Minami

[koganbot]

warthoginrome writes:

I don't know if you had the chance to run into this news, so I wanted to point it out, because the topic is common to the entire asian pop scene

Comments

[anonymous]

Then you have the role of 2chan: one of the main forums, and (at least that was true until not so long ago, but I’m not sure now) millions of anonymous users. So trolling and acting for your audience is part of the game. So one of the boards that thrown more shit to AKB was Hello! Project, and things like that. Everybody seems to have an agency. Then, after 2chan (a forum that is a total mess) there are news aggregators, sites that post news that are less or more resumes from threads over there (so they post the most outrageous responses (so again people acting for their audience, people “learning” how they should act for being “heard”, etc.) or directly, they invent those responses). These news aggregators could have millions of visits in one day and they are main actors shaping the conversation (their main goal is getting revenue through ads and web traffic). Then sensationalistic media (like Cyzo) pick those rumours (people working for The Japan Times seems to get their revelations from here, so go figure) and if they generate enough buzz they can jump to “serious” media.
But maybe I’m making things too black and white. AKB dynamics get a good explanation on this:

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/cool_japan/culture/AJ201301110064

And really, this last year I think the fandom is going through some paranoid phase. I have my own explanation about that (the group is too dynamic in a capitalist sense and they trash the foundations where fans built their engagements, so they get into simple explanations or narratives to cope with those dynamics (they are in it only for the money, etc.) But what I mean with this paragraph is that many “fans” are the first ones searching to discover “scandals”. But whatever.

anhh

[koganbot]

Hey, anhh, it's good to have you back. I'd wondered where you'd disappeared to.

I don't have time to write anything right now, except to say that my reaction to this story was much like that of warthoginrome and askbask, which is that there's something going wrong in fandom here - not that this is news. In fact, in regard to K-pop not J-pop, on my very first comment thread on the subject, both you and petronia were quite prescient, at least as far as the T-ara uproar: petronia said: "K-pop has the most insane and deeply frightening fanclub culture ever, and I say this as someone with a full-blown otaku background. It's as much crazy hate of "rivals" as crazy love of the idols in question, said rivalries seem as random in provenance (from an outside perspective at least) as hip-hop beefs, and are sometimes as damaging - people have poisoned the water bottles of and thrown acid at pop stars they dislike." And you said: "the mechanics that one appreciates in forums and blogs is that people are very obsessive and gossipy (usually to such a high degree that pisses you off) about the groups they love... and kind of work as haters for the rest (or at least of the ones that can work as competence)"

But one thing I keep in mind is that, with all its restrictions and attitudes that I can't get with, K-pop makes vastly better music than people off in indie America with whom I share attitudes and ways of doing things.