I mean I think the popularity of K-Pop Demon Hunters is maybe less the K-Pop thing and more that it's a competent children's movie and if there's one demographic known for watching things over and over more than pop music fans it's children 12 and under (and if you don't have any kids in your life there'd be no reason for you to know this)
This speaks to the ongoing shift from geographic imperialism to mental imperialism. Instead of conquering land and dividing up the spoils into artificial geographies, technocrats are conquering our minds and dividing us up by our interests and beliefs. Now the person beside you in the subway may as well be on another planet. Arguably this is a form of heterogenization, moving from the top 40 era/nyt besteller list to a new cultural mosaic. Or maybe like imperialism it will lead to several massive powers dominating a list of cultural microcosms. Either way kpop demon hunters is on loop at my place if anyone wants to come over.
What scares me almost as much as the silos themselves is the way popular media is presented. I read a lot of different genres, at varying levels of literary clout, sometimes knowing what I'm getting into sometimes not. I read It Begins with Us by Colleen Hoover. I didn't consider it high brow whatsoever but found it acceptable as a psychological/ domestic abuse thriller.
But, when I looked it up in the mainstream discourse, I came to learn it was marketed primarily as a romance. Excuse me??
What is baffling is that even when we are potentially "with it" in terms of what's popular, we may also be completely skewed in our understanding of why or how it's popular, or how in the world it landed in our laps. That's equally as frightening - that my sense of "Source" is no longer a willful, conscious choice.
It was a lot easier in the 80s when there was just Top 40 or Underground, and you could judge someone purely by that delineation. I don’t know anyone—of any age or sex—who listens to Beyoncé, yet she is the greatest recording artist of the era. And it goes beyond pop culture. When my son recently announced on our family group chat that Charlie Kirk had been shot, I replied, Who’s Charlie Kirk? I had no idea. I thought maybe it was somebody he knew from school, and I’ve got CNN (which is admittedly a lot of nothing) on every night.
Might I dare to imagine the thought that Taylor Swift's somewhat faded mega-popularity stemmed from a chronically hyper-extended cult fan base, amplified by editorial decisions in both the mainstream news media and the Power of Football (*shudder*) that were fueled by the promise of a percentage of lucrative merchandising deals.
I heard about K-Pop Demon Hunters from a girlfriend who is into K-Pop, but not a super fan of any particular group. She saw it the weekend it came out, and had a lot of good things to say about it. She also shared a couple of songs, which were fun and catchy and also kinda spoiled some of the plot, but oh well. 😂 And I didn’t watch it. My kid asked if we could get Netflix and watch it, and I said sure, but we’re a busy family and kept forgetting to actually do it. Then a couple weeks ago I went to see her (said kid) perform in the marching band at a high school football game. At one point pre-game they blasted Golden over the speakers, and I am not exaggerating even slightly when I say every kid in the bleachers knew EVERY WORD OF THE SONG. Even the Korean ones as far as I could tell!
So that weekend my kid and I watched it. And it’s pretty great. It’s a story about being there for friends in a time when it feels very difficult to maintain friendships, and about unifying messaging when that also feels very needed. It’s competent, and it’s also SHORT - whole story, ninety minutes, which is a dying art. Cute, the songs are catchy, it’s got some really funny bits.
I think it got there organically. But I also think if I didn’t have a K-pop loving girlfriend, and I wasn’t going to high school football games, it never would have hit my radar.
Yeah I've got to echo some other comments here: I am not at all into K-Pop, nor are my kids (8 and 11) but when K-Pop Demon Hunters hit the banner page on Netflix in the summer we naturally checked it out and I watched it with them... They LOVE it, and I genuinely do enjoy it quite a bit too; it's clever, funny, touching, and well-written, the main songs are absolute bangers and we karaoke the fuck out of them in the car, and I find the sentiment of the climatic moments of the film genuinely quite moving. Perfect popular entertainment. I would wager they have seen it a good twenty times, and I've probably joined them for ten (unlike most of the films they get obsessed with). I would put it up there with kids' media like Hilda, The Dragon Prince, Avatar: the Last Air Bender, The Owl House, Gravity Falls.... Things that are genuinely great and that parents can watch with them with real pleasure and appreciation....
(I just realised I said "genuinely" about eighteen times in that comment... Please replace all instances with "sincerely", "honestly", and "straight-up". I thank you)
As the father of a five year old girl I'd venture there is absolutely zero mystery (or need for astroturfing) around KPop Demon Hunters. It's a well-made kids movie that is available t a click on the 'Kids' tab of one of the world's largest streaming services, with incredibly catchy songs that are easy for the wee darlings to emulate. And judging by how hastily 'the merch' is being produced to meet demand (a demand that has so far, mostly been met by knock offs, as per my daughter's Rumi Halloween costume), I think the rise of KPop Demon Hunters is *relatively organic*.
The million dollar question: if and when Geese get a #1 album or single, will this be like a reverse K Pop Demon Hunters moment, where the counterculture wins and the K Pop Demons shrug? Or will them going #1 be enough for them to check it out and change their minds. Our side, the counterculture side, does not care about numbers and stats like that: we assume #1 is garbage on the charts. They are the opposite; they have this borderline autistic obsesssion with quantification. We'll see, if it happens, or if Geese is just another band in another planet I'm stranded on.
Like others here have said, I think this falls flat because everything you mentioned here is popular with kids. if you don’t have many kids in your life, you won’t know what they’re watching and listening to.
I thought avatar was for kids? idk, I remember seeing the first one as a kid?? I may be too disconnected from this stuff to make a definitive statement though tbh. And as someone who teaches kids how to play music, they are all obsessed with whatever genre twenty one pilots is… can’t tell you why 😭
it's hard to read this and not come to the conclusion that you just spilled hundreds, maybe thousands of words to say "I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary."
Watching K-pop demon hunters with my children, I did find Golden to be a banger… but just this morning realized that it’s probably that the backbeat reminds me of the 1980s aerobics sounding album Head First released by Goldfrapp in 2010.. but yeah, a lot of popular culture is dumbed down canned garbage these days
I mean I think the popularity of K-Pop Demon Hunters is maybe less the K-Pop thing and more that it's a competent children's movie and if there's one demographic known for watching things over and over more than pop music fans it's children 12 and under (and if you don't have any kids in your life there'd be no reason for you to know this)
This speaks to the ongoing shift from geographic imperialism to mental imperialism. Instead of conquering land and dividing up the spoils into artificial geographies, technocrats are conquering our minds and dividing us up by our interests and beliefs. Now the person beside you in the subway may as well be on another planet. Arguably this is a form of heterogenization, moving from the top 40 era/nyt besteller list to a new cultural mosaic. Or maybe like imperialism it will lead to several massive powers dominating a list of cultural microcosms. Either way kpop demon hunters is on loop at my place if anyone wants to come over.
What scares me almost as much as the silos themselves is the way popular media is presented. I read a lot of different genres, at varying levels of literary clout, sometimes knowing what I'm getting into sometimes not. I read It Begins with Us by Colleen Hoover. I didn't consider it high brow whatsoever but found it acceptable as a psychological/ domestic abuse thriller.
But, when I looked it up in the mainstream discourse, I came to learn it was marketed primarily as a romance. Excuse me??
What is baffling is that even when we are potentially "with it" in terms of what's popular, we may also be completely skewed in our understanding of why or how it's popular, or how in the world it landed in our laps. That's equally as frightening - that my sense of "Source" is no longer a willful, conscious choice.
....everything I'd seen about Hoover upon looking her up had led me to believe her works were all romance lol but yeah point taken
It was a lot easier in the 80s when there was just Top 40 or Underground, and you could judge someone purely by that delineation. I don’t know anyone—of any age or sex—who listens to Beyoncé, yet she is the greatest recording artist of the era. And it goes beyond pop culture. When my son recently announced on our family group chat that Charlie Kirk had been shot, I replied, Who’s Charlie Kirk? I had no idea. I thought maybe it was somebody he knew from school, and I’ve got CNN (which is admittedly a lot of nothing) on every night.
Might I dare to imagine the thought that Taylor Swift's somewhat faded mega-popularity stemmed from a chronically hyper-extended cult fan base, amplified by editorial decisions in both the mainstream news media and the Power of Football (*shudder*) that were fueled by the promise of a percentage of lucrative merchandising deals.
I heard about K-Pop Demon Hunters from a girlfriend who is into K-Pop, but not a super fan of any particular group. She saw it the weekend it came out, and had a lot of good things to say about it. She also shared a couple of songs, which were fun and catchy and also kinda spoiled some of the plot, but oh well. 😂 And I didn’t watch it. My kid asked if we could get Netflix and watch it, and I said sure, but we’re a busy family and kept forgetting to actually do it. Then a couple weeks ago I went to see her (said kid) perform in the marching band at a high school football game. At one point pre-game they blasted Golden over the speakers, and I am not exaggerating even slightly when I say every kid in the bleachers knew EVERY WORD OF THE SONG. Even the Korean ones as far as I could tell!
So that weekend my kid and I watched it. And it’s pretty great. It’s a story about being there for friends in a time when it feels very difficult to maintain friendships, and about unifying messaging when that also feels very needed. It’s competent, and it’s also SHORT - whole story, ninety minutes, which is a dying art. Cute, the songs are catchy, it’s got some really funny bits.
I think it got there organically. But I also think if I didn’t have a K-pop loving girlfriend, and I wasn’t going to high school football games, it never would have hit my radar.
Yeah I've got to echo some other comments here: I am not at all into K-Pop, nor are my kids (8 and 11) but when K-Pop Demon Hunters hit the banner page on Netflix in the summer we naturally checked it out and I watched it with them... They LOVE it, and I genuinely do enjoy it quite a bit too; it's clever, funny, touching, and well-written, the main songs are absolute bangers and we karaoke the fuck out of them in the car, and I find the sentiment of the climatic moments of the film genuinely quite moving. Perfect popular entertainment. I would wager they have seen it a good twenty times, and I've probably joined them for ten (unlike most of the films they get obsessed with). I would put it up there with kids' media like Hilda, The Dragon Prince, Avatar: the Last Air Bender, The Owl House, Gravity Falls.... Things that are genuinely great and that parents can watch with them with real pleasure and appreciation....
(I just realised I said "genuinely" about eighteen times in that comment... Please replace all instances with "sincerely", "honestly", and "straight-up". I thank you)
As the father of a five year old girl I'd venture there is absolutely zero mystery (or need for astroturfing) around KPop Demon Hunters. It's a well-made kids movie that is available t a click on the 'Kids' tab of one of the world's largest streaming services, with incredibly catchy songs that are easy for the wee darlings to emulate. And judging by how hastily 'the merch' is being produced to meet demand (a demand that has so far, mostly been met by knock offs, as per my daughter's Rumi Halloween costume), I think the rise of KPop Demon Hunters is *relatively organic*.
The million dollar question: if and when Geese get a #1 album or single, will this be like a reverse K Pop Demon Hunters moment, where the counterculture wins and the K Pop Demons shrug? Or will them going #1 be enough for them to check it out and change their minds. Our side, the counterculture side, does not care about numbers and stats like that: we assume #1 is garbage on the charts. They are the opposite; they have this borderline autistic obsesssion with quantification. We'll see, if it happens, or if Geese is just another band in another planet I'm stranded on.
Nothing is any good if other people like it lol
Like others here have said, I think this falls flat because everything you mentioned here is popular with kids. if you don’t have many kids in your life, you won’t know what they’re watching and listening to.
Avatar 2 and Red Notice though? Those seem like things for adults to me. Twenty One Pilots?
I thought avatar was for kids? idk, I remember seeing the first one as a kid?? I may be too disconnected from this stuff to make a definitive statement though tbh. And as someone who teaches kids how to play music, they are all obsessed with whatever genre twenty one pilots is… can’t tell you why 😭
it's hard to read this and not come to the conclusion that you just spilled hundreds, maybe thousands of words to say "I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary."
I don't think KPop Demon Hunters, nor Red Notice, nor Twenty-One Pilots, from my investigation, qualify as "with it"
Watching K-pop demon hunters with my children, I did find Golden to be a banger… but just this morning realized that it’s probably that the backbeat reminds me of the 1980s aerobics sounding album Head First released by Goldfrapp in 2010.. but yeah, a lot of popular culture is dumbed down canned garbage these days
Just more opportunities to be one of today's lucky 10k! (Maybe we need to adjust that number up a bit for art?)
https://xkcd.com/1053/