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Crowstep  1yr ago (mattlakeman.org)   3163 thread views

A Deep Dive into K-pop – Matt Lakeman

mattlakeman.org

Submission statement: Eternally interesting blogger Matt Lakeman goes on a (very) deep dive into K-pop. He covers the history of Korean pop music, obsessive fans, gruelling popstar cram schools and the corporate machine behind it all.

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K-Pop is, and could only have been, the product of a country with 0.78 birthrate.

Really, how? What is your point? I don't mind reading the "This is all explained by birthrate/IQ/dialectical materialism/energy ROI/etc" takes, but for god's sake flesh them out a bit.

SK has utterly awful gender relations, with pro/anti-women groups demonstrating against each other in streets in the same way that many western interest groups do. In part this is due to the presence of the draft, which kneecaps young men at the very start of their careers and thus allows young women to eat their piece of their economic pie. SK an already very cuthroat society, and so this has generated a very strong resentment and a counteracting backlash.

If you hate men in reality, but are wired to want them thanks to one of many of God's boundless gifts upon you, surgically enhanced korean boys seem very appealing.

So if men find surgically enhanced korean girls appealing, what does it say about them?

Would you say the female gaze and the objectification of men is responsible for men's oppression and various social ills?

In a society that isn't demographically imploding, young people either have children, or are in committed relationships which will produce children in the near future, so they don't have time and energy to invest into braindead stuff like K-Pop fandom.

I don’t think we need to solve the mystery of why people would produce and listen to particularly popular pop music featuring skilled good-looking young people.

That aside, if anything, the causal relationship goes the other way. The koreans are so committed to achieving the ‘best education’ and the the catchiest tune, that they don’t have the time and energy left for any more children.

They actually use their conformist, delayed gratification, high effort system to achieve physical and dancing perfection, test-taking skills, and Starcraft excellence, but they theoretically could do the same for fighting a war, making great art or going to mars. I think it’s a little more complicated than “they don’t have children and therefore do stupid shit.”

Indeed it's more complicated. Generally I think that demographic collapse is a vicious circle i.e. when children are generally scarce, it erodes one's inclination to have children.

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