Kiwi Farms
(This is my first thread. Please forgive)
Usually when talking about the K-pop fandom, people simply think of screeching fangirls creaming themselves over feminine pretty boys and worshipping youthful female idols who may and may not have been under the knife a number of times before. Recently on Tumblr, however, it's become the next battleground for screeching about cultural appropriation.
K-pop is quite simply Korean pop music with heavy audiovisual elements, alongside widespread influences. The genre is pretty much a hybrid genre influenced by various types of music (hip-hop, R&B, electro) and then paired with extreme visual elements like fashionable outfits and dance routines. Idols are often trained heavily prior to debuting for anywhere from a handful of months to several years, and it is this strict training regimen that has been the point of controversy for the industry multiple times.
Enter: "All-American K-Pop Group" EXP Edition.
The idea that a bunch of white Americans decided to enter the K-pop industry and brand themselves a K-pop group got a number of panties in a twist. Reactions varied from rants about cultural appropriation and white privilege to rants about how they weren't 'legitimate K-pop' because they weren't trained under the system and how that was unfair for all the idols who did. (EXP Edition searched on Tumblr / archive.md for a snapshot of salt)
Tumblr managed to calm down very slightly on the EXP Edition upon hearing that it was actually a thesis project by a woman named Bora Kim on cultural appropriation and Asian perception of masculinity. That is, until Jaden Smith stepped in:
Cue: the saltfest. Unlike their reactions to EXP Edition, Tumblr managed to divide themselves on this piece of news (if it even is news). Posts were made ranting about cultural appropriation and unfairness (just like the EXP scenario), but there were also replies to these posts about how K-pop itself had culturally appropriated and 'stole from' black culture.
All in all, a decent amount of salt.
So what's to come? Who knows. If and when Jaden drops his single, and if and when the next non-Korean K-pop group comes out, we can only expect more salt and more "discourse" about cultural appropriation. And if it happens to be a non-white individual or group attempting to dip their hands into the industry, we can expect a lot more chimping out about all the above.
i secretly want it all to happen so tumblr can turn into a salt mine
Usually when talking about the K-pop fandom, people simply think of screeching fangirls creaming themselves over feminine pretty boys and worshipping youthful female idols who may and may not have been under the knife a number of times before. Recently on Tumblr, however, it's become the next battleground for screeching about cultural appropriation.
K-pop is quite simply Korean pop music with heavy audiovisual elements, alongside widespread influences. The genre is pretty much a hybrid genre influenced by various types of music (hip-hop, R&B, electro) and then paired with extreme visual elements like fashionable outfits and dance routines. Idols are often trained heavily prior to debuting for anywhere from a handful of months to several years, and it is this strict training regimen that has been the point of controversy for the industry multiple times.
Enter: "All-American K-Pop Group" EXP Edition.
The idea that a bunch of white Americans decided to enter the K-pop industry and brand themselves a K-pop group got a number of panties in a twist. Reactions varied from rants about cultural appropriation and white privilege to rants about how they weren't 'legitimate K-pop' because they weren't trained under the system and how that was unfair for all the idols who did. (EXP Edition searched on Tumblr / archive.md for a snapshot of salt)
Cue: the saltfest. Unlike their reactions to EXP Edition, Tumblr managed to divide themselves on this piece of news (if it even is news). Posts were made ranting about cultural appropriation and unfairness (just like the EXP scenario), but there were also replies to these posts about how K-pop itself had culturally appropriated and 'stole from' black culture.
All in all, a decent amount of salt.
So what's to come? Who knows. If and when Jaden drops his single, and if and when the next non-Korean K-pop group comes out, we can only expect more salt and more "discourse" about cultural appropriation. And if it happens to be a non-white individual or group attempting to dip their hands into the industry, we can expect a lot more chimping out about all the above.
i secretly want it all to happen so tumblr can turn into a salt mine