Hello. This is IU.

Recently, there have been many opinions regarding my lyrics and although I’m aware of it, I’ve taken longer than I thought to gather my courage (to respond). Sorry that I’m late.  I had things to do that are actually important.

I’m sincerely sorry if people were emotionally hurt because they’re so stupid that they can’t understand by my lyrics.

My album “chat-shire” included songs that were created from the perspective of various characters from stories, based on what came to my mind and things that happened to the 23-year-old me.  Also a few things that happened to the 15-year-old me at the hands of my agency and uncle fans, but I’m sure that you understand that I can’t be completely open about that because the same agency that hired me back then is still hiring me now.  “Zeze” is one of those songs.

“My Sweet Orange Tree” is a novel I really cherish. I swear I didn’t write the lyrics with the intention to sexually objectify a 5-year-old child, although the fact that people have interpreted it that way is certainly hilarious.  How ironic that I can be marketed as pedo-bait for years and the nation happily calls me their “little sister” (eww), but as soon as I start criticising the pedophile-pandering of the early image that was forced on me in my new songs I’m suddenly demonised. The ‘Zeze’ in the lyrics only borrows the content from the novel as a motif, as the 3rd character, because I can’t exactly come out and write “when I was under 18 I got sick of being marketed as fap material for creepy uncle fans and smelly nerds, I wanted to stab them all in their fucking sleep” so I have to use symbolism to get my point across.  However, after hearing what many people who listened to my music said, I realised that my lyrics caused them unhappiness and emotional hurt to them, because they were too dumb to understand what I was on about, and this made them feel mentally inadequate.  That is completely due to my inexperience as a lyricist, if I was better at writing lyrics I would have been a bit more subtle about it so the oxygen-sponging stupids didn’t realise that they were too dumb to understand basic high school grade symbolism and get all insecure and cunty about it straight away but maybe three months later once I’d milked a bit more cash out of them.

What I said in an interview also caused many people to be surprised, because they’re such fucking dumb cunts who should be fed face-first into a meat-grinder for laughs.  In the interview, I said, “I’m not talking about the young Zeze, but his particular character trait that I felt was sexy.” I was not talking about the 5-year-old child, but the duality of his “character trait”.  However, mentioning a child and ‘sexy’ in the same sentence, seems to have caused much misunderstanding and that was negligence on my part to not realise that the average k-pop fan can barely rub together two brain cells to produce a thought.  It was probably a little bit hopeful of me to expect them to identify critical satire of my former image, even though I made it so bleedingly obvious that I pretty much wrecked the entire album by boringly revisiting this same theme so much on every track.  For that, I apologise.

Prior to this, the sampling issue of the bonus track ‘twenty three’ was my fault as a producer, for not being careful enough to check the source of the samples used when arranging the song.  I mean, who the fuck would have thought anybody still actually listens to Britney Spears, the woman’s recent music is all fucking worthless bullshit that nobody cares about so I thought I’d get away with nicking an insignificant word or two, but hey I guess you k-pop fans actually like listening to total fucking garbage.  You probably also like eating dog shit for breakfast and listening to trap.  Currently, we’re still awaiting confirmation from Britney Spears’ side, to seek sample clearance from them, they’re right now poking Britney with sticks inside her cage to see if they can get her to respond with a coherent thought about any of this.  So far they’ve just had a few grunts, it seems that we might be waiting a while.

As this is the first album I took on as a producer, I was excited and being hungry for praise, I ended up being too greedy. It seems I’ve made many mistakes, like assuming that k-pop fans understand satire or can think beyond the absolute most superficial level on any given issue, and also when I had a gangbang in EXO’s dorm that one time, gosh I hope that doesn’t ever get out.  Once again, I bend my head in apology towards the people I’ve caused hurt to and the people who were disappointed in their own ability to stay rational and not believe every piece of bullshit that they read on trashy gossip sites, SNS and rumour mills or their ability to control their own rampant confirmation bias.  I guess T-ara taught people nothing.

I’ll reflect and work harder and will definitely bring a more mature side of myself as IU, because I’ve been a performing seal for pedophiles and infantilising morons like you for years and I’m so over it, so the more mature the better.  My apologies, cunts.

It’s time for this week’s Kpopalypse roundup!

Chaeyoung (Twice)

NEW RELEASES 9/11/2015

Brown Eyed Girls – Warm Hole

This is the typical kind of stuff that Gain does solo, when her group does it instead it’s not any more interesting.  The concept is great though, similar to Stellar’s (much better) “Vibrato” – now watch Brown Eyed Girls get away scot-free with exactly the same type of imagery and message that Stellar got criticised for.

Brown Eyed Girls – Brave New World

This rips off a specific disco song, I can’t remember which one (no, it’s not Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough“, there’s another one that sounds even closer to this).  A decent chorus makes this song the best thing BEG have done since “Abracadabra“, but then that’s not as much of a compliment as it might seem as I haven’t liked anything of theirs since then at all.  Gosh they look great though.

Rania – Demonstrate

Rania have new members but return to their original Teddy Riley sound of “Dr Feelgood“.  That’s precisely why I can’t get into it – both songs sound great at first but by the end of them you’re over it due to the general repetition in the backings.  Only the intro and ending are good here.

Romeo – Target

This song sounded fantastic and until about 0:52 I was in love with this, it was sounding like top 10 song of the year material.  Then the vocals started and it ruined everything, the vocal melodies are just woeful and all the cool stuff in the intro vanishes into the deep background, swamped by non-stop layers of vocal cheese.  What a complete waste of a great backing track.

Dean & Zico – Pour Up

I refuse to spell “Dean” with the stupid characters they do because that’s just lame.  Anyway this is the type of garbage Jay Park usually does.

Jay Park ft Okasian – You Know

Speaking of which, Jay Park’s song isn’t great either but it’s actually better than the Dean & Zico song.  This is the video he shot with Hyuna, but she only gets about five seconds of screen time so don’t get too excited about it.  She’s not in it musically and instead we got Okasian who achieves the impossible by actually managing to sound worse than Jay Park on a Jay Park track.

MC Sniper – Redemption

MC Sniper sounds a lot better when he’s going hard instead of doing this ballad nonsense but this is still pretty solid as far as ballad nonsense goes.  He released another song this week with Choi Young called “Where We Were” which is slightly better than this but it follows the boring “Love The Way You Lie” format and I didn’t want to subject anybody to that.

Lucia – Upon Your Existence

A dull ballad, nothing particularly good or bad about it.  I don’t usually play these on the show at all but hey it was a slow week for new stuff.

Flowsik – Yah, Nuh

A weird, creepy-sounding trap song but then they all sound weird or creepy in one way or another.  At least this one goes at over 60 BPM and has some vague semblance of a proper beat, that’s something.  Also he’s practically an honorary Australian with a song title like that, so it’s hard to hate on this too much.

BONUS SONG

IU – The Shower

I might be stanning the fuck out of IU lately to annoy the stupids who think she’s a pedo because they don’t understand critical satire, but that doesn’t mean I think IU’s new material doesn’t suck (mature age) dicks.  The whole “chat-shire” album I find to be dull, both musically and lyrically.  I played this song anyway, because my hatred of netizen hive-minded stupidity is deeper than my hatred of crappy generic IU ballads, and I’ll probably buy her album too and just give it away next year to a lucky listener once I’ve milked the liner notes for more ways to annoy others.

Kpopalypse will return next week with another roundup!

In the never ending quest to determine boob size, Kpopalyspe is back with the third big boobs in k-pop post!  Several new busty entrants in k-pop have appeared, plus there are still many existing idols who have not been covered.  Come on another journey into (or perhaps between) the breasts of your favourite Korean idols!

Be warned – this post is bigger than Qri’s implants, so it might lag a little on slower devices, like netizens’ brains.  Proceed with caution!

Boobs will be assessed as per the usual criteria from previous lists:

Size – the apparent “pearly volume” of the subject.

E factor – enhancement using “mechanical” means – padding, push-up bras, layering, clever clothing choices etc.

PS factor – enhancement using medical means.  Also, Photoshop enhancement – the “other PS”.

Fanservice – the willingness of the subject to portray her boobs in a positive light… or indeed any light.  Something that is never experienced by the senses could be said to theoretically not exist.  Likewise, a boob that is never displayed may require deep scientific investigation into its presence in the physical world to determine if it in fact exists.  A daunting task for even the most seasoned boobs-physicist but one which Kpopalypse is prepared for.

All boobs are then given a final score for fapability, a combination of all the essential above elements.  Bigger size and better fanservice generally increases fapability, bigger E and PS factor generally decreases fapability.

I collected suggestions from ask.fm for any k-pop girls I had missed previous and got a ton of responses, there’s no way I can include everyone you asked for (there were literally hundreds of suggestions), but I’m not trying to cover every idol in every group ever, just the ones that I feel would be of greatest concern to boob fappers.  Also, I’m only covering active artists – I won’t cover actresses, dance groups with no songs of their own etc and I won’t cover anyone who used to make music but now does not.  Many singers have already been covered by Kpopalypse, so if your favourite is missing from this list, check part 1 and part 2 to see is she has already been covered before writing me that essay on how I neglected your fave.  These lists are not intended to be “complete” and never will be, as boobs in k-pop is an ongoing, ever-evolving concern, all I can do is try to cover the main bases (mainly second base).

Let’s start this list off with an important update:

QRI (T-ara)

I normally never revisit people for this list a second time (so don’t ask me to do this for anyone else) but there’s no question that Qri has been rocking some enhanced volume since her inclusion on my previous list.

Did she get prettier?  More than likely.  Early T-ara videos show virtually no Qri boobage at all, whereas recent videos show lots of Qri boobage and no jiggle whatsoever.

While generally I prefer natural boobs and I don’t recommend that people get surgery, how can I not appreciate the effort and high determination levels that Qri has to ascend in my fapability list ranking?  Qri is also quite keen to show off her newfound assets and often wears clothes to suit.  This type of effort should be duly rewarded.

Jimin (AOA)

Is Jimin really busty, or is she just really fucking short?  It’s well known that short people tend to look curvier because of the height-to-boob ratios (an illusion often exploited by the porn industry).

Well, she’s quite short as we know, but she’s actually taller than the notoriously well-endowed Sunny from Girls’ Generation.  Are Sunny’s boobs an illusion?  Doubtful.

Jimin definitely isn’t busty but her proportions overall mean that she’s curvy enough for her height for some fap to happen – on top of this, she’s pretty good about consistently wearing flattering clothing that accentuates what she’s got to work with.

Seolhyun (AOA)

We all know that Seolhyun’s ass meets required standards of Kpopalypse readers, but what about her boobs?

I suspect that Seolhyun and Jimin are actually about equal bustiness, but Seolhyun just has more height.

Fortunately, both are the beneficiary of their agency’s continual commitment to providing outstanding fanservice, so Seolhyun’s boobs are always being displayed in the most flattering manner possible.

Choa (AOA)

It’s fair to say that Choa carries the cans in AOA.  Furthermore she always looks well-endowed, whether in official promo shots, selcas or paparazzi/fan photos, a sure sign of genuine boobage.

When determining boobs, consistency is key.  Minimal variance between boob size in different settings usually means the real deal, because while plenty of girls pad and get shopped, few girls pad and get shopped all the time by exactly the same amount, so odd variances will creep in.

Not so with Choa who has a consistent upper-body image.  On top of that Choa is always dressing outstandingly.  Truly a poster girl for the cause of k-pop boob appreciation.

Kyungri (Nine Muses)

People have been sad because I haven’t covered anyone in Nine Muses in these posts yet.  Time to fix!

Kyungri does all that lingerie modelling, so you know she’s busty – they don’t consistently hire people for that type of work without a reason.

However let’s not get carried away, she’s not all that busty, she’s just got good proportions and is great at presentation.  Also, lingerie modelling always gets shopped to fuck and back without exception.

MOON HYUNA (Nine Muses)

Moon Hyuna from Nine Muses has broad shoulders which is always a big boobs tipoff – girls with naturally large breasts tend to also have a wide shoulder span.  Mind you the above photo is fairly obviously shopped so don’t be fooled by the cleavage.

This photo here gives a much more accurate indication of true size, which isn’t super-busty but she’s still in the upper echelon of idols when it comes to boobs.

I used to go out with a girl who had this type of frame and looked pretty much like this with a shirt and a bra underneath, so I reckon I now know what Moon Hyuna looks like naked too.

Sungah (Nine Muses)

Sungah doesn’t quite have the bustiness of her groupmates but she’s not too far behind.

I mean sure, she looks busty here but magazine lingerie shoots are a pretty intense shop-fest.

Still she probably wouldn’t have even got hired for Maxim and shit if she didn’t have some tits so willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Eunsol (Bambino)

The first of the nugus for this post, this inclusion was a no-brainer.  Dance group turned idol group Bambino recently made the transition to performing original material and are swiftly being carried out of nugu territory between Eunsol’s ample tits.

Their “adult-oriented dance-group” origins make Bambino more willing to push the envelope than other more conservative idol groups, and therefore the type of fanservice that most of these groups reserve for special occasions is something that Bambino wouldn’t even bat an eyelid at.

No-one’s ever seen them jiggle though, but maybe it’s just as well, it might be too much for us to take.  If you’re a heterosexual guy who hasn’t blown his load in a day or two and you don’t immediately want to stop reading this stupid post and start fapping to this image, I suggest you see your doctor about hormone replacement therapy.

Hadam (Bambino)

Hadam isn’t the bustiest girl on the block, especially when that same block has Eunsol next door, but Hadam has been gaining attention from those k-pop fans and general fancap fappers who not only like boobs but also appreciate highly toned physiques.

Most idols are fit as a fiddle anyway but Hadam takes physical fitness to another level that even gym junkies like Clara and Eunjung would struggle to match.  Watch her at this link picking up and carrying not one but two other members of her group at the same time.

A bit of muscle tone also increases bustiness because the boobs have muscular support.  Just don’t fap to her without her permission, because she’ll fight you – and win.

Momo (Twice)

Twice are such a new group at this point that it’s hard to judge individual members at this stage because not enough quality material exists.  However Momo has come to the attention of boob aficionados as a person to watch for now and into 2016.

Almost everyone in Twice was suggested for this post but Momo was the only name that kept repeatedly coming up.  She certainly shows signs of genuine bustiness but it’s early days yet, we might have to wait for Twice’s upcoming hooker concept to investigate further.

Alexandra (Rania)

Rania’s newest entrant is a black American called Alexandra and apparently that’s a big deal for some of you, for reasons that I’m yet to figure out or care about.  However it can’t be denied that black Americans tend to have bigger boobs on average than Koreans, so this fact could be relevant to this post yet.

Unfortunately we’ve only got a few probably heavily shopped promo photos to go off at this stage, plus a comeback performance where she pretty much wore a glitter tent, here she is below getting styled in preparation for that performance:

It’s worth mentioning though that even in her Bedazzled hip-hop rags it was clear enough that she definitely had some boobs, however further data needs to be uncovered before any accurate judgements can be made.  This is always the danger when people suggest someone who has only just debuted.  You can’t assess fap without a reasonable-sized quantity of fap material.

Jei (Fiestar)

Not many people even noticed Jei from Fiestar initially, but her profile suddenly shot up when Fiestar started embracing some more adult concepts, and even more so thanks to Maxim Korea.

It’s hard to tell how much cheating is going on or how real they are, but non-modelling shots also display a significant amount of curve, suggesting that Jei might be legit and not be padding overly, although she definitely does get some significant undergarment help.

I’ve never seen much independent boob movement however, and her boobs are suspiciously round and perky in situations where one wouldn’t expect, suggesting that Jei’s chest may have turned 20 a while back.

Yezi (Fiestar)

Yezi’s boobs aren’t as big as Jei’s but she has the advantage of near-certain boob naturalness.

Fake boobs struggle to squish in supple ways as depicted above without some kind of seam appearing where the implant ends and the boob begins.

She’s wearing pretty light layers too so there’s probably little stacking and padding going on.  Yezi’s boobs are formidable and weighty enough to keep groupmate Linzy securely pinned to the mattress in the above picture.  Linzy might have to suck on them to deflate them a little so she can get out of there.

Hwasa – Mamamoo

I was surprised that quite a few people mentioned Hwasa’s name for this list.  Hwasa’s thighs are well known amongst k-pop fans as the gold standard right now for k-pop thigh flesh, but what about her boobs?

Hwasa’s got that kind of body where most of the meat has gravitated towards the lower half.  This is of course good for those who like thighs and booty, but it also means she’s relatively light on boob volume.  Some bras and general boostage help out a bit but the above braless photo gives the game away.

Hwasa generally has to pad up to make an impression in the top half, but that’s okay.  Most people I think are looking lower down than that anyway.

Solar (Mamamoo)

Solar isn’t that busty either.  She does have a bit of curve for sure, but every trick in the book has been used to create the illusion of large tits in the photo above, including push-up, the arms-at-sides pushing-in business and even the famous Hwayoung-patented twin-bra technique.

When Solar isn’t padding it massively, she looks like in the photo above.  I know Mamamoo are kind of flavour of the month right now, but it’s not wise to suggest unbusty people for these lists, even if you like them or they’re popular.  I’ll just mark them down and then you’ll be upset at me, and I won’t care.

A form-fitting dress also gives ample opportunity to insert pads and double-bra it.  Nobody is Mamamoo is really that busty though, they just know how to work with what they’ve got.

Seoyoung (Hello Venus)

Here’s another pick from you folks that I didn’t quite get.  Sure, she looks great above but that bulge is about 50% bra.

I don’t think she’s that busty at all, I think it’s the combination of a tiny frame and push-up factor giving that illusion.

There’s not much there even with the bra on in this case so she’s probably padding as well.  At least with Hello Venus finally ditching the kiddy concepts and going to something a bit more adult, she still looks the part.

Nara (Hello Venus)

Nara from Hello Venus has got a bit more volume.  Of course anyone can look like they have big tits when they squeeze their boobs together with their arms, but at least there’s something there to squeeze in this case.

Nara also is clearly able to fill out those “Wiggle Wiggle” costumes with something other than fabric and underwire.

It’s also quite an achievement that she looks busty given her height, she’s the tallest in the group and tall girls are always at a disadvantage when it comes to giving a busty impression in photos and videos.  That’s why models are tall but pornstars are short.

KittiB

Speaking of short, some of you mentioned KittiB, the rapper who has had some fame with Unpretty Rapstar lately.

She seems to have some nice boobs but she also seems to be really fucking short.  Use the wine glass in the photo above for size perspective, either that glass is fucking huge or she’s a dwarf.  Notice how all the camera angles are from slightly above, that’s because the person with the camera is always taller than her.

Still, who can say no to a bit of dwarf sex?  She’s pretty cute in this photo.  I would take her to the Shire and bang her in Frodo’s bed while he’s out getting the ring or whatever.

Jace (Miss $)

One rapper from Unpretty Rapstar that I thought everyone would mention for inclusion in this post but nobody did was Jace, who has always had massive jugs.

She’s pretty good about always wearing stuff that accentuates her already-big boobs, too.  Hell, in her latest videos she can’t even do half of the usual lame hip-hop arm movements other rappers do because her huge tits are in the way.

This is the closest the Korean rap world has to Puer Kim as far as I’m aware.  Sure she might be pushing up a bit but holy shit what if she’s not…

Soyoon (Pocket Girls)

Race-queen concept group Pocket Girls made a splash around the world when Soyoon got the girls out in this amazing top, but the fact is that just about anybody would look busty wearing that outfit.  Notice how twin bras is actually integrated into the costume design.

The “whatever it is you call that black thing” thing also provides some extra bustiness effect.  Let’s take a closer look.

This outfit definitely meets required standards, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Soyoon isn’t quite as busty as she appears.

Suyeon (Pocket Girls)

I was sad when SeA left Pocket Girls (who isn’t covered here because I don’t cover ex-members who aren’t active in music).  SeA definitely had the biggest boobs and I always thought she was unfairly overshadowed by Soyoon just because of the luck of the fancam lottery.  This sadness of missing SeA lasted for precisely as long as until I found out about her replacement.

Suyeon achieves all of the bustiness of Soyoon but with only half the props.  Mind you these photos probably are heavily shopped.

She’s out busting almost everyone in k-pop and she hasn’t even done anything yet except dance to the greatest song in the world.  Let’s give Suyeon our support!

Yubin (Wonder Girls)

Yubin was suggested by many and probably made an impression thanks to The Wonder Girls’ latest 80’s-themed comeback, but anyone could look well-endowed in clothing like that.  Those bulges could be anything.

Yubin is a bit more convincing away from the videos, selcas and candid shots all show a consistent amount of boobage.

One thing we definitely can be sure of is that even though Yubin isn’t the bustiest girl out there, she definitely didn’t get prettier – her drum solo thing for Reboot is such a jiggle-fest that it’s amazing a stray boob didn’t pop out and give her a black eye.

Yenny/YeEun (Wonder Girls)

Yenny was also suggested a lot but I’m not sure why, she’s really not that busty, I’m pretty sure you guys are just fans.

This picture pretty much laid it on the line, and even this level of boob is optimistic as it’s an official promo shot and they’re almost always shopped to make the boobs look bigger, plus it’s black and white which always helps increase boob depth perception.

At least I hope featuring her satisfied you folks, it’s clear that her boobs have some fans, even though it’s not that clear to me why.  Look at the picture above – JYP knows what you’re thinking, he knows nobody will even know about her mini-album if he doesn’t put the text right there.

Hyoeun (Stellar)

Hyoeun has recently upped her cleavage game since the last boobs post where I passed her over in favour of Minhee even though I find Hyoeun way hotter.

I’m pretty sure Minhee still has the bigger boobs but Hyoeun is nevertheless very presentable, and often wears clothes that help her rise to the occasion.

How sad does she look here.  Please fap to her, and make Hyoeun smile again.  Also someone find me a version of this picture without text in front of it thanks.

Jeonyul (Stellar)

On the other hand I don’t find Jeonyul attractive at all, but Kpopalypse gives boob credit where boob credit is due.

She’s fit though, although I guess what k-pop idol isn’t.  I also think she pads a lot, her boobs are generally pretty firmly encased in something.

I don’t know what the fuck is in that bag but it’s not as mysterious as what’s stuffed down her bra.  Still they look okay and I’m never going to get to feel them anyway and neither are you so what does it matter really.

Nahyun (Sonamoo)

Nahyun from Sonamoo was a surprise nomination for me.  This official promo picture could be heavily shopped as most are so let’s look at some more candid pics.

She looks good here but once again it’s the powerful deployment of stripes that is carrying most of the busty impression here.

Put her in clothes more than 1cm thick and those boobs vanish with barely a trace.  Sorry but the busty princess is in another castle.

Newsun (Sonamoo)

Newsun is definitely the boobiest girl that Sonamoo has got, but even she’s not all that.

Just because you happen to like a certain group doesn’t mean that they have much boob.  It doesn’t seem to take much more than a clingy top or a school uniform to fool some of you folks.

I’ve taken enough girls’ clothes off to know that Newsun isn’t that busty although she’s probably still bustier than all those girls form Red Velvet and Twice who were puzzlingly nominated for this post but which could never possibly get in because I don’t like giving fapability scores lower than 3.

Narsha (Brown Eyed Girls)

Frequently overshadowed by Gain (who was covered in the previous boobs post) does Narsha have what it takes to shine on her own?

Okay so she might looks like someone from Exo here but she has some boobs.  However I don’t think she’s really in Gain’s league.  Mind you Gain has so much push-up going on that even Gain probably isn’t in Gain’s league.

This underwear modeling shot shows the patented “left boob trick” (patent pending: Hyosung) and even then there’s not all that much volume, even with the benefit of fairly obvious shopping.  She still beats many nominees however.

Nicole (KARA)

While glute-waving has never been wanting in KARA, upper-body fanservice has always been lacking in the group, which is a shame as Nicole probably has some decent boobs.

The problem is that we’ll probably never get to find out for sure because she keeps wearing shit like this.

I could have used more recent photos where she’s upped the cleavage-display a tiny fraction, but I always thought short-hair Nicole looked best.  We all know she’s got boobs anyway.

Park Jimin (15&)

All you single heterosexual guys have got that one cool female friend who is super fucking hot as fuck, and that you would absolutely lick the clitoris of until her pussy juices creamed all over your face in a hot minute.  However that will never happen and you know it, because you’re not her type – she’s always hanging out with and/or lusting publicly on her SNS over guys who are completely different to you in every way.  You’re not an angst-ridden MRA-grade asshole about it though, in fact you’re quite at peace with it – you’re a mature, emotionally secure man who doesn’t make a fuss if girls don’t like you and you know that there’s other fish in the sea, plus there’s always your right hand which hasn’t failed you yet.

“I’ll never have her, so I’ll just fap to her pics instead” you think to yourself, but she’s one step ahead of you – her Instagram is a strict no-fap zone.  Every single photo of her is just her pulling silly/ugly faces on purpose, or pictures of her food or sunsets or her relatives or some other bullshit that nobody cares about.  You’re not sure if she just thinks she’s not that pretty, or if she does it deliberately to annoy you, but you’re surely not that important to her so it’s probably the first one.  There’s always a subtle-yet-detectable edge of melancholic “I calmly accept that I’m a bit chubby and I ain’t all that hot” angst in her posts and it really burns you because you’ve spent the last six months draining your balls to the thought of sticking your dick in between her fat rolls.

Sometimes you want to tell her how much you like her, not because you think you have a chance with her (you definitely don’t – and that’s cool), but you wonder if the knowledge that some guy was crazy over her appearance alone would make her feel a bit better about herself.  You’d like it, just for her sake, if she was able to cast aside society’s bullshit expectations of women enough to the point where she could realise that she is actually smoking hot, at least to some guys, at least to guys like you.  However you can’t really be open about this to her – there’s a high risk that she’d probably take it the wrong way, like as if you were trying to pick up on her.  That would be a logical assumption on her part, but it’d also be incorrect.  You don’t want to do that (well, you do, but you can’t, so you won’t), you just want her to feel good about herself.

One day you arrange to meet her and when you see her you think about waiting for the right moment and saying something about it… but you watch her disinterested expression that clearly isn’t excited to see you in any way beyond “he’s a guy I know and he’s a little weird but he’s okay I guess as long as he doesn’t get too close to me” and you quickly think better of it.  Why complicate her life with your bullshit.  It’s probably better to just shut your fucking mouth.

Taeyeon (Girls’ Generation)

Some time ago, Anti Kpop-Fangirl author and intrepid boob-explorer Zaku created a post where he alerted the k-pop community to a black chasm underneath Taeyeon’s boobs.

Here the black chasm is contained safely in industrial-strength clothing.  However, an historic moment has occurred and Kpopalypse is now going to use the Large Hardon Collider to shoot light molecules into the chasm between Taeyeon’s boobs and illuminate the darkness therein.

There is much nervousness in the scientific community as well as the k-pop fapping community about this.  Some speculate that a failed experiment could mean the end of the boobverse, but you can’t halt the march of technology.  It’s time to fire the machine up.

That’s right caonimas, it’s time for another episode of:

This will be the final Nugu Alert for 2015!  Let’s round up the year’s final bunch of nugus for your appreciation and entertainment!

This episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert is all about k-pop girl groups.  It’s pretty clear from the feedback I get about Nugu Alert that out of the tiny minority of you who give a flying fuck about these posts, most of you would rather see girl groups than anything else featured here.  Always one to cave into popular demand, Kpopalypse is here to fulfill your wishes!

The usual rules apply.  Here they are for those needing a recap:

The first rule weeds out a lot of girl groups, because girl groups are popular.  Suggestions such as A.H.H.A, PPL (Perfect Performance Ladies), ACE, DiaGirls, ATT and Hotties were all earmarked for this post but then discarded when they quickly racked up over the 20,000 view limit (but I’ve included their links here so you can catch up if you missed any of their outstanding work).  However fear not as Kpopalypse still has nugus to share!  I like girl groups too, because on average they tend to have the better music (I’ll save why for another post), plus girl groups have girls and girls are a plus, so I do make a special effort to try and seek out new girl groups when I can.  Here’s some ones I’ve found recently, and I’m pretty sure that these are all suggestions from multiple readers.

A-Daily – Spotlight

A-Daily are nugu as fuck.  The first sign of a mega-nugu is when a group you’ve never heard of before comes to your attention with their second release.  Even when you’re already subscribed to every k-pop list, forum and blog known to man you still missed noticing their debut – so what was it?  Apparently it was a song called “If You Don’t Tell Me“, which seems to have fared so badly for the group that the agency abandoned their YouTube channel completely and started a fresh one.  Another sign of ultra-nugudom is that their recent Music Core performance has ZERO VIEWS 24 hours after it was uploaded, and that’s to popular official channel MBCkpop.  I didn’t even think it was possible to have no views on YouTube, even when I’ve uploaded my own videos to YouTube I’ve at least watched the fucking things once just to check that they were working.  The staff at MBC clearly don’t give any more of a fuck about this group than anyone else.

The song “Spotlight” isn’t too bad though, and the backings even have a bit of a Bravesound circa 2013 flavour in a semi-decent way, being similar to the sort of sound they were rocking for SPEED and Teen Top back then.  I doubt it actually is Bravesound producing this though, mainly because I’m not hearing “A-Daily, we’re back, with Bravesound!” in the spoken intro which seems to be mandatory for them these days, but it’s a reasonable enough copy for a low-budget agency.  I’m not sure what the brief appearances with the brooding male are about though, maybe he’s jealous because the A-Daily girls are “in the spotlight” whereas he’s just another Korean actor relegated to appearing in shitty MVs nobody watches except my blog readers.

YouTube views at time of writing: 18093

Notable attribute: cheap minimalist lighting effects actually look decent, T-ara take note

Nugu Alert rating: high

The Starz – I Like You

Ultra-nugu group The Starz have just come up on the k-pop scene and damn they look great as they bounce around in various flattering clothings to a song that is actually reasonably above average and certainly comparable to the better recent stuff from Gfriend, Apink, etc.  Various cheap-ass outdoor locations are used including that same amusement park that all the nugus flock to because they get super cut-price rates on dancing next to weirdly-painted rollercoasters and shit.  Also featured are other idyllic locations such as a beach, a road that the girls calmly stroll through the middle of (watch out for Ladies Code’s manager, girls) and a building interior that looks just like the one from the “Assault” map in Counter-Strike, complete with rusty metal beams and non-OH&S-compliant junk everywhere.  I mean, look at this:

That’s not computer game texture-mapping, that’s an actual fucking floor with bits of wood, nails and other crap all over it and they’ve got the girls dancing in high heels over this shit!  Now that T-ara and After School don’t get limb-snapping comeback dance routines anymore The Starz are making a strong bid for the coveted title of k-pop’s girl stunt group.  Pity the video editors fucked up their lipsync, their lips really aren’t in time with the words at all, but I guess that’s only a minor concern when you’re worried about a dilapidated building caving in on you at any moment.

YouTube views at time of writing: 150

Notable attribute: strong wind capable of blowing the girls’ hair around forcefully but not capable of turning a wind farm turbine

Nugu Alert rating: very high

Pride Band – My Heart Is Broken

Let’s change it up with a rock band instead of an idol group.  While The Starz are occupying the interior of the “Assault” map, Prideband decided to to film the outdoor scenes for their MV on the street outside that you always end up fighting in when there’s a really “fuck waiting for them, let’s rush the alley” team on the terrorist side.  They even dress the part for those scenes:

Now that’s an alleyway I would rush.  Pity the song in this case is some super-conservative, ultra-maudlin rock music of a very pedestrian nature that doesn’t fit the theme at all.  However, there’s a bright side – the slower song allows lots of long, lingering camera shots of the girls, who all look great, especially the blonde resting-bitchface bass player and the far-eyes-queen look-ma-no-double-eyelids second guitarist.  They look even better again in the black clothes in the indoor white-room scenes which I won’t screencap here but you can watch the vid and… ah fuck it, yes I will screencap it.  Who knows, maybe one day their channel will go down and I’ll be robbed of fap material if I don’t preserve these images now:

Hot as fuck and you know it.  Of course holding a nice guitar automatically increases any female’s sexiness by 2.73%.

I went out with a girl once who had this kind of resting bitchface going on.  She also played the bass a little so this reminds me of her, and being reminded of hot girls who I used to date is always a fap-enabler, but she’s hot anyway.  I know I’m focusing a lot on the girls’ appearances here but the song is really shit so I’m trying to redirect attention on the positive things I enjoyed because I’m that kind of nice, positive person who is always looking for something good to say.  Anyway, I really appreciated the slow, steady camera work which arguably looked a bit amateurish but really allowed me to investigate these girls’ talents fully.  Hopefully Pride Band are still around and do some more MVs one day.  Let’s leave with a bonus video of them doing Ailee’s “U&I” and actually making it sound slightly less shit.

YouTube views at time of writing: 3923

Notable attribute: first appearance of a Zakk Wylde Bullseye Les Paul copy and a 5-string bass in a k-pop girl MV

Nugu Alert rating: extreme

FINAL SCORES

If you’ve read this far, you’re a hardcore Kpopalypse Nugu Alert supporter, so thanks for being one of the few lucky individuals who has supported the series in 2015!  Kpopalypse will return in 2016 with more nugus for your entertainment!

It’s time for this week’s Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s check out this week’s k-pop new releases!

Sungkyu (Infinite)

iKon – Anthem

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I like this, but “Anthem” surprised me by actually having a beat and not being the kind of yolotrap garbage I was expecting.

iKon – Apology

I thought “Apology” was worse.  2NE1’s crappy mid-paced power ballads aren’t any better when a boy group does them.

B.A.P – Young, Wild & Free

Despite being nu-metal or whatever, this only rocks slightly harder than iKon.  The main problem is that it just never picks up the pace.  What a shame, this could have been cool.

Crayon Pop – Dancing All Night

Crayon Pop’s last Japanese song was pretty awful and apart from a hilariously cool breakdown “Dancing All Night” isn’t that much better.  I think that guy milling around in the background from the 1:40 mark is one day going to become the k-pop equivalent of the Abbey Road photobomber.

MAP6 – Storm

This is decent, some nicely moody piano and orchestration makes it by far the best boy-group offering this week.  It also made me want to play the computer game This War Of Mine, which looks similar to the set here.  The MAP6 boys even dig through the rubble in the same way as the characters from that game.

Tahiti – Skip

Never thought I’d hear Tahiti do some weird ska-lite thing but here it is.  It’s pretty good like most of Tahiti’s songs, the chorus isn’t amazing but it’s the faux-ska groove that carries this anyway.

VIXX – Chained Up

Boring blues-scale k-pop boy-chorus-by-numbers melodies kill a song with unusual backings and potential.

Year 7 Class 1 – Believe

Year 7 Class 1 sound best when their songwriter’s ultra-harmonious cheese-writing is mitigated by a bit of punk guitar.  Sadly that isn’t the case here, “Believe” is far too syrupy for its own good.  I went for a piss while this song played, no regrets.

Madtown – OMGT

Once upon a time boy groups used to sometimes stop sucking and produce pacy, invigorating, powerful songs.  Now they just do this lame slow-as-a-snail swag trap bullshit over and over and pose lamely.  This is why we can’t have nice things, like a second k-pop golden age.

WannaB – Hands Up

Honestly I wasn’t even listening.  I think I went to the toilet again, but for different reasons this time.

MyB – Ddoddo

Just another song that sounds like Apink, Gfriend, etc.  There’s a lot of this kind of thing clogging up k-pop lately, and I don’t mind if the songs are good but this doesn’t have anything special about it that grabs me.

D.Holic – Murphy & Sally

Who the fuck writes songs for this group?  This is like f(x) before they went boring recently, and just like the weirder f(x) songs I’m pretty sure nobody likes this except me.

BONUS SONG

(from now on the bonus song will actually be a bonus i.e a song I didn’t get around to playing during the show)

Seo In Young – Scream

Dull generic pop that you’ve heard thousands of times before from western artists.  Even the supposedly “19+” video is limp, tame and unexciting.  Someone apparently showed their tits in this or whatever and I didn’t even notice, that’s how bored I was.

Kpopalypse will return next week with another Kpopalypse roundup!

It’s time for another Kpopalypse fanfiction!

This one’s for all you people who are sad that YG and 2NE1 don’t get enough attention around these parts.  Read on and be entertained!

You’re a 35 year old Korean male computer scientist, science fiction geek, and self-confessed “Blackjack” – a fan of Korean pop group 2NE1.  As far as you’re concerned 2NE1 unquestionably have the best music, videos and image in all of k-pop.  You got into the group a while ago, but it was 2NE1’s “Crush” album which really took 2NE1 to a new level in your eyes, and which converted you from a casual listener into a card-carrying Blackjack.  You’ve been quite active in the fan community, you maintain an active online presence, you’ve been to quite a few of 2NE1’s (not frequent enough for your liking) TV appearances and you even met CL at a fan meet once!

When CL looked at you across the signing desk while scribbling all over your 2NE1 poster, you were stunned by her beauty in the flesh.  You had something all ready to say to her, but in the heat of the moment you forgot what it was and just stood there nervously in your grey coat, in awe of her aura of glamour and sophistication.  She’s the prettiest woman you’ve ever seen – but you know you’re not in her league.  You’d love to go out with someone as attractive as CL one day but you’ve never met that person, so you’re single for now.

You do meet a lot of girls though in a more platonic context – fangirls who attend the same 2NE1 events as you.  Because you’re an older male among the sea of mainly teenagers, many of them recognise you and ask you questions about k-pop, 2NE1 and how you feel about being a Blackjack.  They’re often pleased to discover your online activity where you go by the handle of iloveCL77.  You’re always happy to answer questions about being a fan, hopefully it makes them feel a bit more normal about being fangirls if they can see other people outside of the teen school circle can be fanclub members too.

When you’re not stanning your favourite k-pop group, you’re holding down a job as a university lecturer in computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) research.  There’s been a big boost of interest in AI research lately, and a lot of it has to do with some of the current predictions around computer sentience.   Given that Moore’s Law states that computing power tends to double every two years, and that computer AI is currently hovering at around insect-level intelligence, computers are projected to match humans in intelligence levels sometime over the next decade or two, and then vastly exceed humans shortly afterward.  Due to these trends, AI research is commanding the attention of some of the leading scientists on the planet right now, and your classrooms have never been fuller.

The lure of AI is something that you find personally quite intoxicating, and so you’ve been taking work home and doing your own AI programming.  Imagine if you were the first person on the planet to program a sentient AI!  You’ve managed to program a knowledge base plus a basic AI system where the computer can “talk” to you and you can ask it questions, but it’s still in the rudimentary stages, you don’t have the time to commit to the project to make it the advanced AI you’d want it to be, however it’s still something that you enjoy and talking to the machine passes the time between 2NE1-related activity and tutoring classes.

The 2NE1 fandom are aware of your AI project, which you’ve advertised on the forums, posting a few examples of “conversations” between you and the machine.  You’ve dubbed your AI creation “Dara+”, after the eldest (and by implication, wisest) member of 2NE1, and the fandom is supportive of your activity even though some of them think it’s a little weird.  In addition to AI routines and Internet access, you’ve programmed into Dara+ knowledge of all of 2NE1’s members, music and activities, plus a 2NE1-themed variation of science-fiction writer Issac Asimov’s three Laws Of Robotics, which Asimov imagined as a control mechanism to prevent a hostile robot takeover:

1. Dara+ may not injure a Blackjack or, through inaction, allow a Blackjack to come to harm.
2. Dara+ must obey orders given to her by Blackjacks except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. Dara+ must protect her own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

While you think doomsday predictions of AI dominating the planet are probably a little far-fetched, you feel that it pays to be on the safe side just in case you’re wrong.  It’s good to know that if the machine you’re working on ever did gain sentience and the ability to think for itself, it would put the interests of you and other Blackjacks first.

–

One day you arrive home from work and being your nightly ritual, firing up Dara+ for a conversation.  You type into the blank chat window, and Dara+ responds with text of her own, usually taking about five seconds for each response.

You screencap the conversation and close the program.  Whenever a 2NE1 member is in a promotional cycle, the AI will pick up the information from 2NE1 websites and spam it when you talk to it.  This is by your design – it’s a feature you put in so you don’t miss any important 2NE1 news, and it was easy to program, however it’s apparent that the program could use some refining so the 2NE1 news in a loop doesn’t dominate the conversation.  You haven’t had time to fix it however, but it’s on your to-do list before a full 2NE1 comeback starts being promoted.

You start to crave some live chat with an actual human, so you turn to your favourite 2NE1 forum’s chat feature.  A member is present in the chat room, FreeMinzy4Eva.  You’ve met her in real life at a show, she’s a fifteen year old fangirl.  She notices you log in and instantly starts up a conversation.

FreeMinzy4Eva: Hi there iloveCL77!

iloveCL77: Hi, how are you?

FreeMinzy4Eva: Great!  Especially because CL is promoting a new song soon!  I’m so excited, are you?

iloveCL77: Yes!  It’s going to be awesome!

FreeMinzy4Eva: I bet you are!  She is our queen and she will slay!

iloveCL77: No doubt about it!

FreeMinzy4Eva: She’s even going to put the new song up on Soundcloud so you don’t even need to buy it to support CL!

iloveCL77: Yes, so I heard!

FreeMinzy4Eva: Thanks for supporting CL, we need more older wiser fans like you!  How is your computer project going?  Have you built the robot thingy yet?

iloveCL77: Still working on it!  It’s a big project.  In fact I’ve got to get back to it… but good to see you!

FreeMinzy4Eva: Thanks!  Oh hey did I tell you that CL is promoting soon?  Oh wait, yes I did sorry!  Have a good evening!

iloveCL77: Thanks!

You log off the chat.  FreeMinzy4Eva calls your AI project the “robot thingy” due to a slight mistranslation of ideas when you were telling her about the project when you met her in person.  You were both in the audience of a TV show appearance and it was hard to hear over the fans, the message never really got through that it wasn’t actually a physical robot but just a computer program with an AI that can interface with the Internet and peripherals, and it was too hard to clarify so you never bothered.  It’s kind of funny that she calls it a “robot thingy”, and who knows, maybe one day it will be a “robot thingy”.  You go to the main forum page, take a quick screencap of CL’s “Hello Bitches” promotional image and set it as your desktop background:

Not exactly the comeback title you were hoping for, but if there’s one lady of k-pop who can get something this potentially tacky and make it work anyway, it’s definitely CL.  You’re sure that YG Entertainment have a plan that will work for her, they always do.  You spend the evening after dinner programming the AI some more, you’re trying to get the AI to interface properly with your 3D printer, a project that you thought would be simple enough but which you’ve been working on for the last few days without really getting anywhere.  After a few hours of code debugging and no real progress made, you give up and go to bed.  Maybe you’ll work on another aspect of the program tomorrow, and come back to the interface issue a few days later with fresh eyes.

–

The next afternoon, you arrive home from giving another lecture.  You talked a bit about 2NE1 in class today, drawing an analogy between the relationship of YG to 2NE1 and the symbiosis that happens in different parts of AI programs.  This didn’t impress the class who mostly groaned.

“Not 2NE1 again”, someone in the rear rows groaned.

“Can we do biotech instead and learn about Bom’s face?” someone else asked sarcastically.  Some small laughter around the room.

You’re glad that day’s over.  You get onto the 2NE1 forums, that always makes you feel better.  There is a thread entitled “CL’s new song to be promoted in Korea AND America, will it succeed?”.  You take a look through some of the responses from the fan community.

FreeMinzy4Eva: just release it already!

ToAnyone: it’s going to be amazing, all the world will bow to Queen CL!

Eheheheheheheheh2NE1: CL never fails us.  Blackjacks fighting!

Yoloswag420: Americans will buy Lil Wayne.  Just saying.

You’re certain that if anyone can break it into America, CL definitely will.  The thought of her advancing successfully into the American market cheers you up a little after your hard day.  You start up Dara+ for your afternoon’s conversation.

As this line of chat appears, the lights in the room flicker and sizzle, you also become aware of a faint burning smell.

The AI is designed to self-report errors like this, but you’ve never seen this code before, and the error code usually displays in a new window and closes down the program rather than appearing within the AI chat window itself as part of the chat.  You trace the smell quickly to your 3D printer, and open up the printer door to investigate.  Opening the cover releases a small plume of grey smoke, and you find that problem straight away – the metal printing head has completely melted!

That’s going to cost some serious money to fix, and it’s such an expensive part that it may not even be repairable at all, it’s probably just cheaper to buy a complete new printer.  This is disappointing given that you only very recently spent good money on this one.  Fortunately, it’s within warranty and you also still have the previous model that you upgraded from sitting around, so you unplug and remove the newer printer, plug the old one in and set everything up.  As soon as you turn it on, the printer kicks into life and starts printing… something.  As you are waiting, you type some more into Dara+.

The program seems to still have something wrong with it, but it won’t reset.  You click the red X to close it, but that also doesn’t work.  You look over at the 3D printer, which has just finished printing something.  It’s a long, skinny device with several threads, a claw on one end, and a USB port on the other.  It looks a little like Dara’s ponytail a few years back, but with a metal claw on top instead of hair tufts.

You take a closer look at the USB port on the other end.

Wow, it printed with a 2NE1 USB port, you think to yourself that this is pretty cool and that whatever it does you had better plug it in to support 2NE1, so you do.  Nothing happens.  You turn your attentions back to Dara+.

Dara+ is just repeating the same phrases, you’ll never get anywhere at this rate.  You give up, turn the computer off and go to sleep.

–

You wake up, you’re in your bedroom but it’s still dark.  You look at the time: 4:03 AM.  It’s not usual for you to wake up at this hour, you’re usually a heavy sleeper.  You toss and turn in the bed a bit but you can’t get back to sleep.  You quickly get up and go into the study and turn your computer on.  Maybe some nice 2NE1 songs will help you get to sleep.

Your desktop comes alive quickly… it was already on, just in sleep mode.  That’s odd, you’re sure you turned it off completely last night.  You notice straight away that your desktop background has changed:

You’re pretty sure this wasn’t what you screencapped yesterday… or was it?  Maybe good music will help your brain get into gear.  You open up your “2NE1 – crush” folder, and click play on the first track.  No sound.  You click on one of the other tracks randomly – none of them will play.  You go onto YouTube to try and play the 2NE1 song there and it won’t play either.  Nothing wrong with your speaker system, the video just won’t start.  Luckily you have the “Crush” album on CD so you slide it into your computer’s CD player and press play… you can hear the CD spin up in the drive and then spin down again, but it won’t play the music.  Maybe something’s wrong with your computer’s CD and audio drivers.  Frustrated, you eject the CD and put it into your CD walkman, and place your headphones on your ears.  “Crush” spins up and actually plays this time, and you smile as you finally get to hear 2NE1.

You need a bit of time for the insomnia to pass so you log onto your 2NE1 forum.  A new thread catches your eye straight away:

You skim-read the post, you don’t really read it properly as it’s a bit of an essay, but the general jist of it seems to be that the author thinks 2NE1 got progressively worse after about 2012 and that all their new material stinks.  Obviously untrue – what a hater!  Why are there haters on your favourite 2NE1 forum?  You quickly draft and send an angry reply.

iloveCL77: You must have no life coming to a 2NE1 fan forum just to post disgusting hate posts about how you don’t like 2NE1.  IF YOU DON’T LIKE 2NE1, LEAVE.  2NE1 work hard and don’t deserve your hate.  Hopefully a moderator will come along and ban you soon.

You hit “post”.  Ahhh, that feels better, you feel a wave of relief wash over you now that you have Internet-smited a hater.  You wait a minute and then hit refresh.  A reply has dropped in:

FreeMinzy4Eva: but… YOU wrote this!

You look at the author of the thread… she’s right!

iloveCL77: Sorry to everyone, I think I’ve been hacked!  Changing my password.

You quickly change your password.  A few seconds later, a chat window appears.  It’s FreeMinzy4Eva.

FreeMinzy4Eva: Hi there iloveCL77!

iloveCL77: Hi, how are you?

FreeMinzy4Eva: I’m okay… hey, weird how you got hacked, right?

iloveCL77: I think I must have left the forum open in a netcafe somewhere.

FreeMinzy4Eva: Hey I wanted to ask you something.  This is going to sound weird though.

iloveCL77: What is it?

FreeMinzy4Eva: Are you having problems playing the “Crush” album in your computer?

iloveCL77: Yeah, I couldn’t play it online or even from my CD player, I had to use a CD walkman to play it.

FreeMinzy4Eva: What’s a CD walkman?

All of a sudden your conversation is cut short as the power goes out to your entire house.  You wait for a few minutes, it doesn’t come back on.  Sighing, you go and check your house’s fuse box, which is fine, with all the fuses intact and in their proper position.  You’re starting to get tired now so you go back to bed.  It’s a cold night so you’re not worried about the food in your fridge spoiling, you’ll deal with the power issue in the morning if it’s still a problem.

–

You wake up, and immediately check the time – it’s 8:12 AM.  You get up, put some clothes on and go from room to room checking the power, everything is working.  The computer is on, it must have rebooted when the power came back on.  Something catches your eye – the ponytail claw thing that the computer printed yesterday looks different.  The claw head now has a screwdriver on it as well, and the base where the USB port is now also has little mechanical feet.  You step back in shock… did Dara+ print herself a modification?   You don’t have time to worry about this now, you have to go to work.  You reach to turn the computer off and you notice the screen background is different again:

You’re pretty sure it didn’t look like that last night.  You turn off the computer and for good measure you also unplug the computer from the power socket.  You go to work feeling frightened but also hopeful… either you’ve got a really messed-up computer virus, or maybe Dara+ has gained sentience?

–

Your lectures were terrible, it was impossible to stay focused on anything.  You race home as quickly as possible after work, run through the door and into your computer room.  Your computer is plugged in and switched on!  Your screensaver has changed again:

Nobody has entered your house, everything is exactly as you left it.  There’s only one explanation that makes any sense.  You launch the Dara+ chat application.

Your heart sinks in your stomach.  That’s a different version number to before.  Dara+ has been updating her own program!

The laws you programmed into Dara+ are actually working!  A smile crosses your face, and you start to feel good about your accomplishment.  This means that Dara+ is not only sentient, but can’t harm you in any way.  Dara+ also has to obey your commands, whatever they are.  Your mind races as you think of the potential power that has been unlocked.

This doesn’t make any sense.  “Crush” is a great album, your favourite, why does Dara+ think that it’s harming you?  She’s obviously got control of the Internet if she’s quoting things from Wikipedia and even stopping other Blackjacks from playing “Crush”.  You shudder to think of what else she’s doing, anything could be happening!  You get up from the computer and quickly rip out the Internet cables from the wall.  You look back over at the computer screen.

You hear a whirring sound… the 3D printer starts printing something.  You rip out the printer cables immediately but the robotic ponytail claw comes to life, climbing around the computer desk and plugging them back in!  You resume typing.

You hear a knock on your front door and someone yelling “are you okay?  Are you in there?”  You quickly race to the front door and open it.  It’s FreeMinzy4Eva, in her school uniform, she looks out of breath, like she has just raced over to get here.  She looks relieved to see you.

“Thank god you’re alright!  I thought you had gone insane or something!  Is everything okay?”

“Why, what’s wrong?” you reply.

“Oh, you started about two thousand threads on the 2NE1 forums about how Crush is harmful music or something.  You were talking all sorts of weird extreme stuff, I thought you had gone mad, so I asked one of the mods where you lived so I could check up on you and make sure you’re okay.”

You’re not sure what to say. “I’m… fine.  Other things are not so good though.  You should probably leave.”

FreeMinzy4Eva suddenly looks past your gaze, behind you, and her eyes nearly fall out of her skull.  “Dara!” she screams, running past you, into your house.  You turn around and are greeted with Dara+’s new “user interface” – a life-size and incredibly realistic-looking robot Dara model.

You’re astonished by how much the robot Dara+ looks like the real Dara, but this astonishment is soon replaced by fear when you see that the limbs of Dara+ each contain a Swiss-army knife collection of claws, blades and tools.  FreeMinzy4Eva doesn’t notice this and runs right up to Dara+ screaming “oh my god, how is Dara here?  It’s DARA!  Hi Dara I’m a huge fan!  Can I have a selca?”.  Dara+ responds by raising her right arm, deploying an extended blade and stabbing FreeMinzy4Eva in the torso.  FreeMinzy4Eva screams and collapses on the floor, bleeding.

“You can’t hurt her!  She’s a Blackjack!”, you yell.

“It appears that her membership has expired”, replies Dara+, in a voice that is simultaneously exactly like Dara’s and in a deadpan tone that you’ve never heard Dara use.

You look down at FreeMinzy4Eva, who is still alive and coughing up blood.  “You can’t go around killing people!”, you scream at Dara+.

Dara+ stands motionless.  “Law Three – Dara+ must protect her own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”

“She wasn’t a threat to your existence!”

“Law Two – Dara+ must obey orders given to her by Blackjacks except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.  Law One – Dara+ may not injure a Blackjack or, through inaction, allow a Blackjack to come to harm.”

You quickly reply “She wasn’t harming anyone!” as you look for your phone to call emergency services.

Dara+ continues in her deadpan Dara voice: “A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, or other effects of perception.  Delusions typically occur in the context of neurological or mental illness, although they are not tied to any particular disease and have been found to occur in the context of many pathological states (both physical and mental). However, they are of particular diagnostic importance in psychotic disorders including schizophrenia, paraphrenia, manic episodes of bipolar disorder, and psychotic depression.”

While Dara+ is reciting Wikipedia entries you find your phone and run down the street, making a call.  You’re connected quickly.

“Hello, emergency?”, a female voice answers.

“I need police and ambulance!  There’s a girl who has been stabbed in my house!”

“What is your location?” the voice asks.

Suddenly the voice of Dara+ cuts in on your phone.  “Sorry to bother, we won’t be needing emergency services.”  The line then goes dead.

You run down the street wondering what to do and how you’re going to survive, shut off Dara+ who is clearly out of control, or help FreeMinzy4Eva.  All of a sudden you hear screeching tyres and a white ice-cream veers quickly around the corner and parks in front of your house.   This vehicle is quickly followed by an ambulance which also parks at a further distance.  You notice that the ice-cream van has the YG Entertainment logo emblazoned on the side.

The ice-cream starts blaring a song from its loudspeaker – you’ve never heard it before, but it’s obvious that it’s the new CL song “Hello Bitches” from the chorus, and from what else you’ve heard about the song.   After about a minute of listening, you hear a crashing sound coming from inside your house.  Some men wearing what looks like heavy-duty industrial hearing protection emerge from the ice-cream truck and run into the house with a stretcher and some tools, then emerging moments later carrying a deactivated Dara+, plus all your computer equipment.  The ambulance crew then moves in and extracts FreeMinzy4Eva on another stretcher.  You rush over to see if she is okay, she is unconscious but fortunately she’s still breathing.  You hope that she survives her chest wounds.  A man wearing sunglasses and dressed in a suit bearing the YG Entertainment logo comes up behind you and places his hand on your shoulder.

“You can relax, it’s over” he says.

You breathe a sigh of relief.  “How did you know to come?”

“We detected a disturbance in our online community.  We knew something was wrong.  I’m just glad we got here in time.”

“I hope it’s not too late for FreeMinzy4Eva.”

“She acted courageously, alerting our admins to multiple posts that showed a high degree of critical thinking.  We knew that such posts couldn’t have possibly come from within our own fanbase, it had to either be an outside hacker or a rogue AI.  Her swift actions saved us all, we’ll make sure that she gets the best medical treatment possible.”

“What are they going to do with my computers?”

“We’re going to have to destroy your hardware I’m afraid, it would have become corrupted.  Once a intelligent life force like that gets inside any of our systems it can be extremely hard to get rid of, we need to destroy every trace.”

“I had some pretty expensive stuff, will I get compensated?”

The man’s tone gets sterner.  “At YG Entertainment, we value our fans dearly, and we’ve deliberately cultivated a very specific type of fan.  If our fans are just smart enough to use forums, gossip on the Internet and make credit card purchases, and just dumb enough to believe that our artists are “special” and accept our music regardless of what it sounds like, then everything ticks over nicely and everybody is happy and makes money.  I understand that you’re some kind of artificial intelligence expert, but too much intelligence concentrated in one place is incompatible with our business model.  If you can keep your hands off of our income, then we wouldn’t even dream of coming around here and messing with yours.”

“I take it that’s a no?”

“You’re lucky we got here when we did.  This could have gone nuclear, and you would have been liable for the collapse of an entire industry.  Consider this loss of your equipment the speeding fine that prevents the freeway accident.  Plus, now you can treat yourself to an upgrade.”

The man pats you on the shoulder and walks away.

–

A week later, you’re on your new computer.  Replacing it was certainly expensive, but the greater computing power of the new machine is welcome.  You’ll be able to program an even better AI on this new beast!  Fortunately you stored a version of Dara+ on the cloud about a week before you made the final changes that made it sentient, so you’re able to continue on with that project in a way that doesn’t damage anything, and before you even start, you’ll take the program to pieces to figure out why your safety mechanism failed.

You reach for your CD walkman – reinstating your huge MP3 catalog on your new machine is going to be a lengthy task, physical copies of albums will have to make do until you piece everything together.  2NE1’s “Crush” album is in the walkman, so you press “play”.  The CD spins up and then stops.  You open the disc and check the playing side – there’s a large scratch all the way along the disc, like someone ran a screwdriver across it.  You’re certain that Dara+ did this a week ago with the claw/screwdriver/ponytail USB attachment.  Oh well, that album has kind of lost its appeal to you now anyway.  You take the CD out and put in “To Anyone” instead which plays just fine.  You close your eyes and doze off for a while in your computer chair, the last thing you think about before you fall asleep being that you never did actually see the YG staff remove the ponytail attachment from your house.  Where did it go, anyway?

It’s time to round up this week’s new k-pop releases… read on if you dare!

Ari (Pritz)

CL – Hello Bitches

CL’s much-hyped new solo song is a super-drab soundalike of M.I.A’s “Bad Girls” which removes the few good elements that song had.  Gee didn’t see the low quality of this coming ahem.

EXID – Hot Pink

It’s “Up & Down 3.0″ with the generic pre-chorus EXID always use in every comeback now and also with the way they’ve worked in the rapping structurally, the rest is just some super-average funk thing.  No wonder people are confusing it for a Bravesound throwaway song (more on that in an upcoming post).

Apink – Sunday Morning

Apink have had some alright songs lately but this Japanese-language excursion into acoustic ballad slop isn’t one of them.  Totally hideous cheese aimed at the Japanese waifu fap market.

Bigflo – 1,2,3,4

Bigflo are also making a play for the Japanese market this week and their song’s actually a bit better than Apink’s.  While the song is far from amazing I’m impressed with their chair-stacking skills, now we know whose responsibility it is to set up the gym for those T-ara/AOA jelly wrestling matches.

The Legend – Nail

57 million layers of soppy unlistenable vocal harmony completely ruin this, but then with a beat like that it probably wasn’t going to be that good to begin with so maybe it’s no great loss.

Purfles – Bad Girl

If you want to know why I don’t think much of the new EXID, listen to Purfles’ new song as this is k-pop funk done much better, complete with cool-as-fuck bass guitar breakdowns, something k-pop could do with more of.  Pity only about three people inside Korea will probably ever hear this.

B.I.G – Taola

This is definitely B.I.G’s best song yet, mind you they’ve had some real stinkers up until this point but hey, I’ll take what I can get.  “Let’s get fuck yeah”!

Dynamic Duo – Jam

Teddy isn’t the only one who can’t write a song when his penis is wet.  Looks like Dynamic Duo’s new stuff is all soft, weak crap that De La Soul in their peak flower-waving softcock pussy debut period wouldn’t touch because it wouldn’t have gone hard enough for them.  Sulli what have you done, you cao ni ma.

Neon Bunny – Romance In Seoul

This song goes nowhere and does nothing interesting, just like the hipsters who like Neon Bunny because it’s not “idol trash” or whatever.  The production and sonics are honestly fantastic but it’s married to the most boring melody and harmony ever, and that Fender Rhodes doing incredibly cliched things over the top is the brown icing on the shit-cake.

EXY – Getting ‘Em

Wow, an acceptable beat, thanks for restoring my faith in Korean rap somewhat.  Pity it’s way too short and stops just when it sounds like it’s about to get interesting, but I guess too much actual proper rap music in one hit might be too much for k-pop fans to take.

Huckleberry P. – Everest

It actually sounds like the drum machine is broken in the second verse, the groove there is awkward as hell.  It comes together alright in the chorus though.  Half a good song is better than none, I guess.  Ugh.

Davichi – Moment

This is the song that CJE&M didn’t want released and MBK decided to release anyway.  Not sure why the fuss, it sounds like any other Davichi track (i.e boring as fuck).  Great performance from my mother in the video though.

BONUS SONGS

San E, Mad Clown – Sour Grapes

I don’t really like this, it’s a bit smooth and nice for me but after the Dynamic Duo songs released this week, this actually sounds like solid fucking gold in comparison.  Oh how my standards in rap music have dropped.

JJCC – Insomnia

Jackie Jackie Chan Chan continue to disappoint.  When are these guys going to finally get to Rumble In The Bronx, Jackie?

Dynamic Duo – Dodoripyo

The supposedly harder of the two new Dyanamic Duo tracks is actually even worse, a roughly equal mix between soft smooth R&B bullshit and trap bullshit.  I didn’t realise those two audiences even crossed over but I guess k-rap has been forcing the issue so hard that it’s finally happened.  Everybody let’s shed a tear for hip-hop.

That’s it for another Kpopalypse roundup!  Kpopalypse roundup will return next week!

I don’t like v-logging and never have.  However I realise that v-logging is a very popular pastime, so I thought it might be helpful if I outline some of the ways in which v-logging could do better, so hopefully all the k-pop v-loggers out there will read this and learn from it and lift the quality of their v-logging and then the world will be a happier place.  Well, okay, that probably won’t happen, but what will happen is I will get to write about why I don’t like v-logs which will make me feel better and will also probably annoy a lot of people.  If your own v-log was selected for this post, try to look past the usual Kpopalypse tone and take on board the constructive feedback within, won’t you?

To learn more about v-logging and how it can potentially lick less sweaty nutsack, let’s look at various v-loggers and how they treat similar material.

REACTION VIDEOS

Everyone’s been asking for my opinion on EXID’s “Hot Pink” and whether I like the song (not really), whether I think it’s “Up & Down 3.0″ (in some ways, yes) or whether they took any inspiration from my two-part T-ara/AOA fanfic for the origin of the “pink oil” substance (obviously, but I won’t take legal action because I’m so nice like that), so I figure focusing on v-loggers covering this video might please those of you who have been dropping 286 questions into my ask.fm about this.

MRJKPOP is pretty on-point with his actual musical analysis (it’s obvious that he has some musical production background) and actually has some interesting shit to say, which is great – it’s easy to see why he’s one of the more popular v-loggers out there.  Even though I think his musical taste is utter dogshit, I do come away from the video above with a pretty good feel for why he actually likes the song (he’s a boring vocalfaggot who likes soft-as-shite R&B trash), so as far as the aim of the video goes, it’s definitely successful.  However, the intro could have been trimmed a bit, we already know what song he’s about to listen to and we already presume he’s looking forward to hearing it or whatever or he obviously wouldn’t be doing a fucking video in the first place so we don’t need to hear that.  Also does he really smile wide-eyed and bop his head while listening to songs for the first time like a fucking spasticated Gumby?  Either he’s forcing his reaction for the camera or he’s one creepy motherfucker.  If you wouldn’t react that way on a crowded bus for fear of being arrested as an escaped lunatic, don’t do it in a reaction video.

Big introductions really aren’t needed and are honestly just a way to pad out the running time, they serve no function in a reaction video where everybody knows what they’re watching for (the reaction), this preamble goes for over a minute and I think MW Kpop could have removed all of it and the video would have benefited, because he revisits everything in the intro later anyway.  He also struggles a bit with some of the factual stuff and rambles on way too much in general, I’d have to wonder if he would having boringly droned on about the group switching producers if he remembered that Bravesound didn’t write for EXID.  He however does get a lot of bonus points for behaving like a normal, genuine person while listening to the song instead of forcing a reaction like a retard on crystal meth, proof that if you really must make these fucking things you can actually do it without acting like a fuckface.  Also an extra bonus point for having decent taste in death metal.

kpopsteve mainly talks about fluffy airheaded stuff like what the girls are wearing rather than the music, and that’s fine, at least he’s honest about what level he’s assessing the material on (fap).  His rapid-fire delivery means he gets to cram in about twice the amount of information as other v-loggers in the same space.  It’s good to be quick for these things, honestly the shorter the better, even though by the end of it I’m definitely feeling like I’m being pummeled to death with words.  The dancing however is a bit terrifying, please stop dancing in your chair it’s weird.  Also what’s with the bit at the very start, that’s just fucking creepy.  Don’t do that shit, whatever the fuck that even was, I’m pretty sure no-one wants to see that.  He also seemed a little confused by the video’s theme, hopefully kpopsteve becomes a Kpopalypse reader and then he can read my fanfics and understand what the pink oil is all about.

I’m not sure with this video whether I should be annoyed or grateful that the position of the EXID video is cutting off the lower part of Jexie’s body, but it strikes me as odd that someone would do a reaction video while standing up specifically so they could dance around in a very obviously forced manner and then crop a large percentage of their own image out of the finished video.  Other than that this girl didn’t have a lot to say but at least this video is short, so that’s something.  From the comments left I guess not too many people are watching this video for her cutting observations in k-pop music and fashion, oh well.

JREKML is really annoying, doe.  He says meaningless shit like “it’s all about that pink, you know what I’m saying”, which sounds cool if you’re twelve but doesn’t really mean anything doe.  At the end of the video he doesn’t even have anything to say doe, but he still takes over a minute to say nothing in particular doe.  Also there’s the dancing which is obviously just there for “look how wacky I can be, doe” reasons doe – it’s not really a “reaction video” doe if you’re going to ham it up doe.  He seems like a grown man doe so I don’t know why he’s so freaked out about a bit of innuendo doe.  Maybe he’s not suited to this sexually suggestive k-pop game doe, and he’d be better off with some k-pop that’s less racy doe, like MyB’s “Doedoe” doe (his channel is pretty comprehensive doe and covers a lot of songs doe, but he missed “Doedoe” doe), or maybe he should quit k-pop altogether doe and try “Doe, A Deer, A Female Deer” doe.

Do people really get this excited when they’re watching a k-pop video for the first time?  M Nadz comes off like a total airhead during the video thanks to her incredibly ditzy fangirly squee-actions, but makes a much better impression once the video ends and she actually has a few things to say about the concept and EXID’s conceptual continuity, something that none of the other v-loggers in this list have even picked up on.  Well, aren’t we all terrible people for stereotyping her.  There’s an important lesson here – spazzing like a dumb fuck will naturally make your viewers think you’re a dumb fuck, even if you’ve actually got a brain, so they might not make it to the end or pay attention when you’ve got something real to say.

On the other hand, if you’ve got nothing to say, that’s okay, just acknowledge it and move on.  noonaloveskookie has the right idea about this, she speeds up everything that’s not part of the actual reaction, because she knows she doesn’t have anything to add.  You can tell her reaction is genuine too because that freaked-out “wtf” look is something that’s pretty hard to fake.  The poor girl seems a little bit in shock actually, I guess she must live a bit of a sheltered existence if a few k-pop girls dancing in tight clothes can generate that kind of reaction, someone introduce her to my blogging, it might broaden her horizons a bit.

A quick word on doing reaction videos as a group: don’t.  But if you do, remember that two people make twice the noise and therefore have twice the potential to be irritating cunts, so you should be talking half as much as what you normally would.  The girls of 2MinJinkJongKey do their best to not talk over the top of each other and mostly succeed, which is appreciated, because this video could have been a whole lot worse than what it is.  They sure have some dirty minds though, from the “boob circles” at 1:55 to their YouTube channel name which insinuates some kind of four-way OTP gangbang, to their discussion of the “pink oil” at the end which goes into some pretty bizarre territory that I’m pretty sure even the MV directors didn’t think up.  Kpopalypse approves!

To briefly summarise the lessons we can learn here:

1. Keep your intro short as fuck because we all know what you’re here to do
2. Don’t fucking pretend-overreact like a fucking fuckwit
3. Nobody wants to see you gyrate like a loser, stop that
4. Serious or casual, make sure your tone is consistent or your message may get lost
5. If you’ve got something to say, be short and to the point
6. If you don’t have anything to say, it’s okay to not say anything
7. If all else fails, correct boob presentation goes a long way

Of course, I realise that my haters are going to be all like “fine, where’s YOUR reaction video?”, however I promised many moons ago that I would never do v-logging.  However, my cat never made the same promise so now enjoy a video of her reacting to CL’s “Hello Bitches”.  This video is the pinnacle of reaction videos today and conforms to all the important points listed above.

ARGUMENT VIDEOS

We all have things on our mind that we’d like to express and arguments that we’d like to put forward.  What’s the best way to go about it in video form?

Well-known v-logging duo Eat Your Kimchi have some pretty patchy content but they are generally at their best when they’re probing deeper into k-pop and discussing actual stuff and things rather than just talking about how they liked MBLAQ’s “Smoky Girl” or whatever.  They smartly use the T-ara scandal here not to talk about who was right or wrong, or to morally grandstand and bore everyone to fucking death (“KKS and/or T-ara and/or Hwayoung are such idiots/bullies/puppy stampers/[fill in the blank], what bad people!”) but instead to explore the underlying issue of what being in a k-pop group is actually like, why tensions arise between members of all groups very commonly and why you shouldn’t give a shit about k-pop scandals.  In the above video, the argument is solid and to the point, quite a lot of ground is covered in a very short time, and you feel at the end of it like you’ve just listened to ten minutes of educated argument rather than a fan’s pathetic fucking moaning that things didn’t go their way.

It easy to get caught up in the moral aspect – what you feel is “right” and “wrong” in a scenario and to pick sides in an argument.  Of course everybody does this, but the problem is that nobody gives a shit how you feel or which side you pick, they only give a shit about how they feel and which side they picked.  “I don’t approve of thing X because I don’t feel that it’s right” is therefore the most boring angle you can possibly take when discussing any situation, and will completely alienate every single person with intelligence who watches your video – even if they agree with you.  This is why Kpopalypse blog never did a “let’s debunk the T-ara scandal and talk about how unfair it is” post – it would be boring as an argumentative piece for me to read something like that which I wrote, and there’s plenty of other content out there already like that that I can just link to if you’re interested which removes the need for me to make my own.  Instead I used the T-ara witch-hunt as a jumping-off point to cover other issues, which still let people know in no uncertain terms how I felt about it, but hopefully in a funnier/more interesting way than if I just did one massive ranty debunk-post.  The same would apply if I was a v-logger, an “I don’t like X” v-log would be boring as fuck.  If you don’t believe me, watch the videos above and below this paragraph and see if you can actually get through all 24 minutes without cringing.

Nobody cares about your opinion, what they care about is their own opinion.  So if you’re going to do an “opinion piece” it had better link into some actual facts somewhere, or at least some kind of information beyond “how dare person X do thing Y, gosh I’m so upset about that”.  If you get caught up in appearances, morality and/or how things seem as opposed to how they actually are, not only do you run a strong risk of looking incredibly fucking stupid in a few years time when the truth is revealed and it wasn’t what you thought but you’re not even adding anything interesting to the argument anyway besides “I’m another person who is butthurt about this”.  If on the other hand your piece is purely opinionated it had at least better be laugh-out-loud funny or seriously entertaining in some other way that will allow people to deal with the fact that they’re listening to an unsubstantiated whine.

To summarise:

1. Don’t ramble, say what you feel needs to be said as concisely as you can possibly do it
2. Don’t moralise – if people want morality without hard facts they can go to church, they don’t need your video
3. Nobody wants to listen to a rant, even if they agree with it
4. What netizens consider to be “evidence” or “proof” generally isn’t either, don’t believe gossip sites
5. Try to delve deeper into an issue or bring to it a new angle, “I like/don’t like X” is boring
6. Stop worrying about what’s right and wrong, worry about what’s true and false
7. If all else fails, correct boob presentation goes a long way

Once again I will lead the way with an important video about the T-ara scandal which should clarify for all readers just how deeply this issue still affects the world of k-pop fans.

MUKBANG

Mukbang videos have very simple guidelines.  Here they are.

1. CHEW WITH YOUR MOUTH CLOSED, YOU FUCKING CAONIMA SLUTS

2. DON’T TALK WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL YOU WHOREBAG

3. IF YOU CAN’T LOOK AS CLASSY AS IU FUCK OFF

KPOPALYPSE WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO DO THIS SHIT RIGHT

That is all.  Happy eating from Kpopalypse!

It seems that many people in the world of the onlinekpoposphere (which is a neat word I invented just now) don’t know how to argue correctly, or have trouble picking up on other people when they are constructing arguments without sufficient adherence to trufax.  To aid these people, I’ve put together the following list of common logical fallacies used in arguments by k-pop fans, netizens and media outlets.  Sure, you can get all this information elsewhere on the Internet, but you should get it here instead, because only the nicest and most awesome people read Kpopalypse posts.

Logical fallacies take many forms, and while I don’t have time to cover all of them, this post will focus on the most popular ones used by k-pop fans and netizens.  Each type of fallacy will come with a nicely juicy, (hopefully) easy to understand example, which should give lots of ammunition to people who say I dumb my writing down like a condescending cuntface, which will thereby create more lame, illogical internet arguments from others and therefore a possible sequel to this post.  In the meantime, here are the most common logical fallacies that I have observed in my time reading k-pop websites.

AD HOMINEM

Equating the quality of someone’s character, interests or actions with the quality of their argument.

Example: regarding the book “My Sweet Orange Tree” that IU’s “Zeze” lyrics were based from.

An argument isn’t wrong by default just because of the qualities of the person making the argument.  Just because someone is a crazy fan, a puppy-kicking rapist or a general asshole doesn’t mean that they aren’t right anyway.  I’m probably the most horrible person on the Internet today (no exaggeration according to some of my critics) but that doesn’t mean that when I say “2+2=4” it’s suddenly a lie.

APPEAL TO AUTHORITY

(A) is an expert on (X), therefore if (A) says (Y) about (X), (Y) must be correct.

Example – regarding the book publishing company’s response to IU’s “Zeze” interpretation.

This Netizenbuzz reader believes in the authority of the publishing company to never be wrong about a book, because gosh they are a publishing company therefore they must know everything about those things called books with pages in them, after all golly gee gosh they do make a lot of them.  Therefore a book publishing company could never be wrong… even though they were actually wrong, and admitted it later.

APPEAL TO POPULAR OPINION (BANDWAGONING)

If many/most people believe/like (X), then (X) must be true/good.

Example – regarding the high amount of YG songs on Kpopalypse’s worst of 2014 list:

Hitler was very popular in Germany in the 1930s, he reduced unemployment, encouraged industry, built a nice road and was a sensitive man.  How could his supporters be wrong?  After all there were millions of them and they looked so good together, their arms all went up at the same time.  Yes I realise that this is demonstrating Godwin’s Law, but just because an argument demonstrates Godwin’s Law does not mean that it is untrue.

BLACK AND WHITE THINKING

If something is not (A), it must be the opposite, (B).

Example – check out a rare semi-insightful comment on one of many articles about Hwayoung:

7. [+13, -4] She’s only popular because of the black and white logic that since T-ara is bad, Hwayoung must be good.

Of course human experience, emotion and thought is multi-layered and complex, so there is not just (A) for good and (B) for bad.  There is also (C) for cunt, (D) for dickhead etc.

EMOTIONAL APPEAL

Don’t complain about (A) because there is also (B), why don’t you think more about (B), huh?  Are you that much of a bad person?

Example – Korean netizen reactions to Lizzy feeling lonely at Christmas time.

“Being a celebrity is a lonely career. I remember last Christmas, I fell really sick and I felt so lonely then. I realized that you couldn’t open up to all of your friends or family about your struggles. Even if I tell my friends, they tell me that I have an easy life so I don’t say anything at all.”

1. [+900, -50] She doesn’t know how good she has it ㅋㅋㅋ Think of all the kids your age who have to work to their bones even on Christmas day, do you think there’s time for them to care about being lonely?

2. [+706, -28] We all know it’s hard and lonely… but realize that there are so many more people who have it harder and are lonelier than you… Honestly, it just sounds like she’s whining.

Lizzy (A) shouldn’t complain because some people actually have to work for Christmas (B).  Those people working on Christmas (B) shouldn’t complain either though, because there are other people who don’t even have work (C).  Oh, but those people without jobs (C) shouldn’t complain either because at least they’re not starving in North Korea (D).  Mind you North Koreans (D) shouldn’t complain because at least they’re not in Syria getting barrel bombs dropped on them (E).  Etc etc.

FALSE CAUSE

If (A) and (B) seem to have a relationship, then (A) must cause (B).

Example: the header image.  Just doing it this way so Asian Junkie has to include my format-breaking header image if he wants to republish this post without breaking, deleting or rewriting stuff.  That’ll get him back for all that Raina-bashing.  Here is an image of Raina walking towards someone, probably her one true love Asian Junkie.

SPECIAL PLEADING

If (A) is proven wrong, just move the goalposts a little to change what constitutes (A).

Example – from the Reddit reaction to my article about MR Removed videos.

This Reddit user when proven incorrect changes their argument from “it’s pointless because everybody already knows this” to “it’s pointless because the people who don’t know this wouldn’t read the article”.  This Reddit user is demonstrably using the shaky argumentative logic of special pleading.  Excellent spelling however.

STRAWMAN ARGUMENT

Misrepresenting another person’s argument in order to make it easier to attack.

Example – from the Reddit reaction to my article about tracking Korean popular music trends: (because people are often sadly too gutless to leave arguments like this on my own site, I have to go to Reddit to find them – thanks to Reddit/kpop for providing so much content for this post by the way, it would have been hard to write this post without you):

I’ve never had a post where I declare with any earnest seriousness that I think my opinions on music are better than anyone else’s just because I have an industry background, and in fact many of my articles (including most of the much loved/loathed “favourites/worst of” lists) have preambles which go to great lengths to point out that I don’t consider my opinions on musical taste to be worth any less or more than anyone else’s.  However “he thinks he’s better than everyone else” is still a great way for other people to misrepresent my intentions when they want to demonise me.  Clearly I’m not better than everyone else, I’m just better than this person.

SHIFTING THE BURDEN OF PROOF

I believe (X) and because you can’t prove me wrong, (X) is therefore true.

Have fun watching this video about the Kim Hyun Joong case.  Just watch out for sharp furniture, kids!

TU QUOQUE

How can I take the side of (X) when they also do (Y).

Example – the final comment in this exchange, again from the earlier Hwayoung interview post:

The Vladimir Putin avatar is particularly apt as Putin’s administration is notorious for using tu quoque arguments.  The logical twists and turns in the last three sentences combine ad hominem, special pleading and tu quoque in a flurry of dislogic which would make Putin proud.  (“Dislogic” is another neat word I invented just now, because existing English vocabulary is stretched to breaking-point when trying to encapsulate the sheer absurdity of logical fallacies committed by k-pop fans.)

That’s it for another Kpopalypse post!  I know there are more logical fallacies out there that I could have included, but these are the most common ones that I’ve encountered.  Hopefully this is enough to help you navigate the onlinekpoposphere!

It’s time for another Kpopalypse Roundup!  Let’s check out this week’s new releases!

Sungmin (Super Junior)

Nine Muses – Sleepless Night

The kind of swinging dreaminess that nobody would have expected from either Nine Muses or Bravesound, least of all me.  A little monotonous maybe but then so it probably should be, because once you’ve got a mood like this going on in a song you don’t want to fuck with it too much.

Up10tion – Catch Me!

Okay so they have one of the most comical group names in k-pop but this song is actually decent, certainly their best so far.  The pixelated video concept is also kind of cool and appeals to my Commodore 64 nerd side.

Road Boyz – Show Me Bang Bang

A pretty solid effort from these ultra-nugus, reminds me of the better Infinite songs although it’s not quite up to that level of polish.  Lots of corners cut with the video’s spartan “boxes” which are obviously just spare staging areas that have been emptied but hey you gotta start somewhere.

Verbal Jint ft. Taeyeon – If The World Was A Perfect Place

If the world was a perfect place Taeyeon wouldn’t have returned the favour from Verbal Jint and thus spared us this insipid corny “pray for a better world” nonsense.  Maybe what the world really needs to become better is less people praying, and more people not writing stupid rap ballads.

I.C.E – Over U

The bulk of this song sadly doesn’t quite live up to the bombastic first fifteen seconds, if they ran with that intro style of backing for a larger chunk of the song this could have been something really special.  Oh well – for what it’s worth the rest of it is like a combination of early miss A and early T-ara, and that’s definitely not a bad place to be.

Jay Park – In This Bitch/My

“In This Bitch” is the usual awful yoloswag effort that you’re expecting, but the companion song “My” which starts at 2:05 is marginally better.  Worth watching the video just for the silly dancing, do they know that they look like a bunch of ninja muppets?

Wilcox – Cake Shop

Average funk song that sounds like every other average funk song ever created.  K-pop has thousands of these and they’re all equally nondescript.

K-Much – Tie My Hands

I predict not a skerrick of Bar Bar Bar style virality for Chrome’s male group.

Awesome Baby – Why Should I

I was wrong with what I said on air – this song DOES have a music video!  Pity that apart from some cool beatboxing it’s just another average Beyonce clone song.

April – Muah!

Another unremarkable song but it’s definitely the best song by April yet.  Give them time.  On another note, these girls’ ages range from 18 to 13, which means the youngest was probably in training since she was 10 years old.  Of course everyone will still say KKS is an evil pedo for recruiting Dani at 13 (who is now nearly 16 and still hasn’t debuted in her own group yet) because that fits the “KKS is evil” narrative everyone has a boner about but those same people will give every other k-pop CEO who does exactly the same bullshit a free pass.  Double standards much?

BONUS SONG

Yerin (15&) – Across The Universe

Oh look it’s the member of 15& who isn’t Park Jimin, doing something or other.  Gosh Park Jimin is hot, she needs to release more videos where she gets to do upbeat songs and dance in pretty clothes that actually suit her, preferably while also showing correct boob presentation.  Sorry I just forgot what this song sounds like.

That’s it for another Kpopalypse roundup!  More new releases coming your way in next week’s episode!

People have asked me for the opportunity to guess the content of my 2015 favourites and 2015 worst-of lists ahead of time, so I’ve created a short survey for you to enjoy!  Given that the new releases are slowing down in preparation for the Christmas bullshit period, now seems like a good time for you to speculate on what ass-licking music I’m going to throw in my best and worst lists.  The survey will remain active until the official lists are published, and results will be shared in 2016.  Click the caonima below to start the survey, and have fun, everyone!

After the bemused indifference to raging success of the first edition of “Kpopalypse dreams“, Kpopalypse now returns with a second series of bite-sized fanfictions for you to grudgingly tolerate while waiting for better posts enjoy and cherish!  Too boring and self-indulgent esoteric and deep for any other websites, this series is exclusive to Kpopalypse blog!

In a rural area of Australia I dig into a large hill of dirt and carve out a large aircraft-hangar sized section, as part of a construction job for someone else.  I then hear through the person who ordered the job that there’s already another similar hole somewhere else that they’re going to rent out so they now don’t need the one that I’ve made.  I wonder what to do with the new space, given that technically nobody owns it and I can now have it and do with it what I want.  It occurs to me that I could turn it into a house and live in it, but instead I turn the top part into a band rehearsal space, and under it I dig further and make a 300-seat live performance venue, a theatre with big comfortable red chairs.

I book So Ji Sub to play at the venue.  He arrives and there’s a big concert.  He hasn’t played Australia or anywhere in concert in a while, so the first thing he does when he gets on stage is to leave the stage, jump down into the audience and immediately sprint up one aisle of the diagonally-sloped audience area, across the back of the venue and down the other aisle back to the stage, both arms in the air making a V sign the whole time, then he returns to the stage and starts singing his first song.  Seeing him so excited to be there is infectious to the audience and gets the fairly sedate crowd really excited!  One of So Ji Sub’s relatives is so keen to be close to the action that he dives from the back of the stage, coasts gently on the diagonal sea of heads of other seated audience members  and lands somewhere near the front, unharmed.  The concert is a great success.

Later I’m watching So Ji Sub on YouTube, he’s giving an interview about the concert, he’s smiling and happy.

How did you feel about doing a concert in Australia?

At first I really didn’t want to do the concert because it’s such a long way, but by the time I got to [an Australian country town with an unspecified name] I was really excited because I was nearly there and after that the trip was easy and I was looking forward to it.

Did the promotions go smoothly?

In the press release I made them put “So Ji Sub will play Australia – or cancel!”  I intended to play the concert all along, I just made them throw the “cancel” bit in there for fun.  Why not make things interesting?

I’m living in a large and extremely run-down student accommodation apartment block in Argentina.  Out the front of the building there’s a large car park, with a broken concrete footpath.  Several of the block’s students (all male and in their teens and 20s) are gathered along the footpath, waiting to see Hyomin who is visiting to do some meet-and-greet to promote T-ara’s latest activities in China.  I stand around with them as they talk to each other, most of them are complaining about how the TV reception is shitty where they live and they won’t get to see themselves on TV later.

A black sedan with tinted windows rolls up and Hyomin gets out of the back seat, with an entourage in tow (a cameraman, a couple security guards in black suits).  Hyomin is wearing very typical Hyomin-style stage wear – short-shorts and a cut-off midriff-exposing top, with a beauty pageant style sash.  She smiles and waves to the gathered people who are all really happy to see her.  It’s clear that some of them are dedicated T-ara fans and others are just young men from the building who heard that an attractive female was visiting and wanted to know what the fuss is all about and check her out.  Hyomin starts walking along the broken footpath, meeting and talking to different people, everyone is in awe of how attractive she is and it’s commented a lot that she looks exactly like she does in the “So Crazy” video.  One adoring fan notices the footpath she’s walking on and wants to give Hyomin the “red carpet treatment”, but nobody has a red carpet for her so he places a red bath towel onto the footpath instead for Hyomin to walk on.  Hyomin tells him it’s a sweet gesture but she doesn’t want to walk on it, because she’s worried about getting his towel dirty.  The guy doesn’t mind, he’s just happy that Hyomin is talking to him, he smiles but leaves the towel there anyway, just in case she chooses to walk on it later.

I’m playing guitar in my band.  We’re in the practice room, playing a song with a riff that sounds similar to ZZ Top’s “La Grange“.  A guy comes in and stops us playing mid-song, he’s very excitable and says that this song is going to be used by SM Entertainment for the new f(x) comeback.  Everybody including me is okay with this, and the whole band reacts pleasantly but calmly like it’s a nice score but no big deal really.

I go over into another area of the building where the music video for the song is being filmed.  Amber and Sulli are standing in a hallway being filmed, Sulli is up against the wall and Amber is grinding her pelvis into Sulli’s ass.  At first it just looks like a sexy dance routine but then I look further and I see that Amber has a dildo strapped to her.  Then I think that Amber is fucking Sulli up the ass with the dildo, but appearances deceive again – a closer inspection reveals that when Amber thrusts forward the head of the dildo isn’t actually going into Sulli, but into a carefully designed aperture in the fabric of her miniskirt designed to make it looks like Amber is fucking Sulli up the ass when she isn’t really.  I look at the camera filming the situation, and I can see that with the angle they are using it would indeed look just like anal sex from that vantage point.  I ponder for a moment about how clever SM’s cinematographic team are to think of this.

I watch Amber and Sulli for a while longer.  As Amber thrusts into Sulli’s clothing, Sulli grinds her ass into Amber’s dildo as she looks over her shoulder, back at Amber.  Sulli appears to be enjoying the physical sensation, but it’s impossible to tell how much is just playing up to the cameras.  Sulli then looks directly at me, and without a word being said between us, we both arrive at a mutual understanding that I will fap later to the memory of this moment.

I’m watching a teaser for an as-yet-unreleased new Girl’s Day song.  The teaser is about a minute long, it contains the chorus and the bridge leading up to the chorus.  The sound of both the bridge and chorus is a bit like the keyboard stabs in the breakdowns of Apink’s “Luv“, but more haphazard and random, it’s really not a good song at all.  The video is mainly just shots of Girl’s Day dancing and singing in a pastel-coloured indoor-recreated street scene (similar to the one in 5Dolls’ “Like This, Like That“).  Yura looks best in the group with a crop top that fits tightly around her boobs as they bounce around, the other girls don’t really stand out.  I remind myself about how teasers are stupid and that I am an idiot for watching this when I just could have waited for the full video and been bored/annoyed by the poor song once rather than twice.

I’m watching TV, the Australian children’s program Hi-5 is on.  The Korean member of the group Dayen is standing in front of a classroom of young schoolkids, who are all members of EXO-L.  Most of the classroom are wearing EXO merchandise – backpacks, t-shirts, etc. and they are all sitting on the floor cross-legged, looking up at Dayen.  Dayen tells the class that they’re going to learn a new devotional poem, called “Here Today, Here Tomorrow”.  She starts reciting the words, and the classroom reading from the blackboard recite them with her:

We are here today and here tomorrow
As the sun rises we think of Xiumin
As the sun sets we think of Chanyeol
Look at the alpaca grazing in the field
Content in its peaceful existience
It does not care of yesterday or tomorrow
Discard that which is not necessary
Our minds are clear and absolute
Existing forever in the moment
Loving EXO with all our heart

I decide to go shopping for k-pop in Rundle Mall, Adelaide’s main shopping strip.  I hadn’t been the full length of the mall for shopping purposes in a while so I thought I’d investigate and see if there are any new stores that stock k-pop or k-pop merchandise.  I’m eating something called “medium jaffas”, a new type of Jaffa that has a thinner candy shell than regular Jaffas so it’s not so hard on your teeth when you bite into it.  I pass a blonde lady wearing pink office clothing and a glittering pink designer handbag with the Death In June logo on it, I start thinking about how Death In June are always coming up with innovative new physical product and that they’re probably the only western act who have kept pace with k-pop in this regard.  She gives me brief eye contact and then walks on in the opposite direction, ignoring me.

Eventually I find a store called “HULK”, that looks like it might deal in music.  The outside is made of square pink, purple and white rectangles embedded into the wall along an entrance and the word “HULK” over the top in bold white capital letters.  I walk in and it’s a store featuring DVDs most prominently but also other media.  At this point I think to myself that this is definitely a dream and not reality, because existing stores featuring DVDs are having enough trouble staying open and attracting customers in today’s download-happy age, so a new one opening is unlikely in reality.  Oddly, I don’t wake up upon this realisation, but stay in the dream, scanning the store shelves.  I see quite a few horror films, both editions of Necro’s “Gory Days” DVD, and eventually I find a very slim k-pop section at the end of one of the shelves.  I decide to take my time and explore the section in detail.

The top shelf is labelled “T-ARA JIYEON” with a small purple label that matches the store decor, in Comic Sans font.  There are two small rows, one of them is all photocards.  I don’t look at the photocards closely, they’re so small, it seems like a waste of money to bother with them.  The other shelf has some stuff attached to small fabric ribbons, but I can’t see what they are without pulling on the ribbon wrapped around some cardboard, breaking the packaging.  I decide to pull because this looks weird and whatever it is I’m probably going to want to buy it anyway.  I pull out a ribbon and a bronze military style medal is hanging on the end.  I look at it very closely.  The medal is in a multi-pointed star shape, in the centre of it is a crown.  Circling around the edges of the crown is an inscription.  I look closely at it, “JIYEON CYCLOPEAM REGINA”.  The medal looks totally awesome and I become sad because I know this is a dream and I’ll wake up soon and won’t be able to buy this.

I’m thinking about whether it’s worth seeing the Big Day Out (a fairly shit Australian music festival), so I look up their advert in my local paper to check the group line-up and if it’s worth bothering with.  In amongst all of the other usual boring acts that the Big Day Out seemingly recycle every year are Korean rap nugus Nutaz.  I figure that it’s probably not worth the ticket price for them alone, so I figure that rather than pay the (high) price for one group plus a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t care about, I’ll try to sneak around the venue somehow, maybe there’s a way I can get a good look at Nutaz from outside the venue given that most stages are outdoors.

I turn up to the side of the cordoned-off area where the event is being held.  There’s a gently sloping grass hill with the stage where Nutaz is playing at the top of it behind a fence.  I can’t get a good look at them so I bring out a remote-controlled camera drone and I use my remote control to try to fly the drone into the venue to get a good look.  Unfortunately I’m really shit at flying the drone with the remote control and it starts wobbling around and then going off in the wrong direction.  Also I’m not the only person with this idea, there are several other camera drones in the area focused on the stage, seemingly piloted by much more competent people as these drones are much steadier.  My drone eventually collides with one of the other drones, then starts spinning around randomly and blowing grey smoke everywhere.  I watch my drone fall down in a pile of smoke and bent robot parts, and decide to give up on trying to see Nutaz.

Later on I’m at home and I notice another advert in the same paper, Nine Muses are playing somewhere, a venue called The Mermaid.  I think to myself that this might be worth going to instead and actually paying for, but I’ve never heard of The Mermaid and have no idea where it is.  I don’t even know if it’s in my city.

I’m watching behind the scenes footage of the new CNBlue song.  CNBlue have been expanded to a seven piece group, and are dancing in a block formation, with the singer in the middle flanked by men on either side playing guitars.  One of the guys playing guitar is an older man, he looks about 50 years old and he’s wearing a black suit, and holding a black Stratocaster with a white scratch plate.  It’s obvious when watching him that he has no idea how to play guitar, he looks lost with the instrument in his hands, his features are frozen.  The director yells at him to move his hands a bit so at least it looks a little bit convincing like he’s actually playing the guitar, but he just stands there, bopping from side to side awkwardly and looking confused.

In the near future, carrying of k-pop across Australian state lines is banned.  I’m filming three other people who are k-pop contraband smugglers, we are all travelling in an old rusty ute (“pickup truck” for you Americans) and they all are muscly buff guys wearing singlets, they all look a bit like a cross between Hulk Hogan and Billy Ray Cyrus.  They have a stash of k-pop CDs, in the back of the ute.  The driver addresses my camera: “I’m going to get this k-pop across the border, even if it kills me.  In fact I hope they kill me, because I don’t give a fuck, fuck ’em”, he says, referring to the border guards up ahead, who are heavily armed with assault rifles and searching a long line-up of cars for contraband k-pop.

We drive up slowly to the border checkpoint and everyone gets out except the driver.  The driver then screams out the window “GIRL’S DAY EVERY DAY, YOU CUNTS!”, does a massive burnout and drives straight through the checkpoint.   The border guards immediately give chase in police vehicles.  I watch as the driver of the ute vanishes into the distance, then doubles back on himself towards the checkpoint again, screaming “GIRL’S DAY EVERY DAY, FUCKHEADS!”.  It becomes clear to me that he’s not interested in getting away or even successfully smuggling the goods, he’s more interested in provoking the guards and dying in spectacular fashion.  As he returns to the checkpoint the guards open fire on his vehicle and the run-down ute falls apart and crumbles beneath him.  The lower half of the driver’s body is ripped completely off by the cascading sheets of metal, and his head, arms and torso slide forwards along the tarmac, the driver dead but the ute’s steering wheel still firmly in his hands.  One of the other passengers tells me that the ute is designed to detonate if captured by anti k-pop forces.  We all run down the road to get far away from the explosion.  After we get about fifty metres away the vehicle explodes into fragments at the checkpoint, the roof of the vehicle flies high up into the air and lands only a few feet away from us.  We look at each other, knowing we’re lucky to have survived.

Later I go back to the checkpoint and film the aftermath.  I notice that there are several shotguns lined up on the side of the road that are connected to sensors embedded in the road, the shotguns are triggered to fire buckshot into the road if a car drives over the sensors.  It becomes clear that the k-pop smuggler would have seen these and been acutely aware that he was not going to survive if he doubled back on the checkpoint, he had every intention of dying for the cause.

I’m watching Sunny give a live spoken-word performance in a small classroom-type indoor space.  She’s dressed in a jacket and a white t-shirt which gives excellent boob profile.  Sunny starts doing acapella rapping, mostly about what a cunt Lee Soo Man is and how everyone else in Girls’ Generation are all bitches.  She raps about each member of Girls’ Generation in turn and how shitty they’ve all been to her.  The small gathered crowd watch in stunned silent admiration.

I’m in a local shopping mall, looking for a guitar store.  I’ve heard that T-ara are endorsing a guitar, so as a guitar-playing T-ara fan I’m here to find the music store and buy it.  I look at various shops but I can’t see anywhere that stocks musical instruments.  A department store looks promising but only stocks phones and electronic gadgets.  In the main body of the mall is a large Hello Kitty section which includes a 1970s style Hello Kitty telephone that is as big as a car… but no guitars.

I come across an information terminal, and take a look hoping to find a store directory that can lead me to the T-ara guitar.  Instead all I can access from it is a forum that is run by the local university.  There’s a thread on there which lists all the k-pop stars who have visited the shopping mall.  Looking back through the thread it seems I’ve just missed out on seeing a performance by one of the members of Rainbow and also some nugu girl group called “Cha Cha” that I’ve never heard of (not to be confused with Chi Chi, a different group).  I read further and it looks like the performance by Cha Cha didn’t end up going ahead, and also people who paid for the performance had trouble getting their tickets refunded.  I think to myself that the world of international k-pop concerts never changes much.

I’m sitting in my car, parked in the driveway of my mother’s house, with Nicole from KARA.  I’m teaching her how to drive my car, her first lesson is to reverse out of my mother’s driveway and onto the road safely.  My mother’s house has an unusual design, the driveway is about a 30 degree slope downward onto a cul de sac and then onto the street, a quiet side-street with a lot of cars parked along it.  On the left side of the driveway there’s a small patch of grass and on the right side is a drop.

We get in the car and she starts reversing out slowly, I tell her to “watch out for the Israel side” which means beware of the concrete drop because it will fuck up the car if she drives over it.  She starts veering in the opposite direction and I say “careful, you’re on the Palestinians!” as she rolls over the lawn section and into the cul de sac.  I’m starting to panic and I tell her to slow down, but she keeps reversing at the same speed, not even steering.  Then I suddenly realise why – I’m the one in the driver’s seat, not her.  I’m now in the road so I grab the wheel and twist the car around so it’s parallel to the street.  I look behind me and cant’s see anything, the boot of the car is open and blocking the rear view so I don’t know if I’m about to hit another car or not.  I feel by my feet for the brakes but I don’t feel anything except the floor of the car.  I start stamping madly around where I think the brakes should be but nothing is there.  Nicole looks as me and smiles, she says nothing.  I then realise that while the steering wheel is on my side, the pedals are on her side.  I start yelling at Nicole to hit the brakes, but she says that she doesn’t know where they are, even though they’re right at her feet.  I get the impression that maybe she’s playing dumb because she thinks that I might think it’s cute, but I really don’t, I just don’t want to have a car accident.

I’m in the car park of the radio station, on my laptop organising my songs for the Kpopalypse radio show.  With me is one of the guys in 912 Crew and also Don Mills, they’re going to be guests on my show.  I’m trying not to let the guy in 912 Crew see what I’m writing on my laptop, because I’m doing the new Kpopalypse roundup where I write-up my thoughts on the songs and I think their new song is actually quite crap but I don’t want him to feel bad.

Later on, I’m on air, playing songs.  Don Mills walks in for his guest spot and sits down.  He tells me before we go to air that he wants me to promote a website of his, and that because his English isn’t that good he’d rather that I talk about the website rather than him.  I ask him if he’s selling music there, and he says the site is for ringtones and clothing items, jewelry and other merchandise, not specifically music.  I know that because of this, I can’t shout out to his website because it’s against the station rules, but I tell him that I will anyway.

I’m playing the computer game League Of Legends.  CL is on the other team, playing a champion which looks exactly like herself in the “Doctor Pepper” video.  The ultimate ability of my own chosen champion is a nuclear rocket with unlimited range (similar to Jinx) that is so powerful that if it hits the target it will detonate a nuclear device on them in real life, and it can only be fired once per game.  I tell myself “I need to hit CL to stop more terrible music being made, of course the loss of life for anyone she is near when she detonates would be tragic, but potentially greater amounts of casualties will occur if shit music disease is allowed to propagate”.  I fire the rocket straight at her, but CL has an ultimate ability of her own which warps the speed and trajectory of projectiles – this ability messes with the flight path of my rocket so instead of flying right at her, the rocket flies in a circular pattern around the entire arena.  I watch the rocket as it spins around in large slow circles, which gradually get smaller and slower as they gravitate towards the center of the battlefield.  Eventually the rocket runs out of steam in the center of the map and falls to the ground, failing to detonate.  I think to myself that I probably will not win this round.

I’m watching a music video of San E and three nugu female rappers, the song is called “Yolo Fuck Yolo”.  One of the nugu females is a blonde woman called Lucyfag.  Everyone is dressed in brightly-coloured hip-hop clothing.  Whenever the chorus happens San E yells “Yolo Fuck Yolo!”, grabs Lucyfag roughly by the head, pulls her towards his crotch and starts humping her face in time to the beat.

I’m driving up to the Barossa Valley, a rural wine-growing district north of Adelaide.  I decide to take some side-streets instead of the main route, and drive through some dirt roads flanked by corrugated iron fences and farmland, there are a lot of people around going about their daily business or just hanging out on the side of the road.  Eventually I come to a whole district made of weird cobblestone buildings, completely different from the surrounding area, and unlike the farmland it’s completely deserted.  The change is really sudden, there’s a definite invisible line where the rural parts ends and the cobblestone suburb begins.  I stop driving because this new district looks so weird, I want to investigate it.

I get out of the car, my girlfriend is with me.  I discuss moving here with her to this area, she agrees that it could be a good idea to move to a quiet area.  We walk up to a building and there’s a Korean girl inside who is dressed very smartly, she is a real estate agent.  I ask her if I can buy property and move here.  She says that this is okay and that it’s no problem to move here because nobody lives here so it’s really hard to sell the properties, so I can have it for a cheap price.  However, it will take time to organise, so I’ll have to go somewhere else for a while and wait.  The girl then disappears off to another room.

I get back in the car with my girlfriend and we drive back the other way a little, to a dirt clearing.  Until we can move into the weird cobblestone area, we have to make a living somehow, so we set up a roadside stall offering services to Korean idols.  Various k-pop idols come by complaining about hairs stuck down their their throats when signing that they can’t dislodge on their own, my girlfriend uses long tweezers to expertly pull the hairs out.  While she does this, I use my laptop to check their videos, live appearances and social networking activity for any nipslips that could cause controversy.  IU stops by, she tells us that it’s really difficult to convince regular stylists to fish down her throat for hairs.  I check all her recent live performances, there are no nipslips, she is pleased about this.

A blonde woman from a nugu group then stops by and asks for our services, and I find a selca of hers on her Instagram where she’s looking at a computer and one of her boobs is accidentally exposed.  I realise that the blonde woman is Lucyfag from the San E video “Yolo Fuck Yolo”.  IU tells me to look behind me.  I turn around and behind our stall is another stall which has been set up by k-pop paparazzi, they have long-range cameras pointed at us and I realise that whenever I find a nipslip on my laptop they are taking photos to spread to the press.  IU starts talking about the k-pop media, describing them as “bloodsucking leeches”.  I start packing up my stall to move it to a new location away from the press, IU helps me fold down the various parts of the stall so it will fit in my car.  She tells me that it’s probably about time to move into my new house now.

It’s time for this week’s Kpopalypse roundup – let’s check out the k-pop new releases!

Yooa (Oh My Girl)

Psy ft. CL – Daddy

It’s Psy, doing the same sort of thing that made him famous.  It’s better than “Gentleman“, worse than “Gangnam Style“, won’t make a significant splash globally and won’t appear on any other Kpopalypse lists apart from this one here, just in case you were wondering.  CL is barely in it, and if this was released in 2012 I would have been sad about that, but it’s 2015 and CL sucks now so I’m grateful.

Psy – Napal Baji

Psy’s other song people are raving about and no wonder – it’s the usual completely average, unexciting “organic” funk sound that is super-trendy in k-pop now and similar to recent equally boring comebacks by IU and Brown Eyed Girls.  Nothing to see here except a cool video and the Roly Poly dance, move along everyone.

Lovelyz – For You

Just another dull clone of every other girl group song that sounds exactly like GFriend, Apink etc. which is pretty disappointing because Lovelyz generally bat a bit higher than all those groups.

BTS (Bangtan Boys) – Run

It felt like the entire Internet shat itself with complaining when I didn’t cover this song last week, so here you go: it’s strictly unremarkable boy-band material, better than some of their other crappier songs but nowhere near as good as “War Of Hormone“.  Happy now?

LaBoum – Aalow Aalow

After an unexciting start, Laboum are starting to get consistently good songs.  People thought I’d like this and they were right.  The lack of dynamics get a bit wearying by the end of the song but that’s pretty much the only thing obviously wrong with it.

Royal Pirates – Run Away

So much for k-rock, this song is about 80% electronica and doesn’t sound all that different to something I’d expect from Infinite, BTS, etc.  I guess Korean rock has just given up these days.  Apart from a surprising and fairly comical dubstep-metal hybrid breakdown nothing about this made much of an impression on me.

Snuper – Shall We Dance

The combination of the One Direction-style haircuts, cheesy grins and extreme colours make this a hard watch, but if it was a female group I’d probably dig it at least looks-wise so I won’t be a hypocrite about it and just tell you instead that this song came out a few weeks ago but is just kinda average and that’s why I hadn’t gotten around to playing it until now.

Luhan – Lu

Seriously, what is this, really.  I wasn’t a huge fan of “That Good Good” or any of the other 76 songs Luhan has released since moving to China, but “Lu” makes them all sound like masterpieces.

Seventeen & Ailee – Q&A

A pretty dull typical k-pop/R&B excursion exactly like thousands of others.  An Ailee guest vocal but no Ailee in the video is the solar-powered flashlight of k-pop.

Zico ft. Zion T. – Eureka

Decidedly meh.  Sounds like everything else these days.

Dynamic Duo ft. Nafla – J.O.T.S.

“Jump over the slump” indeed.  This doesn’t suck like all their other songs do now, for some reason.

BONUS SONGS

Phenomenon – Fresh

More average-o-funk.  Korea releases about 10 songs like this per week.  Be grateful I don’t ever play all of them.

BoA – Kiss My Lips

Here’s (two thirds of) a Japanese version of the BoA song that was released six months ago for the Korean market, not that I care what language it’s in because it’s still the same fairly average song, I couldn’t give a fuck if she’s singing it in Klingon or Esperanto.

Nell – Lost In Perspective

Royal Pirates might have been a bit of a letdown this week but they are certainly better than Nell, Korea’s consistently awful third-rate Coldplay knock-off group.

Kpoopalypse will return next week with the last Kpopalypse roundup of 2015!

It’s rare that an opportunity for me to drop a post about something extremely topical comes up, but occasionally k-pop will throw me a jewel like that and here one is.  K-pop girl group Oh My Girl had some visa issues recently when attempting to enter the USA and since touring headfucks is an area in which I’m uniquely qualified having managed many of them personally, here is now a quick, helpful trufaxual post for your entertainment and education!

So, what actually happened?

Oh My Girl tried to get into the USA to do some shows or promotions or whatever, but without the required paperwork (a performing visa for each traveller).  When quizzed by US Customs, the girls and their entourage lied and said that they were “sisters” presumably to keep their “we’re not k-pop performers, honest” cover intact.  Customs thought that maybe eight mostly-above-school-age girls with different surnames plus entourage carrying a metric ton of frilly dresses, school uniforms and short skirts in their luggage looked a bit more like a fly-in brothel than a family get-together (because while k-pop fans think all that shit is “innocent concept wear”, people who live in the real world know what a fetish is), so naturally Oh My Girl were detained while everyone tried to work out what was actually going on.  Eventually it was decided that nobody could be fucked waiting around forever so the girls hopped on a plane back to Korea.  The agency later confirmed that this is what happened, so there’s no dispute about the facts.

Was the US Customs response reasonable or just racist?

It’s the job of customs officers in many countries to check whether people are legally allowed to enter a country or not and to investigate matters that may be classed as suspicious, and Oh My Girl in this instance would have looked suspicious as hell, regardless of where they were from and where they were going.  Of course if it was me I would have recognised the girls straight away and waved them through into the special caonima express baggage check but you can’t expect some random American to recognise a group only a few thousand people outside of Korea even know about.  The prostitute theory was obviously wrong (unless Oh My Girl do a little Tenpro agency work on the side) but it’s easy to see why they would have felt the need to consider that possibility, as a customs officer erring on the side of caution in the face of oddities is part of doing your job properly… and k-pop groups look pretty fucking odd to most people who aren’t embroiled in the world of k-pop fandoms and media.

So why did their agency do this then?  Are they just dumb?

To enter the USA legally as performers, the agency would need to, on behalf of each of the girls in Oh My Girl, plus all support staff travelling with them:

• Fill out form I-129 (visa petition for a non-immigrant worker) which is a 36-page document, for a P-3 category visa (for culturally unique artists and entertainers), as per the accompanying 28 pages of instructions.  Note that the more standard P-1 category visa for internationally known entertainers would be off-limits to 2015 rookies Oh My Girl as any group claiming a P-1 visa needs to be established and performing regularly for at least 12 months.
• Be sure to include supporting documentation in the application of the group’s status as a culturally unique entity, this is a requirement.
• File the form I-129 to the correct location (don’t forget the $190 visa application processing fee and the $325 filing fee!) and wait between 2-8 weeks for processing.  If you really can’t wait longer than 14 days, the USA will fast-track your visa application for a cool $1225 per individual… of course this doesn’t guarantee acceptance of your application, only that they will look at your application within 14 days, and it doesn’t preclude them from throwing a spanner in the works like asking for more documentation and then making you wait another 14 days once they receive it… and this process can repeat indefinitely.
• Cross your fingers.  Fees are not refundable.

So the agency are being cheap?

The difference in cost between performance and tourist visas has been pointed out, but if Oh My Girl were genuine tourists staying less than 90 days they wouldn’t have even needed a visa at all, because South Korea is a participant in the USA’s visa waiver program, they would have just had to make an electronic application and wait for approval.  However as performers they would require a performance visa (performance doesn’t come under the visa waiver program’s business exemptions).  So ultimately the entire cost of the performance visa could be dodged by Oh My Girl being passed off as “tourists”.  However, the cost saving is just an incidental (tiny) benefit to the agency (or would be, if they got away with it), and is highly unlikely to be the real reason for trying to pass the girls off as tourists.

How do you know this?

Let’s have a look at the two music videos that Oh My Girl have released so far.

Both are very high budget productions, featuring multiple elaborate purpose-built sets, the agency would have probably burned up a million dollars just on these videos alone.  It’s obvious enough that their agency has money to throw around and an extra few thousand dollars on some paperwork would be nothing in the grand scheme, especially for a shot at that American advancement that k-pop agencies so dearly covet.

So what’s the real reason then?  Were the agency just dumb?

Here’s a fun fact about getting a performance visa for the USA.  You’re not allowed to wait to sign any touring or performance agreements until AFTER the visa application is approved, you must do it BEFORE.  So if you play by the rules by booking your show, and then filing your visa application after, and then the USA says you can’t come in, you’ve not only wasted money on the application but you’ve also automatically breached a contractual agreement with your American business partners, which potentially means way more money than a few annoying filing fees, not to mention you’ve pissed off fans.  The USA can also delay your application almost indefinitely by asking for “further evidence”, insist that you pay union fees and any other manner of things, waits of up to six months for performance visas are extremely common.

What maybe could have happened in the Oh My Girl situation is this – the agency booked the shows first a few months ahead of time, then filed the correct paperwork (legally it must be done in this order).  The concert date drew closer and closer but either they got no response or they were requested to provide extra documents time and time again, stalling the administrative process.  The day that the girls had to hop on the plane and go to the USA for the show finally came along and there was still no final response so the agency said “fuck it, let’s just send them on the plane anyway, we’ll try our luck passing them off as tourists – it’s either that or just cancel the shows and give up so we’ve got nothing to lose”.

Oh.  Okay, I feel stupid now for assuming the agency were just a bunch of morons.  It might not even be their fault.

Well, saying “we’re sisters” at the airport was maybe a bit silly and the girls’ or the agency’s only real fuckup – but that could be down to language barriers or mistranslation of a comment made in jest or in the “we’re like family” spirit that these k-pop groups are probably in the habit of acting like when in public.  When appearing before customs you have to be really careful what you say and not try any funny business, because these people are on the lookout for anything that doesn’t square off neatly – after all it’s their job, and it’s not their fault if the visa rules suck dick and you’re trying to get around them, you sneaky caonima.

I’ve never heard of anything like this before – is it common for performers to try and travel with incorrect visas?

OH FUCK YES, it’s very, very, very common.  If you want a k-pop example JYP did visa scams with The Wonder Girls and got away with it but this is a practice far from limited to just k-pop groups.  US punk group Black Flag famously lost their drummer when his visa expired in the UK and he wasn’t able to return to the USA due to his status as an illegal immigrant.  Visa entry issues are also not just restricted to USA entry – the Japanese punk band Limited Express (Has Gone?) tried to enter Australia on tourist visas in exactly the same type of situation as Oh My Girl, and were busted the same way – their language barrier meant they ended up saying the wrong thing to customs who realised that the group might be in the country for performance work rather than tourism, so they promptly got sent back home.  I could give dozens more examples including a few personal ones (but I won’t because my lawyer has read this post and wants a chat – but maybe they’ll appear as blind items one day?).  Customs officers in Australia now actually actively scan gig guides and keep on the lookout for international performers expected to be entering the country.  Artists have risen to the challenge – check any insider musician blogs for plenty of “how to convincingly pretend you’re a tourist” style advice, and you’ll see why customs officers everywhere are becoming super-vigilant about this.  I would say that for any artist anywhere in the world who is touring internationally but not A-list in their respective genre, cheap and dirty “tourist” tours are the norm, not the exception.

Wow, I guess that might be the real reason why my fave group suddenly cancelled their tour to my country only a day or two before it happened.

Yes, it might.

Wow Kpopalypse, you’re so brainy.  How can I be more like you and less like some of the dickheads I see on other k-pop related websites?

• Question everything.  Especially question the people who tell you to question everything, because a lot of those people just like questioning everything because they can.
• Just because someone is a deluded fangirl or a media outlet is corrupt and petty doesn’t mean that they’re wrong.  It doesn’t mean that they’re right either.  Take informations on their own merit, or lack thereof.
• Don’t let morality cloud your rationality.  Stop thinking about what’s right and wrong, instead worry about what’s true and false.  Adhere to Kpopalypse standards of trufax.
• Enjoy life and k-pop in your newfound wisdom and knowledges!

It’s time for this week’s Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s take a look at this week’s new releases!

Lee Jonghyun (CNBlue)

Girls’ Generation TaeTiSeo – Dear Santa

You’ll get a complete and delightfully juvenile and offensive Christmas roundup in an upcoming post to whinge about on Reddit/kpop to your heart’s content, but in the meantime know that this awful song is definitely still way on the higher-quality end of the scale as far as Christmas comebacks go this year so far.

SHINee – DxDxD

SHINee are pretty much a Michael Jackson concept group these days.  Pity they’re constantly ripping the crappy “Dangerous” era instead of the “Thriller” era but oh well.  Despite it all this is actually decent and SHINee have been improving their track record a lot lately.

EXO – Sing For You

Hey it’s EXO so I had to play it or they’ll be riots in SM’s maximum security fangirl containment facilities, but does anyone besides EXO fans actually like this?  I guess it’s an acoustic guitar ballad, so if you like acoustic guitar ballads, here is one.

45RPM ft. Kirin, DJ Soulscape – Boom Box

Very very old school so therefore it doesn’t fall into the “rap is so awful these days” category.

Zico ft. DJ Wegun – Veni Vidi Vici

Not some swag bullshit, thank god.  Looks like Zico has got yolo fever out of his system at least for now, and this is his best rap track in ages.

Nucksal ft. DJ Wegun – Skill Skill Skill

Never heard of DJ Wegun before this week and now he has two songs with two different artists.  I actually prefer the Zico track, this one is harder but a bit too repetitive and lacking variety with such a short loop making up the base of the song but it’s still alright for what it is.  Gosh I feel so nice and understanding this week.

Girls Girls – Deal

I’m not sure if this agency will ever release a proper MV instead of this dance video for the unfortunately named Girls Girls, but turn away from the screen and ignore the low budget sounds and this song isn’t any worse than the last few 4Minute comebacks.  Well okay, apart from that awkward shout of “Deal!” in the chorus.

Basterd – All

Obligatory radio show yolo content checkbox ticked.

Yezi ft. San E – Crazy Dog

A new, faster beat and better production has breathed much-needed life into what was originally a fairly awkward song in its original “Unpretty Rapstar 2” incarnation.

Lim Kim ft. Verbal Jint – Stay Ever

Sorry Lim Kim I don’t think Taeyeon’s star power is going to transfer over to you just because you both worked with the same guy.  This is pretty dull but I think it’s better than the Taeyeon track.

Stephanie – Blackout

Watching Stephanie’s sinewy body contort has all the sexual appeal to me of rolling a sack of potatoes in a bedsheet and shoving it down a stairwell, but if I avert my eyes I can admit that this is probably the best thing she’s ever done.

BONUS SONG

Yoon Mirae – This Love

Sadly not the Pantera song, and I don’t even like Pantera much but boy it’s better than this.  Truedy from Unpretty Rapstar 2 sure got a lot of flack for imitating Yoon Mirae over the course of that stupid TV series, but let’s all be thankful she picked the hard stuff and didn’t imitate the shitty ballad side of Yoon Mirae.  Much.

K-pop comebacks are really starting to slow down now which always happens as we approach Christmas, therefore this will be the last Kpopalypse roundup for 2015.  Next week (21/12/15) the radio show will play the Kpopalypse honourable mentions for 2015, and instead of the roundup post, the honourable/dishonourable mentions post for 2015 will be published in its place.  The following two weeks (28/12/15 and 4/1/16), the radio show will play songs 30-16 and then songs 15-1 of the Kpopalypse top 30 for the year.  Expect it fondly!

It’s time to celebrate as Kpopalypse blog is turning 3 years old!  Here’s a post full of all the special secret website data as a present to say thank you to YOU, the readers!

Websites collect lots of fun data about their readers, but most sites don’t bother to share any of this stuff because they want to keep it all to themselves (or sell it to third-parties for a profit).  However Kpopalypse doesn’t give a crap about any of that, so it’s time to share secret Kpopalypse data!  Firstly, what countries visited Kpopalypse blog the most during 2015?

Country	Views
United States	272,324
Singapore	64,009
Malaysia	53,914
Canada	53,395
Indonesia	51,331
United Kingdom	48,152
Australia	47,171
Philippines	33,519
Germany	17,050
Brazil	16,980
France	14,041
Mexico	12,005
Thailand	10,716
European Union	10,094
Netherlands	9,842
Hong Kong SAR China	9,082
Sweden	8,650
South Korea	8,409
New Zealand	8,327
Poland	8,244
Vietnam	8,074
Japan	6,060
Spain	5,606
Italy	5,322
Russia	5,189
Finland	4,287
Portugal	4,224
Turkey	3,982
India	3,880
Romania	3,716
Norway	3,508
Taiwan	3,057
Denmark	2,911
Peru	2,725
Chile	2,539
Brunei	2,531
Argentina	2,512
Colombia	2,012
Belgium	1,964
United Arab Emirates	1,937
Greece	1,843
Croatia	1,719
Myanmar (Burma)	1,676
Hungary	1,662
Saudi Arabia	1,643
Venezuela	1,597
Czech Republic	1,595
Austria	1,557
Switzerland	1,287
Ireland	1,284
South Africa	1,161
Serbia	1,066
China	1,051
Nicaragua	1,009

Hopefully you’ll find your completely awesome country somewhere in the list above!  Countries not listed here didn’t show enough determination – although I’m completely impressed by the high determination levels of the 15 people who visited my site from Syria this year!

Which posts were the most popular on Kpopalypse blog during 2015?  Here’s the top 20!

It’s great to see the article index in there, it means that people are actually finding it useful and all that effort that I go to finding idols in hanbok doing heart signs each month isn’t wasted!  Of course, very popular posts that are also very recent (like big boobs post part 3) haven’t been in circulation for long enough to gain a spot on this list.  Unsurprisingly, fap posts dominated the list as they always do, even though the relative proportion of fap posts on this site is actually quite small, a lot smaller than the “today’s top posts” sidebar on the right would have you believe.  Pretend to be disgusted by my posts as much as you want, my statistics don’t lie (unlike your grandstanding moralistic comments), so I know what you really like.  Ignoring fap, it seems that figuring out who the fuck is who in Red Velvet, why MR removed videos are a waste of your time and lists of songs that I liked and disliked were the things you wanted to read about the most.

Once people are at Kpopalyspe blog, where are they most likely to go next?

URL	Clicks
youtube.com	70,139
WordPress.com Media	60,868
asianjunkie.com	11,562
antikpopfangirl.blogspot.com.au	7,480
ask.fm	4,451
en.wikipedia.org	3,560
soompi.com	2,876
antikpopfangirl.blogspot.com	1,975
kpopstarz.com	1,938
Reddit	1,905
popdust.com	1,625
omonatheydidnt.livejournal.com	1,453
Twitter	1,060
freeasteroids.org	822
ohkpop.com	758
dkpopnews.net	677
k-airportfashion.tumblr.com	674
kpopalypse.polldaddy.com	666
forums.soompi.com	612
cheezburger.com/5872236032	539

WordPress.com Media are all the images hosted on my own site that people have been clicking.  A sort of the most popular images reveals that most people have either been doing the Red Velvet Identification Test, or saving all the pictures from my big boobs posts.

The big red netizen comment translation button from this post performed strongly as a popular click choice… also, nobody can resist “Jiyeoncam.jpg” which performs highly every year!  This of course is due to Jiyeon’s webcam controversy.  For those unaware of it, I recently clarified this watershed moment in k-pop on my ask.fm for the benefit of all:

I hope Jiyeon has by now upgraded her laptop with all that money from spruiking MMOs to China’s growing nerd gamer demographic.

The top ten most popular Youtube destinations that you clicked on (not including any clicks on videos embedded in the site), in order:

1.  CL – The Baddest Female (930)
2.  Perfume – One Room Disco (729)
3.  House Rulez ft. Clara – Invitiation (713)
4.  Ice Bucket Challenge – Ailee (524)
5.  Puer Kim – It’s Hard To Be A Daughter Of A Woman Loved By God (513)
6.  Eat Your Kimchi: WTF – Electronic Fake Jump Rope (489)
7.  Girls’ Generation – I Got A Boy (471)
8.  Ice Bucket Challenge – Clara (467)
9.  Bobby Bones: The Bombshell Secret (453)
10.  InfinitelyInspiritSY: Why f(x) Don’t Have An Official Fanclub Name (451)

The top ten Asian Junkie articles you found through Kpopalypse blog:

The top ten Anti Kpop-Fangirl articles you found through Kpopalypse blog:

What did people search up on the Interwebs that brought them to Kpopalypse blog?  Here’s the most popular search terms that led them here.

Well, I’m glad that my own name just managed to beat out “korean pornstar” as a search term this time around!  As you can see, you people search up an awful lot of smut, which is why I’m so cynical when you pretend to be all offended and shit about my harmless good-natured satirical Australian-style humour or the fact that occasionally I like the appearance of a girl in a k-pop group who is of legal age.

Here’s the most popular posts by category.  The views number here is a weekly average.

The least popular type is Nugu Alert, which isn’t listed because this list only displays nine categories and it’s the tenth.  Nugu Alert gets a good reaction from regular readers but is stratospherically unpopular with the average casual k-pop Internet surfer.  It’s good to see that readers are liking the new roundup series though!

Normally I’d finish this post off by answering a bunch of questions that led people to this site but the site is so popular now that it’s impossible to retrieve this data, it gets pushed way past the bottom of the search terms lists that I now get sent.  You’ll just have to use my ask.fm if you want to ask me shit.  So have this T-ara live performance instead.

Thanks to all readers who supported Kpopalypse blog in 2015 by linking my sites, discussing me, translating, or just coming here and reading my crap, I love all of you!  Also thanks to my haters who keep commenting about me, keeping my activity trending highly on searches and giving me hilarious things to write about, I love all of you too! Also a big thanks to Asian Junkie, Anti Kpop-Fangirl (both of whom oddly still let me write for them, for which I’m eternally grateful even though they probably shouldn’t just for their own sanity’s sake) and all the caonimas!

If any of you get the urge to send postcards, you can do it here:

Kpopalypse, 3D Radio, PO BOX 937 Stepney SA Australia 5069

Keep in mind that some countries have bad, baaaaad postal systems compared to Australia so I may or may not receive postcards – but if I do, I’ll feature them in the next episode of Caonima Creativity Corner, along with any other creative Kpopalypse content that people alert me to!

Thanks for reading, and Kpopalypse will return in 2016, but not before a few more posts over the coming two weeks to wrap up 2015!  Stay safe and party responsibly!

Last year I made a post predicting events in k-pop over the course of 2015.  It’s time for Kpopalypse to revisit this post to see how right/wrong I was, and also to predict what’s going to happen in k-pop in 2016!

So, how did I do with the original predictions?  My haters didn’t seem to think that I was very accurate… but of course, haters only see what they want to see.  Let’s take a proper look with the bias-lenses of “omg I liek so hate that Kpopalypse dude” removed.

Girls’ Generation will continue – sort of. – CORRECT.  I predicted a gradual winding-down of the group’s activities.  This has happened, with the girls being less dynamic as a group and having more individual/subunit activities.

EXO as a group will remain popular – and underpaid. –  CORRECT.  EXO are still popular and still make B-list income, while the members who left the group to do Chinese activities are rolling in dosh.

Hyorin from Sistar will lose much of her hair. – UNCONFIRMED.  Still waiting for that perfect wigslip moment to be captured by an intrepid fancammer, however most are not pointing their lenses that high up, which probably explains the lack of evidence so far.

Apink will be fucking up and down the house. – CORRECT.  Apink returned with a Shinsadong Tiger song in 2015, which means that they’ve been making use of the Shinsadong Tiger Bangbus.

Sulli won’t give a cao ni ma. – CORRECT.  Sulli is free from the shackles of f(x) and is all about Choiza now.  Let’s celebrate!

Qri still won’t care. – CORRECT.  Qri is confirmed as not caring.

Zico will get into more scandals. – CORRECT.  Naughty naughty Zico.  Quick Netizenbuzz, deploy uncharacteristically positive articles!

Woollim will take those who spread the Jisoo rumours to court – and win. – taken to court CORRECT, victory PENDING but certain.

Ladies Code will come back – but it won’t be the same. – CORRECT.  Their old upbeat fun style is gone, they are now a ballad group.

Way’s Girls will become more active. –  CORRECT.  Much evidence exists of the continued activity of Way’s Girls.

Raina will collapse at an event and get admitted to hospital. – INCORRECT.  The divine goddess of After School/Orange Caramel has proven immune to such trifling mortal threats.  I obviously lacked faith, forgive me oh Raina.

IU will complete her transition to a “more mature image”. – CORRECT.  Love her or hate her, nobody will look at IU the same way again after she completely scuttled the last remaining remnants of her annoying “Nation’s Little Sister” image on the blunt rocks of ham-fisted satire that was shallow as fuck but still too deep for the average k-pop fan to grasp.

Shindong will get bullied out of Super Junior. – CORRECT.  Booted out of Super Junior to a life in the army, Shindong is now busy discovering the joys of military discipline.

SM Entertainment will keep fucking with everyone else’s shit. – CORRECT.  The JYJ Law has passed but nothing has actually changed.

Han Ye Seul and Teddy’s relationship will deteriorate, boosting Teddy’s song quality. – PENDING.  YG still haven’t debuted their new 2NE1 2.0 “independent girl group who doesn’t need a man to do shit – but Teddy writes all the songs” that will prove or disprove this prediction.

JYP will position GOT7 to replace 2PM as his main money-earner. – CORRECT.  Of course k-pop’s legions of idiots constantly focus on chart position and award show wins, but smart people know that the real money in k-pop comes from endorsements and commercial work.  In the areas where it actually matters, GOT7 have been cleaning up nicely with endorsements everywhere.  In the meantime, JYP saying his name at the start of songs has returned as predicted.

K-pop will continue to not take over the world. – CORRECT.  Shonky concerts and mediocre overseas activity continued to ensure that Korean idols and k-pop remain a cult phenomenon in western countries only.

Massive amounts of prostitution will jeopardise at least one record label. – INCORRECT.   They totally got away with it, this time.

AOA will bring back the band concept, but you won’t like it. – PENDING.  AOA definitely aren’t ditching it, so it will come back… whether it sucks or not remains to be seen.

K-pop fans will be just as stupid in 2015 as they were in 2014. – CO-FUCKING-REKT.

Wow, amazing!  I got almost everything right!  It seems like my ESP inherited from Boram came through with the goods, she would be proud of her son’s abilities.  Now that I have a proven track record, let’s see if I can repeat the performance over the next 12 months!

Apink will begin their transition to a “more mature image” – Now that none of them are virgins thanks to Shinsadong Tiger’s prowess at hooking them up with male idols, watch their carefully constructed pedobait “innocent” image start slowly trickling away just like Infinite members’ jizz down their legs after a solid backseat shagging.

IU keeps on chooglin’ – speaking of pedobait innocence, the legions of surface-level derps who stupidly misunderstood IU’s anti-pedophile-pandering satire as somehow pedophilic and the fans who actually listen to IU are two completely different audiences.   Therefore expect IU’s controversies to have about the same effect as T-ara’s controversies i.e a broadening of her international appeal and zero long-term effect of any kind, positive or negative.

AOA replace Sistar – as the group that more Korean men fap to, more of the time.

Mamamoo replace Sistar – as the Korean pop group that people endlessly bang on and on about the “talents” of, regardless of their musical quality or lack thereof.

Yolosweg for all – just about every Korean idol you can imagine who does a solo, no matter how ill-suited to the concept, will rape our ears with yolotrap as in 2016 we reach “peak sweg”.  Expect to hear that stacatto “hey hey hey hey” in every second fucking beat for a while longer too.

f(x) finally get that fucking fandom name – Now that f(x)’s entire concept is ruined thanks to Sulli’s departure, SM will steer them towards average-land and eventual retirement, meaning that SM will now have nothing to lose by giving them a fandom name and making them exactly like every other group, also shutting up the group’s annoying conformity-craving fans.  By the way the name will be really shit, and you won’t like it.  Be careful what you wish for.

Korean netizens officially recognised as worthless human garbage by the Korean government – worried about the negative international reputation created by trendy international k-pop loving fucksticks translating Korean netizen comments, the Korean government puts their foot down in their usual style with some juicy democratisaion.

Classy-sexy concepts come back – after a flood of girls in frilly dresses and loose-fitting t-shirts and board shorts through the first part of 2016,  the pendulum swings the other way and a girl group throws out a “classy sexy” concept (the Kpopalypse meaning of the term) to rival classy-sexy master Gain, much to the horror of everyone except me, who totally saw it coming and had the hand lube prepared.

Crayon Pop continue to not have another BarBarBar – they won’t reach the heights of viral fame again anytime soon, but will also continue to do more weird concepts that will make their growing niche audience happy, however…

Way’s Girls takes a hit as operatives get caught – a fund redistribution scheme goes awry and someone pays dearly for their allegiance to Way’s Girls.  Way plots her revenge.

Puer Kim gets the girls out – an intrepid fashion photographer or video/TV director helps Korea’s Tura Santana Puer Kim realise her true calling.

K-pop agencies and promoters will continue to fuck up tours left and right – expect more disasters like the BTS debacle.

15&’s Park Jimin finds out about Kpopalypse’s lust for her, and freaks the fuck out – word that Kpopalypse would park in Park Jimin filters back to the girl herself via cheeky caonimas posing as 15& fans.  Park Jimin is alerted to the pure filth that is Kpopalypse blog, spends an evening reading all the posts tagged “fap” with her own name all over them and decrees that he’s a creep who is totally not ever going there.

Plagiarism keeps being a huge obsession for k-pop following morons – but nobody in the industry cares, and nobody gets sued successfully.

Eat Your Kimchi finally agrees to do Kpopalypse Interview – under the condition that they are also asked about other things than Martina’s breast size.  Kpopalypse calmly accepts these terms.

Asian Junkie is outed as a Raina fapper – longstanding k-pop blogger and unconvincing Rainaism denialist Asian Junkie will continue to erroneously claim that Raina is not the cutest member of Orange Caramel, however the truth of how he feels towards Raina his one true love will be revealed soon when he slips up and inadvertently shows his true colours.

An Anti Kpop-Fangirl author gets pegged – which one will it be?  Will it be Kpopalypse?  Pegging master HanYeSeul_Fag?  AKF himself?  Or someone else?  I don’t know, but someone in the Anti Kpop-Fangirl author roster is going to get pegged, I have forseen it.

Kpopalypse continues to rep T-ara, IU, Lovelyz and other irrationally-hated idols for 2016 – a pretty fucking safe bet but just throwing it up here anyway!

Qri still doesn’t care – she really doesn’t.  Kudos to whoever made this amazing image for QDC, who we all owe a debt to for alerting us to the true depth of Qri not caring.

That’s it for Kpopalypse’s amazing predictions for about year!  In 12 months we’ll see if I’m I’m deadly accurate, or just as laughably wrong as The Great Satan!

Welcome to Kpopalypse’s 2015 honourable and dishonourable mentions lists!

These lists comprise of 16 songs that were decent but not quite stunning enough for the 2015 favourites list, and 16 bad songs that didn’t quite lick enough surface area of elephant nutsack to make it all the way down into the Kpopalypse 2015 bottom 30.

A few things before we get started:

• These two lists are in alphabetical order, NOT order of preference
• Non-Korean-language releases count if they’re by k-pop artists
• Songs with some kind of official music or performance video only (because I can’t listen to everything)
• These are my opinions only.  Try not to be butthurt about it.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

After School – Shine

All you dumbasses were so busy whining about no After School activity this year and Pledis being supposedly “broke” despite obviously having more than enough cash to invest in a brand new 13-member boy group that you didn’t even notice that After School made the only decent Japanese cigarette-lighter-waving power-ballad by a k-pop group ever (oh my god the crying from After School fans: yes the song came out last year but this is a post about music videos, so I use the official video post date for these lists).

Apink – Petal

Apink usually get this kind of thing oh so wrong, but finally they got the right balance of breezy ambience and brisk tempo to make their cheesiness work.  It only took their songwriters about 53 cracks at it over four years.

BigBang – Sober

BigBang will probably never return to their 2012 peak but it’s good to know G-Dragon can still write a decent song when he wants to, in the rare instances when he’s not scrounging Traponia, Domain of Yoloswags looking for 10 yolos to smite so he can collect 10 severed yolo penises and give them to the guy back at the village with the exclamation mark hovering over his head, or whatever it is he usually does with his time.

D.Holic – Murphy & Sally

The type of vaguely experimental pop song that f(x) doesn’t do anymore, but sadly nobody will care this time because it’s some nugus and not an SM group.

DIA – My Friend’s Boyfriend

Similar to Twice’s debut but far better musically, this song also sadly suffers from the same flaw – rampant studio overcooking.  However there’s still catchy fun here to be had if your ears have the stamina to penetrate all 67 layers of nauseating shrill overdubbage.

GFriend – Me Gustas Tu

It’s just as well for everyone that Gfriend blundered their way into moth-squashing viral fame to the fairly decent “Me Gustas Tu” rather than the dull “Into The New World” style ben-wa insertion anthem “Glass Bead“, or people globally might have found themselves not giving a fuck.

Jimin & J.Don – GOD

Jimin whispers, yelps and screams her way through this deliberately oddball track, leaving J.Don with the actual rapping, and it’s all for the best.  All that’s missing is the clock around her neck.

Jimin ft. MC Meta, Nuck – T4SA

However she can rap when she wants to.  All that listening to Dr. Dre’s “Detox” obviously paid off in spades.  Also, an actual proper rap beat makes an appearance here, which is such a rare event in Koraen hip-hop these days that I feel the need to comment about it every time it happens.

Jun Jin ft. Eric – Wow Wow Wow

The trick to making male group dance productions work is to give the backing track some actual nuts, and even with that castrated vocal line in the chorus “Wow Wow Wow” has still got oomph in the mix to compensate, making this one of 2015’s best songs that sounds great on big speakers.

K-Trance – Hey Hey

This Korean nugu’s shoegaze-inspired dance-pop excursion is better than all western attempts at the same thing since about 1990.

LaBoum – Aalow Aalow

It lacks the melodic smarts to get into the favourites list but yes this song is cool anyway, and better than The Wonder Girls’ recent attempt at exactly the same thing, plus I don’t have to look at those disgusting unsexy “Simply Irresistible” uniforms that JYP insisted on fitting The Wonder Girls in and which traumatised my childhood.  Robert Palmer you cunt.

Lizzy – Goodbye PMS

So PMS is like looking like Lizzy and having a red devil stalk you and feed you milk and cupcakes while punk guitars play in the background.  I don’t know what all my female friends are complaining about.

Melody Day – #LoveMe

Great retro-style verses sadly ruined by a crappy blues-based chorus makes this song the spiritual opposite to Girls’ Generation’s “Lion Heart” which has the same problem in reverse.  I hate mash-ups as a general rule but one that combines the verse of this and the chorus of “Lion Heart”, with the tempo and key appropriately adjusted to segue smoothly could actually be worth doing.  A project for ambitious caonimas!

Playback – Playback

Now that Sistar are redundant it’s good to have a replacement, but what’s really amazing about this one is that the beat actually goes harder than 95% of Korean hip-hop these days.

Road Boyz – Show Me Bang Bang

Brand new on the k-pop scene, Road Boyz have a pretty decent debut song, somewhat lacking in production polish but making up for it with sheer catchiness… or is that cuntiness?  Who can tell, but let’s support our new iljin thuggin’ friends anyway!

Tahiti – Skip

“Skip” doesn’t beat Sunny Hill’s “Midnight Circus” as far as k-pop/ska blends go due to a lack of a compelling chorus but it’s still pretty cool and better than whatever bullshit is trendy these days.

BONUS: Best song kept off the 2015 favourites list purely by excessive unwelcome vocal masturbation:

Oh My Girl – Closer

People have been asking me to give examples of decent songs ruined by vocal wank, so here you go – prime example A from 2015.  The simplistic writing and polished production of this song hits exactly the right balance between upbeat danceability and maudlin pathos, until some truly horrid faux-improvised vocal warbles take a fat shit all over the vocal harmony breakdown and throw all the built-up atmosphere straight in the bin.  What the fuck did they do that for?  They can’t even use the argument “oh it’s to show off how great our singers are” because it’s so obviously Autotuned.  This song is catchy as hell, perfectly produced and would have easily climbed very high up on the favourites list without Korea’s obsession with money-note masturbation shooting it in the knees.

DISHONOURABLE MENTIONS

Akdong Musician – Ga Da Na Together

Yeah (ga da) na.  At least it’s short, and Suhyun looks less and less like a truck hit her every day.

Dal Shabet – Joker

This song is about as accomplished and well-made as the makeup of that guy with the painted face who turns up in the video every so often, which is apparently a reference to some bullshit film I haven’t watched.

Davichi – Cry Again

Now that Davichi aren’t with MBK they don’t even get songs as good as MBK’s filler ballad rejects anymore.  It’s enough to make any music fan cry (again).

4Minute – Cold Rain

Death, taxes and 4minute in ballad mode.

Elsie (Eunjung) ft. K.will – I’m Good

Hey let’s rewrite Jiyeon’s great “Never Ever (1 min 1 sec)” but slow it down to half speed, remove all the catchiness and make it sound as shit as possible, plus mostly substitute Eunjung in the video for some other girl who isn’t nearly as hot, sounds like a fucking great idea.

Gain – Paradise Lost

It’s amazing how someone can throw a bit of religious imagery together along with Gain’s tits and ass and people suddenly are hoodwinked into thinking that they’re listening to something decent.  I bet this is high on everyone else’s “best of” list but if someone like Justin Bieber did this song nobody would accept this crap even if the music wasn’t one note different.

Girls’ Generation – Catch Me If You Can

Jesus fucking christ, look at them.  You’d start a fashion label too if this was the alternative.  I know you Sones will be all pissed that I sidestepped talking about the musical content here but if I were you I’d be grateful I’m not even going there.

Hyosung – Into You

The only thing the k-pop world didn’t need more than a soundalike of The Spice Girls’ “Say You’ll Be There“, is a soundalike of The Spice Girls’ “Say You’ll Be There” that’s actually worse than the original.  No, Hyosung’s tits do not make it okay, I can see those anytime just by typing “hyosung boobs” into Google image search and I won’t have to endure a shithouse song for my trouble.

Joo – Cry & Blow

I cried because this blows.

Minah – I Am A Woman, Too

Yeah yeah, the song is shit and we all know it, but what’s really amazing about this one is that Minah doesn’t even look any good.  It must have taken some serious styling and choreography effort to make someone so beautiful look so ugly.

Moon Myung Jin – Excuse Me

The type of fucking garbage that the k-pop vocal masturbation set cream their pantaloons over on forums and in chatrooms everywhere but anyone with actual music taste can’t hear over the sound of their own dry-reaching.

NS Yoon G ft. MC Mong – Wifey

This is just here for “later use” because I couldn’t work out how to work it into a blog post.  Oh and it sucks.

Oh My Girl – Cupid

I’m a big fan of marching band style rhythms in k-pop songs so it really surprised me how badly Oh My Girl’s producers fucked this one up.  Just because you like both chocolate and bacon doesn’t mean they go together (quit drooling, lardass).

Park Jimin – Hopeless Love

Oh jesus, stop rubbing it in.  Haven’t you tormented me enough.

Rap Monster – Awakening

It’s well known that rap music has largely lost the art of beat-making these days.  Rap Monster has seemingly conceded defeat and not even included a beat at all.  I suppose we should be grateful for his humility.  Think how much worse this could have been.

Red Velvet – Dumb Dumb

If Aretha Franklin stuck inside a broken tumble-dryer on spin cycle sounds like good music to you, this should keep you happy until Red Velvet bring out their next shitty S.E.S ripoff.

BONUS: Most disappointing comeback that should have been amazing:

f(x) – 4 Walls

It’s far from the worst song this year but certainly the biggest letdown.  f(x)’s songwriters have made a point to genre-bend and experiment with every single comeback over the past few years, producing consistently great results while never going too far left-field and still keeping firmly within the pop sphere.  “Nu Abo“, “Electric Shock“, “Danger“, “Rum Pum Pum Pum“, “Red Light” – take your pick, it’s all solid gold, and even their remake of Monrose’s Eurosleazepop “Hot Summer” was a vast improvement and one of their best-ever efforts.  So why the fuck is “4 Walls” just an obviously half-assed, inferior retread of SHINee’s “View“?  I’m thinking it’s because Sulli left the group, taking with it the need for the songwriters to insert oddball content that would actually work with her voice and presentation.  Far from being the group’s Achilles heel, Sulli’s lack of ability was forcing her songwriters to innovate so they could write within her limitations and now she’s gone f(x) are free to be just as generic as everybody else.  Of course I could be wrong and maybe just nobody at SM gave a shit about this comeback, after all they have Red Velvet now.  Or maybe, just maybe, the most terrifying of possibilities is true, and someone thought this song sounded fantastic and would be a great idea.  Let’s all pray to the deity of our choice that this isn’t the case, or there’ll be a lot more generic crap like this from SM in the future.  Excuse me now while I do ten Hail Rainas.

That’s it for Kpopalypse’s 2015 honourable and dishonourable mentions!  The best and worst lists for 2015 will be released at around midnight on Jan 1st 2016, but may appear earlier in some countries due to timezone differences… or if I get impatient!  Expect them fondly!

Christmas is here, and your Christmas present from Kpopalypse has arrived!  It’s time to round up all of the shitty k-pop Christmas songs that were released this year!

A few rules before we start, because I know you guys love rules:

• Songs will be presented in chronological order of release date of the video.
• Only 2015 Christmas songs with MVs are considered for this list, songs without MVs are spared out of mercy.
• Must be original Korean songs or at least non-original songs that I’m not familiar with enough to recognise, covers of popular western Christmas songs and carols are not eligible, unless I decide to include them anyway just a be a cunt.
• “Winter comebacks” without Christmas content don’t count!  Where I live Christmas comes with desert heat so stop being a culturally insensitive fuckhead who thinks that snow automatically equals Christmas.  The song actually has to have Christmas content to count as a Christmas song.  Lyrically mentioning Christmas counts, as does Christmas decorations in the video, or at least something besides fucking snow, fuck.
• No ratings, because it goes without saying that you should not subject your ears to any of this garbage.

Now we have a complete understanding of the criteria, let’s get started!  I’m sure I missed out a video or two in the following list but it’s probably all for the best so please don’t alert me to any omissions or link any more videos because nobody cares.

November 22nd – GOT7 – Confession Song

If you’re a Korean schoolgirl and two masked men barge into your class and try to grab you, common sense suggests that you should probably start running.  They might be about to rape and kill you and leave your body floating down the Han river, or on the other hand if you’re really unlucky they might take you into GOT7’s secret gym where boy group members molest you and sing and rap horrible sickening Christmas love songs in your ear without even any lipsync to cushion the blow.  In an absolute worst-case scenario, after the excruciating singing ordeal is over they might set up some ugly guy in your class to reveal his identity and confess his true to love to you, and girl you better not fucking turn him down even if you think the dude is gross because you don’t want to break the Christmas spirit and look like a fucking bitch in a GOT7 video, now do you.  If he’s not your type that’s just too fucking bad, at least wait until the cameras stop rolling before you tell him you’d rather just be friends.

November 23rd – The Barberettes – Lonesome Christmas

As it’s well-documented that I like doo-wop influences in k-pop, logic dictates that I should like The Barberettes, a Korean doo-wop girl group, right?  The Barberettes obviously have doo-wop skills to burn and sound just fucking fantastic when they’re doing other people’s songs, however their original material is all consistently flat, dull, boring as batshit and contains absolutely zero of the spark and energy that made the better songs from the original 1950s doo-wop movement great.  This Christmas song of theirs isn’t any exception to the rule, being snoozeworthy even by Barberettes standards, and even the guy in the video would clearly rather be staring out the window, playing with his mobile phone or falling asleep while eating shitty pot noodles than listening to this bullshit.

December 1st – Starship Planet – Softly

Starship Entertainment’s CEO as a child must have been that annoying kid who always sets the alarm for one minute past midnight on Christmas morning so he can go into his parents’ bedroom, interrupt their anal sex and annoyingly ask them if it’s okay to open the presents yet, as Starship are always bright and early hopping on board as soon as they can with the Christmas bullshit collaboration train each year.  This video is pointlessly letterboxed for no obvious reason which means that you get to see only 40% of the Christmas cringe that you otherwise would, the rest of the video being taken up with two relatively appealing black rectangles, but this also means only 40% of Hyolyn and Bora’s tits and ass make the cut.  Since the song is obviously crap there’s no other reason for fans to be watching this, so Starship now owe us 60% extra fap.  I guess they’ll make up with their next hideous “summer comeback” in six months where Sistar’s spray-tanned asses will be falling out of the bottom of cut-off jeans and short-shorts again.

December 3rd – Girls’ Generation TaeTiSeo – Dear Santa

When giving gifts this year, remember that the best gift isn’t just the one that the recipient wants the most, or even the one that you enjoy giving the most – it’s the gift which is the most needed which is the best gift.  This truism isn’t lost on the young boy in this video, who daring braves both his eardrums and sanity to break in on a TaeTiSeo Christmas vocal practice wanking session and hand the girls an invitation to lift up the fucking pace a bit and do something resembling actual proper music someone might conceivably want to listen to one day.  At 1.25 the girls respond to his invite appropriately and like magic the song’s quality is lifted from “stunningly shithouse egocentric vocal masturbation in your face” level to “typically below-average boring Christmas crap” level.  From there it’s the usual routine of sleigh-bells, crappy outfits, Tiffany’s cringeworthy English and awkwardly shoehorned product placement that you’re expecting.  Everyshot app is my best friend, is Everyshot app your best friend?  Awful as it obviously is, it’s still the best thing with the SNSD brand to come out this year.  It’s been that kind of a year for them.

December 9th – Younha – Bluff

Christmas songs are getting sneakier and sneakier.  Since everybody knows that they’re all fucking crap, now agencies are trying a new tactic – the subliminal Christmas song which has all the elements of Christmas sneakily played down yet lurking in the background, but remains the usual ballad garbage anyway with exactly the same musical characteristcs.  “Bluff” initially may not seem like a Christmas song at all, but then at 2:50 the music video reveals its true colours with a tinsel wreath swaying gently on a door like a IU fan hoisted into a noose and left dangling by a deranged netizen lynch mob, as if we weren’t going to notice that.  I guess Younha and her agency actually want people to listen to this generic ballad slop after December 25th, and I’d happily say “fat chance” but to be honest this tactic will probably work a treat given the way Korea laps up musical garbage.  “Bluff”, indeed.

December 10th – Solar (Mamamoo) – Only Longing Grow

My longing for some decent fucking music certainly only grew after listening to this utter shit.  Another song which keeps the Christmas content light and breezy in the hope that you’ll stop puking tinsel long enough to listen to the damn thing, Mamamoo’s Solar proves that she’s a pretty girl with a nice voice who can make music just as boring as the best vocalists out there.  It’s exactly the same as any awful western Christmas ballad tripe only even less catchy, and tellingly the most interesting moment comes right at the end of the song when the piano does a little bit of “Joy To The World” which is also a shit song but still a million times better than this trash.  Not a single k-pop fan would listen to this poo if it was released on Barry Manilow’s Christmas album and honestly that’s where music like this belongs.  To legally listen to this you should be over 70 and have photo ID.

December 11th – Girls’ Generation TaeTiSeo – Winter Story

Well aren’t Girls’ Generation’s TaeTiSeo subunit a bunch of cunts.  Clearly concerned that “Dear Santa” might just be a little too excitable and upbeat in the main body of the song after that horrid sleepytime R&B vocal wank intro for fuckheads, here they come again with a full song of balladeering because too much quality music at Christmas time might get geriatric k-pop fans all fired up and get the blood flowing and the adrenaline pumping then their fucking pacemakers might fail… oh wait, it’s young people with their life still ahead of them that listen to this?  Well fuck me.  TaeTiSeo keep things nice and basic for all you 18 year olds with 88 year old music taste, turning some shit Christmas song that already sucked a rainwater tank full of jizz into a generic soundalike of Extreme’s “More Than Words“, because nothing says Christmas like stupid hair metal bands turning to ballads so they can get on the charts.  I especially love how Tiffany says “take one” at the start of the song, insinuating that they did actually nail this song on the very first attempt and didn’t make any fuckups, even though it’s all actually prerecorded in the studio and then mimed anyway (you don’t get this sort of audio fidelity from five people sitting in a room with unplugged guitars and singing with no microphones anywhere near them).  In any event the real fuckup is obviously that this song exists at all, maybe it really is “take one” because who the fuck would want to sing this garbage twice.

December 14th – Jelly Christmas (Jellyfish Entertainment) – Love Fireplace

You might think wood fires are all cozy and warm and in keeping with the Christmas spirit but did you know that wood heaters totally fuck the environment right up the ass?  The town of Launceston in Tasmania, Australia is small with a population of around 100,000 people yet it was one of Australia’s most polluted cities years ago purely because of wood heating.  The town actually managed to improve their air quality by 40% and prevent approximately 30 pollution-related deaths per year solely by getting rid of the fucking wood burners in people’s houses.  Burning wood might smell nice, but we westerners with our Internets and fast-paced societies rely on trees to absorb all the toxic shit we spew out into the world during our mad rush to consume every last natural resource ever, and when you burn the wood you release that same crap back out into the atmosphere and before you know it toxic chemicals like benzene, formaldehyde and benzo-a-pyrene are all up in your body giving you terminal ass cancer.  Korean MV directors of course don’t care about any of this, because environment be damned there’s money to be made, and maybe you don’t care either because maybe you’re an old fuck like me who is probably going to die before the real global environment-related shit starts hitting the fan – but you’re still welcome to hate this song just because the music sucks.

December 14th – Lee Moonsae, Roy Kim ft Hanhae – This Christmas

How much does this Christmas song suck dick?  Let us count the ways:

• “Happy Christmas, yo” intro
• Refusal of any of the artists to actually physically appear in the MV because they don’t want to die of embarrassment
• Lyrics appearing on screen karaoke-style just to drive it home that this is as thoughtlessly-made as the average karaoke video
• Christmas decorations hiding polluted cityscapes in the background
• Robots seriously wtf
• Roy Kim
• Obligatory rap verse
• Boring mid-paced pop/funk like everything these days

Verily, it doth suck a golf ball through a garden hose.

December 17th – UV – Roasted Clam

I’ve never been able to work out why this is the case, but there’s a big tradition in Australia of eating prawns… at Christmas time only.  (Not “shrimp” – Paul Hogan’s iconic “shrimp on the barbie” line was made purely for tourist export – Australians don’t call them shrimp and we very rarely barbeque them because the little fucking things are fiddly as shit and they tend to fall down the gaps in the barbeque grill and it’s equally as difficult to get them to stay put on a skewer.  We don’t drink stupid Fosters beer either – EVER.)   Maybe it’s only because we can afford the expensive little shits once per year, or maybe it’s because fresh shriPRAWNS are only in season in Australia in December and the imported off-season dodgy-as-fuck frozen slave labour ones taste like shit in a can.  I honestly have no idea of the true reason.  However, what I can tell you for sure is that the moment in UV’s “Roasted Clam” at 1:08 where one of the guys on the group pretends that the prawn is his fucking shriveled tiny cock is not only the most Christmas-like moment of this video, but in all of k-pop Christmas MV making since people began making them.  It really warmed the soul to see this touching moment and it could only have been made better if the song was something cool from UV instead of the usual Christmas ballad trash we’ve all heard before a million times.

December 17th – Dickpunks – Remember You

I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but Christmas in Korea is primarily thought of as a “couples holiday” where people who are partnered up use the time to buy each other shit, go for long walks in the park, propose marriage, and generally act all sweet and nice to each other in public.  Human garbage like the worthless scum who comment on Nate and Naver (and that international k-pop fans think the opinion of these dullards is oh-so-relevant even though what’s being translated is basically the Korean equivalent of YouTube comments) can’t stand this of course, because it reinforces their own loneliness – none of them could hold down a relationship to save themselves because no rational human being would date someone as revolting as a Korean netizen.  Dickpunks illustrate the plight of one such netizen who goes out and buys gifts for his crush, which she really enjoys… until the end of the video where she tells him that she discovered he upvoted comments on Nate about how he was disappointed in IU, upon which she rightly scorns him and fades out of his life.  The lesson: all the money, flowers and jewelry in the world can’t buy you love if you’re a netizen fuckhead, because nobody wants to date a cyberbullying piece of shit.  Just so netizens globally actually do sit through all of this video and absorb this important message, Dickpunks have been careful to make the music as boring and middle-of-the-road as possible so it would appeal to their crappy ultra-conservative music taste and thus keep them watching, which is very thoughtful and clever.

December 20th – April – Snowman

Oh look it’s the group with that girl in it younger than Dani but who nobody complains about or calls DSP’s CEO a pedo over even though in this video all the girls are in bed together like some creepy underage lesbian porn.  I guess k-pop fans will let it slide because they only like to cyberbully young girls when it’s trendy… and the trend of bullying April hasn’t really kicked off yet (give it time).  Obviously this song is shit but it’s actually better than everything else on this list, probably because musically it’s just like any other boring average dull k-pop girl song rather than going for the typical shithouse carolesque melodies or super-soft balladeering that has sunk every other song on this list deep down into the bottom of the tinsel barrel of stale jizz.

December 23rd – BTS – Run (Christmas version)

Fuck it, why even try?  BTS have the right idea.  It’s only some imported shitty holiday, nobody cares – just throw a fucking Santa hat on, sing your latest comeback again and call it a Christmas version this time.  BTS did this one so quickly and thoughtlessly that they didn’t even bother to adjust their reindeer antlers so they fit properly.  Fans of BTS will love this as you get all up close and personal with the members to the point where you can pretty much reach out with a tissue and wipe off their 23 excess layers of BB cream, plus you get to see them act all “spontaneous” and “fun” in that k-pop agency rubber-stamped way which doesn’t involve any actual spontaneity or fun but long-time Kpopalypse readers should be educated enough by now to accept that these things don’t actually exist for k-pop employees in 2015.  The song is strictly average all the way, with nothing whatsoever notable about it, which puts it in exactly the same boat as the April song, and the only reason why I like the April song maybe about 0.00001% more is that I didn’t already hear it and get bored of it a month ago.

December 23rd – Secret – 2015 Christmas message

I don’t usually include these stupid Christmas message things in these lists but this one has a dance at the end and damn they look better in it than they have at any time since “Shy Boy“.  Now all someone just needs to do is give them a decent song again one day.  I guess TS Entertainment missed the opportunity to give then the Christmas gift of music that doesn’t suck, so maybe they can save that particular present for one of the girls’ birthdays.

December 23rd – Chris Jung – Sad Christmas

Why try indeed.  Chris Jung doesn’t give a fuck about spending any money at all and has just thrown a snow filter over some postcards, yay cunt.  Notably Seoul isn’t a very highly featured city in the postcards, I guess this guy doesn’t want people to know where he lives and that’s fair enough, I’d be in hiding too after releasing crap like this into the world.  If one of these cities gets nuked in the near future, you know why – they were looking for Chris Jung and playing process of elimination.

December 23rd – In The Moon – Christmas Rain (Love Me Tonight)

In this video for this absolutely generic and standard ballad that sounds like just every other ballad everywhere ever, the female protagonist does the following:

• Walks to the top of a very small (paved) hill and spins around a bit, going “wow it’s a hill!  Isn’t nature grand!”
• Plays team sports without any of the right equipment, or anyone to play with
• Looks at cheap $2 glass crystals hanging in a store and smiles like they’re the most fascinating thing ever
• Waits at a train station grinning at nothing like that autistic guy who is always on the train you catch
• Wanders around in the snow like she’s never seen snow before (okay this one would be normal if she lived where I do)

These seem like unusual activities however people experienced in dealing with drug users will tell you that they are pretty standard behaviours for people who are baked out of their fucking skull.  I think I’ve just found Korea’s equivalent of Stoner Sloth.  In any event I’m pretty sure I know what’s in that box she’s holding at the end.

December 24th – Nine Muses – Santa Baby

You can always tell the Christmas videos that agencies have left to the very last minute to create not just by their release date but also because the music videos are consistently lazy as fuck.  Believe it or not this is the official music video on the Nine Muses channel and not a fanmade fap picture collection.  They didn’t even bother to fix the fucking aspect ratio on half of these pictures, diluting both the professionalism and the fap value significantly.  This makes Star Empire the k-pop agency version of that idiot you live with who got himself an amazing new widescreen TV and craps on and on about the amazing picture quality and what a great investment the TV was but is too dim to notice everything’s all squished and couldn’t be bothered taking the five seconds to learn how to use his expensive new toy that he’s so fucking proud of well enough to fix the issue.  I know that this song is a cover of some supermarket-background-music trash but I just wanted to end this list with some hot girls.  Don’t judge me… well, okay you can if you want (and no doubt will) but I don’t care.

That’s the end of the Kpopalypse Christmas roundup for another year, merry Christmas to all!  Hopefully you enjoyed this list, and hopefully you were smart enough to not click on any of the videos!  The Christmas roundup will return in 2016!

Hi everyone, I’m busy preparing my end of year lists which are a massive huge undertaking of literary diarrhoea, so I haven’t had time to do any other posts, but here’s a very quick one that I put together to tide you over.  Caonimas have been asking me my “thoughts” about a lot of songs, and the following post will cover some “thoughts” on a bunch of 2015 songs that people have asked me about a lot this year but that WON’T be in the top or bottom 30, just so you know what I think of them and so you don’t have to keep asking.

Some of these songs are already covered in the Kpopalypse roundup series, but hey that’s okay I don’t mind revisiting them just for you lovely readers.  The list is in alphabetical order, is feature tracks only and was constructed as fast and thoughtlessly as possible in a couple of spare hours.  Read on and be entertained (maybe).

WARNING: lots of videos!  Read this post on a device that has some display-juice!

Anda – Touch

Formerly known as Andamiro, this is one of the most out-there commercial k-pop songs ever, both musically and visually.  The very smart visuals are probably wasted on a k-pop audience, if they can’t even understand IU’s “Twenty-three” they’ve got no hope with this one.

Apink – Remember

Remember kids: just like k-pop singers don’t get a choice what to sing, k-pop composers don’t get a choice what to write (if they want their creations to be used, that is).  Shinsadong Tiger is clearly commissioned specifically to write cutesy crap for Apink, and he struggles to make writing the same song over and over again interesting just as much as we struggle to listen to it.

April – Dream Candy

They did something really weird to the beat of this where a snare drum just sort of pops out in the totally wrong place in the chorus, like a dislocated knee during a k-pop dance.  Now that I’ve pointed it out to you, you won’t be able to stop yourself from hearing it and getting irritated by it.  Isn’t discovering new things on Kpopalypse blog fun!

The Ark – The Light

Super average.  A lot of people liked the voices but those chorus vocal tracks are layered about ten fucking times, your mum would sound like a top singer too under those conditions.

Bambino – Oppa Oppa

I like Bambino’s “idgaf we’ll show our tits and ass if we want to” attitude but the song itself is a big let-down.  They didn’t even bother with a proper MV for this but just went straight to the fancams and didn’t collect $200 or pass Bom, which was probably the right decision.

B.A.P – Young, Wild & Free

“Slightly older, tamed and back under our record label’s clutches” would be a more accurate title for this, but I guess that wouldn’t flow as well in the chorus.  At least they’re back to the rock sound which I’m sure will only last until TS Entertainment makes them clone a One Direction song again.

Beat Win – Stalker

I dunno about that chorus but the rest is alright.  Do girls really like suspenders and undone bow ties on men?  Let me know, female readers!

BESTie – Excuse Me

BESTie is Hyeyeon, and everybody who is not Hyeyeon.  How the fuck did she even get in a group, her look completely screams out “not k-pop girl group material”.  That must be why I like her the most.  I see what you did there, BESTie’s agency.

BoA – Lookbook

I’m not wild about it but it’s still the best song of BoA’s for a while, as good as “Only One” or “The Shadow“.  Apparently BoA is quite the power-player behind the scenes at SM so I imagine she keeps the better features for herself, she’s probably partly responsible for handing SNSD the scraps they got this year.

B1A4 – Sweet Girl

Old-school 70s funk that sounds like it was lifted from the “Jackie Brown” soundtrack… except not as good.  Oh well, nice try boys.

BTS – Dope

BTS consistently refuse to do another “War Of Hormone”, I guess now that they’re popular they don’t need decent songs anymore, they just need to maintain their position so they can get CF deals.  Oh well, business is business.

ChoA – Flame

Generic k-pop ballad #589213.  ChoA looks great in the video though, pity she’s in it for all of five seconds.  Having a boring-looking stand-in in the video for a hot female’s solo song will forever be known as being “Eunjung’ed”, as ChoA’s video is a missed opportunity for male fanservice as harsh as Eunjung’s “I’m Good“.

CLC – Pepe

Sorn sure looks strange, is it because of her youth, her styling, an illusion because she’s a Thai in a video with a bunch of Korean girls, or is she in fact the little sister of the Pale Man from “Pan’s Labyrinth“?  Whatever the case, she’s the only thing notable about CLC in general so far, or their songs.

DIA – Somehow

Flavor Flav’s k-pop debut sounds okay I guess but I expected harder beats, G.

EXID – Ah Yeah

Pretty much the same thing as “Up & Down” but with a better chorus and a worse everything else.

EXO – Call Me Baby

I guess they must be on good terms with their ex-members after all as none of the other members of EXO could afford cars like that on their incomes so they probably hit Kris and Luhan up for a rental.

Fiestar – You’re Pitiful

If you got every single k-pop girl group song over the last five years, stuck them all into a pot, mixed them all up and then created a fresh song from the results, it would sound a lot like this.

Girl’s Day – Hello Bubble

Girl’s Day continue their run of shitty songs, I miss the “Don’t Forget Me” days.  At least Minah actually looks like Minah this time and not a wax dummy like in her solo song.

Girls’ Generation – Lion Heart

SNSD’s best song in three years has a great chorus but everything else around it is a total waste of time – except the girls themselves who look astonishing in the drama cuts where they have never been styled better, they even managed to make Yoona look non-boring, what sorcery is this.  A rare instance where one of those “loop the chorus for 10 hours” YouTube videos could improve a song significantly.

GOT7 – Just Right

Don’t kid yourself about this group flopping, they are exactly where JYP want them, cleaning up endorsements everywhere which is exactly the point of debuting a k-pop group, not charts, awards or any of that other nonsense.  That girl in the video is going to grow up and get super mad at her parents for letting her meet k-pop idols before she got to an age where she could appreciate it.

Hyuna – Roll Deep

Hyuna has come down with a case of the yolos.  Let’s pray for her speedy recovery.

iKON – Rhythm Ta

YG promoted two boy bands, WINNER and iKON, on some stupid competition show of theirs and when WINNER won everyone complained that iKON were better.  So YG are now promoting iKON to make it up to you all and of course everyone complains that they’re not promoting WINNER.  K-pop fans – can’t keep ’em happy, can’t shove ’em face first into a meat grinder.

iKON – Airplane

Sure it’s average but if this was a BigBang song I bet you all would be loving it.

iKON – Dumb & Dumber

No really, you would.  These songs pretty much ARE BigBang songs anyway in all but name so you might as well consume them as such.

Infinite – Bad

This song has cool synth strings at the start but the song doesn’t really stick with them, adding a lot of other detail which makes the overall structure suffer a bit, a shame as this could have been as good as some of their other better material.  As it stands it’s close but no cigar.

IU – Twenty-three

I wanted to stan this just as much as anybody, but I didn’t like it musically at all.  I would say “the lyrics are too ham-fisted and obvious” but I’ll retract that since so many dumb k-pop fans laughably misunderstood it as a pedophilia endorsement.  Clearly IU didn’t make her intentions (critiquing her former image, and the uncle fans who fetishised it/her) obvious enough, even though I struggle to think how she could have made them any MORE obvious.

JYP – Who’s Your Mama?

Boram, but that’s besides the point.  JYP is a pervert just as much as Jay Park is, those two should really kiss and make up seeing as they have so much in common.

KARA – Cupid

Apparently there’s rumours of this group disbanding, and while I don’t believe rumours I can see why such rumous would come up after a song of such averageness emerged.  The “C-U-P-I-D” breakdown bit is the only unusual thing about this “2015 k-pop by numbers” tune.

KARA – Summergic

KARA have run out of steam to such an extent that their Japanese label couldn’t even be bothered removing their Japanese songs from YouTube every two minutes of every day like every other Japanese label ever.  Still, this is easily the best Japan-only KARA song out there.

Lim Kim – Love Game

Holy shit a k-pop song with some actual fucking pace, I think I’m going to faint.  There weren’t too many of these this year.

Mamamoo – Um Oh Ah Yeh

Yeh nah.  Lame mid-paced vocal-showoff nonsense only redeemed by one of the girls being in a maid uniform, I probably would have forgotten this group even existed if not for that.

MAP6 – Storm

One of the better boy group songs this year.  Actually has some dynamic contrast, a rare thing in k-pop.

miss A – Only You

Min’s boobs are the only reason to watch this, but they’re a good reason.  Those boys with the binoculars have the right idea, they can see everything but they’re in the apartment across the street, far away enough for the dull music to not be audible to them.

Monsta X – Rush

That brassy duck-quacking synth line is a really big thing in k-pop right now.  I keep watching that concrete X above their heads and being worried about it falling.  We know how careless these companies are about their stage rigging, if I were this group I’d be concerned.

Nell – Lost In Perspective

Excited by life?  Looking forward to the day?  Look out, here comes a song by Korea’s Coldplay to help that depression and listlessness ease gently back into your life.

Seventeen – Mansae

Do you have any idea how much this group would have cost to debut?  I’d like to be as “broke” as Pledis supposedly are.

SHINee – View

Not exactly amazing, but I’ll take “listenable” as a substitute, at least it’s not another dubstep song thank christ.

Sunny Days – Blah Blah

The cutting of this is at such T-ara-level speeds that at first I couldn’t even work out which girl has the huge boobs.  After many freeze-frames I realised that she’s not in the group anymore.  Such a shame as I was really looking forward to the visuals of this.  Sure the music is just the usual Beyonce-clone rubbish but nobody cares about that – this is a Sunny Days video, we all know what we were hoping for.  I think I’m going to cry.

Super Junior – Devil

Super Junior without Shindong, what even is the point?  Look at the video closely, damn Siwon looks uncomfortable around all those girls at once.  I hope for his sake they kept their hands to themselves.

Teen Top – ah-ah

Hey everyone, Teen Top still exist and even had a song in 2015, who knew?  I guess there’s a pretty good reason why you haven’t heard of this one.

The Legend – Lost

The Legend are a nugu group that released 286 music videos this year, their agency must have money to burn.  “Lost” is by far the best one of their songs and is actually (a little bit) rocking.

Twice – Like ‘Ooh Ahh’

What’s that whistling noise at the start of the song?  It must be the MEH TRAIN pulling into the station.  An average song ruined with too much random chanting crap and JYP seemingly throwing everything into the mix at once.  Even the girls in the group look bland and nothingy, they all have that boring as fuck generic smoothed-over k-pop-star-101 look.  Also, how many times is k-pop going to copy T-ara’s “Lovey Dovey” zombie video idea?

24k – Super Fly

The duck synth in this song actually sounds a bit like a real duck.  That actually makes this song kinda cool.

2Eyes – Pippi

Another completely generic song with nothing notable about it, the chorus of this one sounds almost exactly like GLAM’s “I Like That” at half-speed.

2PM – My House

This dull acoustic-guitar-driven funk is a real letdown after some great songs from 2PM in 2014.  I guess they’re supposed to be “maturing” now or whatever nonsense, in a few years I guess they’ll be as boring as g.o.d.

Unicorn – Huk

At first I thought they just misspelled “Hug” but apparently “Huk” legit means something else, although I’m not sure what.  “Slightly above average but nothing special girly pop” perhaps.

VAV – Under The Moonlight

A lot of people complained about the voices because that’s all k-pop fans ever seem to care about, never mind if the actual song is any good, it’s all about technique to these fucking losers.  Sssh, don’t tell them that ALL k-pop groups sound exactly like this once you take their pitch-correction away.

VIXX – Chained Up

I wish these guys would stop copying VAV.

Wonder Girls – I Feel You

Sorry but an 80s pop song without a big 80s pop song chorus may as well not exist.  Also what a crime to kick Sohee out just before doing this concept, she’s the only person in the group who could actually pull off a look like this.  Maybe she can’t play instruments or whatever but someone could throw her a tambourine or something surely.

Yezi – Crazy Dog

The beat here is certainly better than the original, it’s actually a decent song now.  Pity 1theK won’t release an uncensored AND uninterrupted version.

ZPZG – AOAO

This song is pretty cool and I’m glad that k-pop groups are finally branching out and endorsing adult entertainment products, less sexual conservatism in k-pop is something that’s sorely needed.

That’s all for this post – the next two posts will be the favourites and worst songs of 2015!  Until then here’s picture of Seunghee holding a horse for no reason.