before you came around. Normally that style of “classy-sexy” video is very popular. So what gives?
It’s true that in literal real life situations those male singers would be wayyy too persistent, but I tend to see music videos as exaggeratedly portraying a “theme” in real life. For example if Bibi is decapitating random dickholes in her vids or pushing them off cliffs to drown, that doesn’t necessarily mean the intended message is “if a guy is kinda sexist/cheats on you you should kill then slowly and painfully.” Similarly I tend to see the “guy chases an uninterested/seeming girl video who kind of stared in an unimpressed fashion” as artistic license of “the chase” process. Most relationships or flings don’t start with both people being instantly smitten and certain and just going for it – usually there’s a bit of a “back and forth” process. And given the positive response to videos like “Blink,” and how there’s been plenty of time for the Metoo movement to pick up on and condemn them, I think a lot of people feel similarly.
Is it possible that there’s still underlying themes of tolerating misogyny and harassment? Absolutely. Should guys start imitating thirsty pop stars wholesale as if it’s real life? No. But I think if we can give Seo Eve a pass in Kung King Dda for being rejected like 20x in a row by the Ateez guy then we can understand that “guy lolls after a girl who stares at him sardonically” is not always condoning harassment.
(And yeah I’m more comfortable with videos where the love interest is acting aloof than where someone is being cornered/can’t easily leave/is giving ZERO signs of interest but still being caterwauled to the whole time. Those do strike me as an extension of “entitlement” or at least clumsy directing/acting.)
Anyway my overall question about this is: you’ve mentioned before that you don’t like social/romantic games and strongly prefer directness in yourself and others. Is that part of why the “street harassment” videos are annoying to you? Like you’d prefer less of a “I will secretly approach you pit a Pat” and more “hey fuckers get over here” and then they make out for 12 hours?
Hopefully this wasn’t too long and confusing or annoyingly personal. I’m a bit overstimulated right now.
A music video, at the end of the day, is just a music video, and I’m not hugely invested in narratives of “stamp out the evil examples of street harassment”. I’m not saying these videos are “bad” as such, or that removing them would really change anything, I mainly just think:
1. The fact that these kind of videos where sexual pursuit is considered desirable and something to be consistently rewarded after a little initial pushback, are all over the Korean music scene, but this type of depiction is much rarer in the west, is something to think about and maybe says something about society and attitudes towards women across different countries or something. Or maybe it says something else. Or not. I don’t know. I’ll leave it for someone else to write that thesis, but there’s definitely a thesis there that could be written. If nothing else it’s an observable pattern.
2. As someone who has trained in martial arts when I was younger and also have been a victim of street violence and school violence multiple times I find that self-defence is at the forefront of my mind when I watch videos with people being chased even if I don’t want it to be, and I think it’s an interesting angle to discuss precisely because nobody else is doing so. It’s something that really sticks out to me, I find it impossible to ignore or to perceive it “romantically”.
3. I just find it amusing and interesting I guess, and I write mainly to amuse myself as I think about stuff. If others are amused also that’s great, but my writing has to meet my own standards first and foremost.
As for people who follow me and what they do or how they feel, I’m just grateful to have people who care about my stuff at all. Maybe some people agree more with my opinions because they’ve been influenced by me, but I think it’s probably more likely that it’s the opposite and they gravitated towards me because I was the only person writing things in the k-pop space who had opinions that they already found agreeable, or at least tolerable, or worth engaging with/debating/thinking about/whatever.
I’ll leave you with the western version of the “street harassment” video, which I personally find far more interesting artistically, enjoy:
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!
