mab personal

thoughts on things that i like. diary entries. opening for replies because i like talking. don't expect me to reply all the time tho. let's just be. ---- kpop | old essays | pop culture | design | art

[mabpersonal]

we clowned aespa for their ae and kwangya concept without looking into what that actually (might have) meant. or maybe we did and we just like to joke around abt it lol.

there are many ways and angles to take on this. i have yet to finish close reading lyrics of savage (ep), and i'm mostly taking cues from how aespa's concept was introduced through debut/smcu eps, visual narratives from their MVs, lyrics from black mamba and next level, etc. so i might be completely off. nevertheless here goes death of the author. this is going to be really messy and i have yet to completely and properly write a think piece on this but i just want to let it out so we can stop pretending that aespa's concept is anything short of genius.

ever since sm released smcu ep. 1 i've been thinking about how we built an entire virtual world and just accept that we interact on it on a daily basis without realizing it sometimes. like the internet, NFTs, digital fashion—an entire virtual world outside of what we tangibly/physically experience is out there. and i think it's quite a sign of the times that we are asking questions, creating music, building an entire kpop group that explores it. at university, i've been encountering lots of text and literature that talk about this specifically--evocative objects by sherry turkle being the most recent one.

like what defines our human experience, is it the physical world? and what if the virtual inventions of mankind found their way into our daily routines as much as those of the physical world has (hello 1992 invention of the www who wouldve thought)? what does that interaction make of us (and our virtual personas), how much (dis)connection are we experiencing from the fact that virtual everything has been on the rise? how much is it making us lonelier? happier? more human? less human? -- truly some philosophical questions here sometimes lol

the pandemic actually accelerated that because we don't have much choice but to go online to connect, to shop, to deposit money, to interact, to read, to entertain ourselves. where do all these things end up? floating somewhere in the virtual world yet they play such huge part in our lives!!!! it's really mind blowing if you just take a step back and try to take in how much of our lives are facilitated by virtual tools... people?

if you have other literature that can provide an angle/another take on this. i'd be happy to hear about them! this actually makes me so excited because of how this can really be explored in aespa's discography and the smcu.

i'm sorry its 5am where im from, i've just finished uni work and haven't had sleep. just had to write this and think out loud so i cant find the right words to this atm. I promise when i find the time i'll flesh it out more haha and maybe link a blog post of some sort.

do share related ideas! for those who have close read smcu and aespa's lyrics, are there any textual evidence that point/prove/support this thought? would love to hear them.

this is the first time im diving deep into this so if it has been brought up before but the memes / ae clownery just overshadowed them, dont crucify me for being late to the party!

[mabpersonal]

SM, we would like to see it.

[dreaminterlude]

whose vocal line

[mabpersonal]

NCT U - 7th Sense (12.27.20)

7th Sense Full Performance at NCT2020 Beyond Live: Resonance 'Global Wave'

Shotaro covering Taeyong’s debut song... my tears are on the floor. Get well soon to the leader. I bet he’s so proud. Everyone did so well.

[mabpersonal]

The 10 Best K-Pop Albums of 2020: Critics' Picks

These records serve as reminders that K-pop is always worth exploring further, that B-sides exist that match the strength of lead singles.

i love resonance with all my heart but yes i agree with this list

neozone >>> resonance pt. 2 > empathy >>> resonance pt. 1

and also boa 😭😭 as a queen should 👑

[mabpersonal]

now is the best time to reread this. editing as i go? starting january.

[mabpersonal]

i really wanna talk abt album design somewhere and sometime

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[mabpersonal]

art and set so nice as usual 

Teaser Photo for TAEYEON 태연 The 4th mini Album [What Do I Call You]   https://twitter.com/GirlsGeneration/status/1337050438231752705

[mabpersonal]

NCT and aespa are the only actual innovations in KPop in recent years and that's what keeps SM on top.

Exactly what the title said.

Of course all groups have unique concepts and all have something new to offer to the table but each and every one of them have been iterations of what has been done before i.e. in the case of big three, BLACKPINK is an iteration of 2NE1, TWICE is an iteration of SNSD, Red Velvet could be considered an f(x) reboot.

NCT's system can be said to be an iteration of SuJu and EXO but those two failed in a sense. Nevertheless that only goes to show that years' worth of thinking and teams of people are behind the whole concept for it to finally work; and fans saying the NCT system is "stupid" don't really know what they are talking about. With the release of Resonance, the NCT system makes more sense and you can see how it literally breaks the boundaries of KPop as we know it now.

Like I said it each iteration is unique and this is not meant to say the groups and idols/members that have debuted recently have nothing to offer; but if you're going to look at the big picture, especially with how formulaic a KPop group's careers are from debut to sub units to soloists to retirement, etc. -- it honestly gets kinda boring.

The reason everyone can't help but keep talking and debating about aespa and NCT when they debuted is precisely because their concept/system have not been done before and out of the ordinary/norm that we are used to, so we are more inclined to think and have opinions about them.

And it's all happened before... what did people have to say when SM was building the idol system from the ground up? when SM was the first to implement the subunit system from groups? I don't have the receipts but for sure people had stuff to say, too. Ik SM just wants their money but also behind each of yall's faves success are a bunch of creative people (probably paid less than idols) thinking and working their butts off to innovate and come up with something new. SM has the resources and risk appetite for that and it shows.

[mabpersonal]

this was a nice touch. the target is a perfect 10. few frames later, jungwoo is introduced as the 10th member.

“Irregular Office” Teaser Video for NCT 127 엔시티 127 The 1st Album 'Regular-Irregular’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pne7e_FGGsM&list=PLnV10PRPhWIhIQ2GCkG4mx0UDhRP08OdE&index=254

[mabpersonal]

this is literally an essay i wrote in 2018. it’s almost 2021.

Generation Z: Too Incredulous to Participate, too Ingenious to be Tethered

One thing that sets today’s youth apart from other generations is the inherent irony in their character. Generation Z (Gen Z) or the cohort of individuals born between 1995 and the late 2000s (Chaney, Touzani, & Slimane, 2017) is troubled with problems such as economic decline and financial insecurity, but they managed to make room for thinking they might not want a job. As a result, their predecessors brand them as idle or unprepared for employment, much less a career. This may be true in some cases, but in true ironic fashion, Generation Z’s reluctance to be employed is just a manifestation of their incredulous ingenuity.

Primarily, Gen Z trusts corporations and the government less than any other generation. Gen Z came of age in a time after the world witnessed events like the Great Recession and 9/11 Attacks, which brought about economic downslope and political upheaval (Scott, 2016). These trends continued and imposed financial insecurity and political reinvention, illustrated by events such as, but not limited to, the rise of strongman leaders, the domination of global corporations, and the hike of college education rates. Such events continued to jeopardize stability of existing social constructions in the eyes of Gen Z; and as a result, they developed incredulity toward these constructs, specifically the government and multinational corporations.

An 18-month long investigation conducted by economist and professor Noreena Hertz (2016) revealed that only 6% and 10% of Gen Z trusts corporations and the government, respectively. Words such as “exploitative” and “untrustworthy” were even used to describe multinational corporations. This educated skepticism proved to be a key factor when Gen Z started to turn away from the idea of employment and dependence on the government.

Predictably, Gen Z became self-directed realists who would rather engage in entrepreneurial ventures than be employed. Majority of them—61% of high school students and 43% of college students—prefer ingenious income sources like opening their own businesses over traditional means like being an employee (Schawbel, 2014). More evidences of Gen Z's inventive mindset include the rise of crowdsourcing applications like Kickstarter, which allows anyone to fund the creator of an entrepreneurial project; and the ubiquity of monetized content-creation on sites like Youtube and Instagram in the form of videos and strategic product promotion. All aforementioned evidences illustrate how Gen Z favors to direct their lives while utilizing their interests and innovative pragmatism over traditional dependency on social (sic) institutions.

In brief, Generation Z’s distrust in societal stability makes them reluctant to pursue what the older generation often refer to as “real jobs” that can lead to a more definite career path. Consequently, their disinclination may be misinterpreted as laziness; however, as what was previously discussed, Gen Z is wired to exert creative efforts to direct their lives and stay away from instability as much as they can. The youngest generation may be too perplexed at this point to arrive at a final decision regarding their careers, but they are clever enough to ask the right questions and trust the right people. The future is in good hands, after all. (500 words)

References: Bremmer, I. (2018, May 23). The 'strongmen era' is here. Here’s what it means for you Time. Retrieved from http://time.com/5264170/the-strongmen-era-is-here-heres-what-it-means-for-you/

Chammie, J. (2017, May 18). Student debt rising worldwide. Yale Global Online. Retrieved from https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/student-debt-rising-worldwide

Chaney, D., Touzani, M., & Slimane, K. B. (2017). Marketing to the (new) generations: summary and perspectives. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 25(3), 5. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254X.2017.1291173

Hertz, N. (2016, March 19). Think millennials have it tough? For ‘generation k’, life is even harsher. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/19/think-millennials-have -it-tough-for-generation-k-life-is-even-harsher

Jenkins, R. (2017, September 25). Who is generation z? This timeline reveals it all. Inc. Southeast Asia. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/ryan-jenkins/complete-guide-to-who-is-generation-z. html

Reference list: electronic sources (web publications). (2018). Retrieved June 17, 2018, from Purdue Online Writing Lab website: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/

Schawbel, D. (2014, September 2). What generation z entrepreneurs are like. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2014/09/02/what-generation-z-entrepreneurs-are-like/#2a7221b24f1e

Scott, R. (2016, November 28). Get ready for generation z. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/causeintegration/2016/11/28/get-ready-for-generation-z/#37d6aba22048

Younge, G. (2014, June 2). Who’s in control—nation states or global corporations? The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/02/control-nation -states-corporations-autonomy-neoliberalism

[mabpersonal]

NCT127 replacing members makes sense.

filed under: diaries; where i just write what i think about, consider them raw and unfiltered and not final. i will stand corrected for opinionated ones but this is just me thinking out loud on a public personal blog.

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yes its highly likely that yuta will leave 127 for nct japan and will get replaced by sungchan. tho ofc this is just a theory take it with a grain of salt. i mightve took it to far this might very well be a shitpost but hear me out—

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i remember the first time this happened with winwin-jungwoo my friend and i theorized (literally in our college dorms lol) that this will happen in the future too with the other foreign members. we even said at one point ten will leave wayv and move on to nct thailand and possibly be replaced by ren/le.

bc 127 is "the longitude of seoul which represents that from there we're going to spread our kpop music around the world."— our man johnny suh

with the whole fandom/unit mentality aside and taking nct as a brand, which it is, it makes some goddam sense:

each foreign member in 127 gets replaced by a korean member until 127 is purely korean. and the trend proceeds to the rest of the units in nct the original 127 members transferred to (i.e. winwin → wayv, and wayv will do the same until all of them are chinese). so from the 23 members that we know now, possibly:

* This continues on to levels three, four, and so on.

Some notes:

Example of 3rd Level: NCT Thailand will probably debut someone Filipino or Indonesian in the team and then they then will move on to transfer to their own city-based groups, leaving NCT Thailand purely Thai.

This explains why SM wants you invested not only in each unit but in the whole goddam clan. They will periodically come together every two years (? maybe but let's wait for the third to confirm this) until all yall care about the 50 men they're about to debut. Though my prediction is the cap is probably around 35, even then we're being generous.

This can explain why theres so many vocalists in 127 than they need and why johnny/yuta/winwin never really got actual spotlight when they were/are active there (but the outlier would be mark then).

SM sure cares abt portraying each unit as a family, which for sure has some truth to it, but at the end of the day debuting a new unit with members that have gained following in their previous units will make them more money than investing in one fixed group for a long time. As long as they feed fans with interactions every time theres an nct "reunion," theyre confident enough in their formula that the new neos they will debut to "replace" your faves will charm their way to success just like every SM idol does all the time. While youre busy whining; they're busy getting new, younger fans. Plus this means rarer interactions from members that used to be in the same unit and when they come back together yall will eat that shit up (i.e. jaehyun-winwin orange lemon cross; kun-jungwoo-lucas lucky three; taeten content; johnten content)

Holes in this theory include but not limited to:

this is bat shit crazy i could be clowning lol

ten is ethnically chinese and for him to move to another group AGAIN wow give the man a break; not to mention he's more essential center-wise to wayv even at debut than winwin was to 127 (take no offense, you know what i mean). it would be like if taeyong or mark left 127.

which brings us to... mark leaving 127 is honestly personally unimaginable but oh well.

Honestly IDK how nominsung will fall into place here but i remember theorizing that another korean subunit (non dream) will debut. but with the changes to the dream system, i havent fully thought about it yet.

Finally this leaves 127 with 5 rappers, 4 vocalists: Taeyong (og center of the universe lol), Taeil, Doyoung, Jaehyun, Haechan, Jungwoo, Sungchan, (Mark) - rapper, (Johnny) - rapper.

Footnote: yooo wtf what if mark - jeno; johnny - jaemin. idk yall.

#5 doesn't really make sense age-wise. Taeil is already 7 years older than Sungchan. Imagine 3 more additions younger than Sungchan. And its not like SM can debut 2*(see edit) new nct units next year to keep the age gap at a minimum in 127 new line up. unless noren continues to be rotational in dream until NCT north america debuts removing mark and johnny in favor of noren early enough before fans starve.

#6 literally means mark will debut... again...

#5 Footnote 1 means jisung and 1/2 of ren/le will be left unit-less except for rotational dream which can be bad but can also mean chenji new taeten and will debut as a 4th gen group (dream is technically 3rd gen even for their age)

In conclusion, chenji best boys.