It’s time for QRIMOLE, the series where readers ask Kpopalypse questions! Let’s take a look at the mailbag for the last month!
Do you feel trapped with regards to balancing your coverage of kpop with discovering new music?
Like, it seems like you’ve explored a lot of genres fairly deeply, but once you started doing roundups that doesn’t leave a ton of time to get super knowledgable about other genres. Do you ever feel “married to kpop” in a bad way? Or does kpop legitimately still carry more interest than every other genre?
It certainly does take up a lot of time. It’s still interesting for all sorts of reasons. Yes it does take time away from discovering other stuff, but then other genres follow Sturgeon’s Law just as much as k-pop does. As long as I can continue to find good stuff wherever it may be, I’m okay with that. Also it’s been my k-pop readers who have in some cases turned me onto other non k-pop music that I’ve really liked, and I probably wouldn’t have discovered those things if it were not for my k-pop interest. So there’s that. Overall, no regrets.
Looking through the archives for a lark, and I was surprised at how edgy this page used to be. Do you think you’ve softened over the last 10 years? (P.S. For the love of Eunjung don’t stop posting, this page is my last connection to kpop since I developed a prefrontal cortex)
I honestly don’t think the writing here has ever been edgy. Australian humour is just blunt, and bluntness is the opposite of sharp edges! But I do agree that the writing style has changed and matured, as I have also changed and matured… or arguably not, as some might attest hahaha… but it’s certainly changed! It would honestly be a worry if I wrote now the same way that I wrote when I started, because it means that I wasn’t getting any better at writing after doing it for over a decade, which would be weird.
Don’t worry, no intention to stop posting!
My friends decided to make a music and upload it on spotify for fun, none of us know shit about music in general. Like, if you showed any of us a musical symbol, we probably wouldn’t even know what it meant. Speaking for myself, the only things I know about music are things that I’ve learned on Internet, so y’know my musical knowledge is basically 0. But I like to write songs for fun, and one of my friends said “oh, it would be cool if we made a kpop group and released songs on Spotify” (none of us is Korean btw), so we decided to do so. We have the lyrics and the “composition” (or the closest we can get to it) and a friend that knows how to play violin and knows music theory and said that he could do all the production, but he’s charging too much for us to paid, and even if we had the money we wouldn’t pay for a song that probably 5 people will listen. So what’s the basic of music theory and music in general that I have to know so I can produce for free instead of losing $205?
(Sorry, English isn’t my first language! Also, the genre we’re going for is R&B.)
You should find that this series covers you pretty well. Don’t worry about not having talent, you’re making R&B which is pretty much a talent-free zone in 2026.
Best bald artist?
Kpopalypse of course. He’s a great writer and author and very sexy and talented and especially modest.
I don’t think you talk about your girlfried alot, but i am pretty curious about her music taste, a metalhead? a punk? an industrial clubber? noisenik? jazzist? I know u said she didnt care for kpop but whar else?
She likes a lot of things but she was involved in the goth scene back in the day and her favourite music is old school goth music. Bauhaus, Christian Death, Sisters Of Mercy, The Cure, etc.
I don’t talk about her a great deal because I signed up for this k-pop writing ultra-low-level fame thing whereas she didn’t. She gives no fucks about your k-pop faves.
Hey it’s the kisshuhua blog dude again. Is my tumblr blogsite glitchy bullshit. I feel like it is. Also by now I’ve put out a list of music videos I think are strange and wanna know what you think of my opinions
I could not find the list that you are referring to. I saw lots of “music review delivery” but I don’t think that’s what you mean? It was a little weird to navigate (I used desktop, never my phone) but not too bad. I quite like the look of it actually.
Wanna know what’s worse than finding out the seemingly normal bottle of coke is sugar free? The song you have to perform being sugar free. What do you think of that t-ara song presently in 2026 assuming this lives to make it to nov qrimole and any opinions from before that I couldn’t find somehow have changed enough to warrant a reply
Sugar Free is a great song. I’m addict.
I personally think a good song genuinely needs brass to make my musical boner stick up at all. What’s your opinion on brass heavy songs line ah yeah by exid or so good so bad by mxfruit or like literally anything form K-pop’s early-mid 2010s because most of those years hits were Christian horse girl or sax-jerkoff tournaments
A lot of the time it doesn’t work for me because they lean into it too much because it was a trending sound rather than using it to enhance the song. Occasionally they get it right. Orange Caramel’s “My Copycat” is a great example of a song leaning into the trendy sax riffs of the time successfully.
But if you want my opinion of early 2010s music in general, just use the site search bar to search “favourite” (with the u) and you’ll find my favourite song lists for each year.
Pick any of your favorite girl groups and make a JAV code out of the letter than starts the group name then pick a debut date and make a number out of that for the code and let me know if it works and if it does send send pls lypse
This question had too much math for me to handle. I feel like Eunice from Girls909 trying to do her forgotten algebra assignment.
this observation about girl group fans being fairweather/hype beasts/frontrunners true? idk, but you’re way more “in the weeds” than me so maybe you know?
It’s absolutely true that “pre-debut stans” exist. If there ever was anything that proves that many people who are into k-pop don’t give a single shit about music, it’s the existence of the “pre-debut stan”, the person who pledges allegiance to a group before they know what any of the songs sound like. If music was a consideration, the “pre-debut stan” would simply be an impossibility. (The videomaker knows this too, and gives a nod to this at 0:53). Following k-pop groups for a lot of people is more about social connection, feeling included, feeling like they’re part of something bigger… that’s why “flops” is such an insult for people, because if a group isn’t doing well, it stops satisfying those criteria. It’s also why so many people are secretly bothered by my reviews. If I don’t support “the club”, what if they get less popular? For me personally, the only thing on the line is music quality. For many k-pop fans, it’s their whole social world.
your thoughts on my observation?
i think i figured out aegyo. to be able to do it, you have to have no sense of shame. it’s usually involves adult women acting like small children.
I found this instruction manual article, clearly written by adult women for other adult women. it is very well done with good art work to illustrate as examples!
it’s very much like the “debauchery arms race” of online sex workers, like in 2024 when lily phillips and bonnie blue were trying “out ho” each other with the amount of men they could have involved in a photographed train pull.
everything goes back to women commodifying themselves as a business transaction. why do women do aegyo? to convince men to open their wallets.
Was with you until the last paragraph. Not everything is as simple and binary as horrible manosphere online content makes it seem. Maybe the aegyo isn’t about getting men to spend, maybe some women want to do it because other men who they’re already with just like it and they like pleasing their man? Or perhaps other women like it and they like pleasing other women? Or they themselves like it and they couldn’t give a shit about pleasing anyone and just want to feel “cute” or something?
In fact I don’t even think the Lily Phillips/Bonnie Blue clit-measuring contest was about money either, I feel like that one’s just about the same sort of status bullshit stuff that anybody trying to break a world record in anything feels. But I can’t throw stones as I’m not immune to it. I’d like to think that I can break the world record for the most bullshit post on a k-pop website one day.
Does a hit still count as a conservative hit if it comes out 15 years before the artist comes out as conservative? Do you think art is more separated from the artist in Kpop where most of the performers aren’t writing the songs? Is Sorry Sorry a conservative hit? Inspired by this {some video of some j-pop that I don’t care about because I’m not jpopalypse, shown as an example of “incorrect” to the statement “republicans can’t make a hit song“}
I don’t really care about “conservative hits” or whatever. Good songs can come from anywhere and that includes any political persuasion.
In k-pop there’s still an artist, it’s just usually not the person who you’re looking at who’s performing the song on the video. The idol is more of a “crafter” bringing to life the art that someone else imagined.
Siwon is only one person in Super Junior. In The Ramones, Joey was left-wing and Johnny was right-wing, so does that make The Ramones “centrist”? Or more left-wing because Joey is the singer? Or more right-wing because The Ramones probably wouldn’t have even toured without Johnny whipping Joey into line? These ideas fall apart when you start thinking about them too hard.
“Yunjin reflected on her adjusting to Korean culture after first moving to Korea when she responded with “okay” to her dance teacher, which isn’t the correct way to acknowledge that you understand to your elders:
“So, like in Korea, responding and acknowledging that you understood what the other person said is very important and it shows respect, but when I first moved here, I was not as aware of that.
I remember our dance teacher at the time had said something, and I responded “Okay.” She goes, “What did you say to me?” and I was like, “What? What do you mean?” She’s like, “You do not say okay to your teacher. Am I American?” and I was like, “Oh my god, I am so sorry.”
From then on it was just like, okay was super, super casual and not formal at all whatsoever. I learned that the hard way, never use “okay” to your elders.””
What do you think? I feel this east Asian culture respect hierarchy thing being baked into the language prob gets abused by ppl who like to power trip? Eg reminds me of Middle Manager Syndrome, Reddit moderators or Karens abusing retail/hospo staff.
It’s an interesting question, but you couldn’t have picked a worse person to ask. As someone who is both Australian where we pretty much have a “reverse respect” culture, plus neurodivergent up the ass, plus not living in Korea, I would struggle to even detect the sort of obstacle Yunjin is talking about let alone react appropriately. But yes it does make sense to me at least on paper that such systems would get abused a lot, however I really don’t know how far that plays out in reality. Just people using these systems in exactly the way they’re intended to be used would be egregious enough on its own from my perspective.
What’s better and do you think so, the original or the sort of remake (really just the chorus)?
sort of remake (Laibach’s version)
Laibach are very good at cover versions and twisting them to suit the kind of thing that they do. However I don’t think this is their strongest cover. I also don’t think much of the song anyway, but I’d rather hear it Laibachified than the fairly generic nu-metal type sound of the original.
What do you think that my subconscious is trying to tell me?
In a dream I watched a social media video where some gay man influencer was complaining about a make up thing. I copied the link to on ask oppar, saying “why are they using a made up name for the colour? Why can’t they just be normal and say it was a shade of white?”
In same dream, outdoor restaurant patrons tried to break into my flat to escape the rain.
Stan Chuu.
hiii oppar i know you like Pinkpantheress and i was wondering whether you have any opinions on this song she produced for Say Now?
I am not Westernpopalypse, but this is a miss for me. Like most singers who are also producers, she saves her best songs for herself!
have you noticed that there seem to be kpop groups who rely almost entirely on international markets? TripleS, Artms, Kard, Dreamcatcher + UAU come to mind.
i suppose if korean fans of those groups want more attention then they should open their wallets more?
(that was a consistent complaint with Loona, i recall: korean market didn’t give AF about them.) why do more than the bare minimum to promote in markets which don’t GAF about you? eg korean domestic.
Yes I have noticed this. It’s one of the effects of Korean pop groups aiming globally, sometimes something will take off more in foreign markets. This is by design. Sure they’d like the Korean market too but the Korean market is small and crowded, not everyone can be that lucky so it makes sense to stretch the net as far as you can and hope something lands. Each fanbase you build in another country is another thing that supports your activity. It’s not just k-pop. I know fellow Australian musicians who are huge in Europe but virtually unknown at home.
hello oppar! I don’t understand why you keep saying QWER is feminist, is it a joke or you’re hinting at another layer I’m not getting?
QWER are feminist. I’ve covered this before in various places but I’ll reiterate for you.
Firstly, they’re a girl rock band who actually play their instruments, and even taught each other how to play instruments. Just being girls in a rock band alone is a feminist action, just ask my old radio station who had a “female airplay quota”, where a certain amount of music played on the station was required to be bands with at least one principal female member (so lead vocals, guitars, keys, drums, bass, etc all counted as a principal member, but backing singers did not, as backing singers werre considered a “designated place for females” in a lot of 70s and 80s rock music and rarely part of the band). That female airplay quota was added to deliberately counter mainstream rock radio in my town which was historically about 2% female artists.
Secondly, Chodan knows how to fight, and she fights men often. The boxing compilation of her beating the shit out of men that I used in my bias list post isn’t even the longest one of her doing exactly that on YouTube. She has good technique too, she’s not just cosplaying, she clearly works hard at it.
Thirdly, she’s friends with another avowed feminist, i-dle’s Soyeon. We all know Soyeon is a feminist. Do you think those two would collab together or even associate with each other if they were wildly opposed on gender politics?
Fourthly, and this is the big one – she bitches about other feminists and calls them insane. This is probably the strongest indicator that she is a feminist. If there’s one thing that feminists really don’t like at all, it’s other feminists. Manosphere grifters try to pit men against feminists all the time, but the real gender war isn’t between feminists and men, it’s between feminists and other feminists. Example: both trans-exclusive radical feminists (TERFs) and trans-inclusive radical feminists (erm… TIRFs?) believe that they are the one true representation of feminism, and that the other side really isn’t feminism at all. And that’s just one example, I could give you more. And I will. There’s also fierce debate between pro-porn and anti-porn feminists over which stance is more feminist and which side are a bunch of frauds. There’s also debate over whether traditional Muslim attire constitutes oppression of women (men fetishising women and forcing women to wear certain things) or women’s freedom (women combating against the male gaze). There’s also debate over whether bikinis are oppression (pandering to male preferences for revealing attire) or freedom (women showing pride and confidence in their body). I could keep going. That’s why feminists write all those books and in any bookstore with a gender studies section there’s shelves and shelves of books on feminism in particular – feminists can’t agree with each other on what feminism is and isn’t and they tend to fight all the time about these issues and many others. Feminism means different things to different people and it’s not a settled debate by any means. So for Chodan to get so passionate about feminists on her old uni campus means she’s probably been part of these debates, or had to deal with these people often, which means that she IS a feminist, because it’s generally feminists rubbing other feminists the wrong way on campus, and people who aren’t feminists don’t tend to even get involved in any of this shit.
The Artist Formerly Known As Viviz, first performance under the new agency.
If they’re performing the old songs, does this mean that they acquired those rights, but just not the old group name? How do things usually get resolved?
I think Highlight had to wait until the copyright was left to lapse to get Beast back, many years later.
I can’t see any contracts so I can’t give you a definitive answer, but generally speaking here’s how it works:
As far as songs go, these are usually outsourced to songwriters who wrote them and therefore own the rights, k-pop songwriters are usually not “in-house” with the agency. Songwriters are legally allowed to prohibit live performances of songs that they wrote, but they usually don’t do this, because that would be dumb. They are generally happy to let groups perform their songs, because live performance royalties are paid from venues to the songwriters via royalty collection agencies every time there’s a performance of that song. Even if the songwriter then sells the rights to that song to someone else (like big evil agency X) then often the agency will still let the performance go ahead because the agency still gets the money for basically doing nothing. Royalties go to rights-holders of the songs, not the performers.
As for the group name, that’s usually something that’s thought up by the agency and part of their branding, so the group of individuals may not own any rights or claim to it. Of course this can be disputed, the group can fight this in court if they want and try to lay claim to it, and sometimes that works, but sometimes it doesn’t. This is a murky area and there’s no strict legal precedent here.
I dont feel like living anymore. I don’t think anyone wants me anywhere I have nothing I’m passionate about I don’t want to put effort into anything everything feels tiring living at home feels suffocating I just wanted to tell someone this
and
hi kpopalypse, do you have any tips on how to cope with suicidal thoughts/urges? generally speaking my go to has always been distracting myself with music but lately that hasn’t really been enough, and because of the fact that i live in an african country and mental health is very taboo and misunderstood reaching out has been hard especially since my mother is a semi functioning alcoholic who’s struggling with her own issues and my dad is just not an option anymore honestly it’s perfectly fine if you don’t answer this since it’s sort of weirdly personal and emotional for no reason but it would be nice if you did, sorry for the poor quality writing english is my second language
Better English usage than half the questions here tbqh… anyway, firstly, don’t do it! There’s always another roundup to stay alive for. Also, distraction I think is a valid tactic. If that’s not working that well, don’t underestimate talking to a doctor. If talking to a doctor is too taboo because of society reasons, I’ve always found that keeping myself busy with creative shit works really well. Creative doesn’t have to mean life-changing art or whatever if you’re not artistic, just something that you enjoy and can get involved in and get better at as you go. The urge to suicide lessens a lot when you have something really important that you just want to do. And then when you finish it, start the next thing. Also it seems cheesy probably but do make use of those free suicide help line phone things, don’t feel weird about using that stuff, there are people on the other end of those who are literally just paid to listen to you and that alone can help out a lot. Sometimes all you need is someone to talk things out with. Plus they have experience talking to people in your situation (and there are a LOT of those, trust me I know as I get at least one question from someone going through it most months) so they can often point you in better directions than some asshole like me can who really isn’t qualified to tell you shit. Good luck!
opinions on ethel cain? my favorite album of hers is preacher’s daughter or perverts and I’ve always wondered what you’d think of her music especially her 15 minute track titled waco,texas it would be great to see your opinions on that song or vacillator from the perverts album though i doubt you’d actually like them.
Can’t remember if I’ve heard of Ethel Cain before or not. Didn’t find anything particularly wrong with it, just found it pretty boring. Maybe I would have liked it when I was thirteen or something as it’s pretty angsty and so was I back then, but it doesn’t hit these days.
Hi kpopalypse english isn’t my first language so forgive me if i structure my sentences awkwardly but I’ve always had a big interest in music especially in singing but since i was very young I’ve always been told that i have an awful voice something which really ruined my confidence and has made it really hard for me to even think of singing even when im alone. This paired with the fact that my sisters are very naturally talented singers with great voices and that my voice is much deeper than most other girls my age and seems to be slightly damaged due to a lot of screaming/screeching and shouting has made me sort off give up on singing and all of this is to say do you think it’s possible for someone with a seemingly naturally unpleasant voice to become a great vocalist? or should i just give up on it? also unrelated but my dad randomly decided to stop my piano and guitar lessons and has been blatantly ignoring me begging to have them back do you think it would just be better for me to try and teach myself or should i continue pushing to get them back?
Why not do both. And also try to get a singing teacher while you’re at it. Or if you can’t get one, try and get others to help you. There’s plenty of people who can sing and there’s also lots of free materials. Don’t worry if other people say you’re shit, that doesn’t matter, half of the k-pop idols are too. If BTS’s Jimin can have a career as a singer and make megabucks then you can at least sing with confidence, so just do it.
what’s ur letterboxd top4??
I don’t know what this shit means.
Kpopalypse-oppar! What is the best rock and best metal band ever?
Caramel Candid and Lovebites. This answer subject to change whenever I feel like it.
do you believe in this conspiracy theory?
the remaining Japanese members of Madein are basically slaves to 143 Entertainment. they’re fucked because the agency is holding onto their passports.
(we can confirm that creeper CEO is still at the company, at least.)“I found evidence that Lee Yong-hak (also known as Digital Masta) was no longer being described as 143 Entertainment’s CEO by December 2025. I haven’t found reliable evidence that he is still employed by, owns, or exercises control over the company.
There is an important distinction here: resigning as CEO does not necessarily prove that someone has severed all business or ownership ties.
Here are the most useful sources I found.
## Strongest evidence: the August 2026 court reporting
1\. [Newsis – August 9, 2026: Court rules in favour of two former MADEIN members]
This is the most significant source. Reporting on the Seoul Central District Court’s June 17 ruling, Newsis says Lee argued that he had already resigned and no longer participated in group activities.
The court rejected that argument. It specifically found that Lee remained a major shareholder of 143 Entertainment and was in a position to exert direct or indirect influence over the group’s activities and operations.
2\. [Maeil Business Newspaper – August 4, 2026: Lee’s continued involvement]
Reports that Lee was still acting as an in-house director (company executive director) and had accompanied one of 143’s boy groups on a Japanese concert schedule on August 1
3\. [Asian Junkie – August 5, 2026: Ex-CEO still spotted with iKON]
Includes a video circulating on social media showing Lee personally handing a cake to iKON members, alongside reporting about his presence at the Japanese concert. This is useful supporting evidence of his continued involvement, although it is not as authoritative as the court reporting.
Asian Junkie
## What happened to his CEO position?
4\. [Kstyle – June 2, 2025: 143 Entertainment announces Lee’s resignation]
The company announced that Lee would step down as CEO while cooperating with the police investigation.
My conclusion: The evidence supports a more specific claim than simply saying he never left: Lee resigned as CEO, but the August 2026 court reporting establishes that he retained a major shareholding and potential influence over 143 Entertainment. There is also reporting of continued hands-on involvement with iKON.
One important qualification: the court’s finding concerns his ownership and ability to influence operations; it does not, by itself, establish that he continued to hold the CEO position.”
143 ENT keeping Madein member’s passports, I don’t know. Wouldn’t surprise me but my guess isn’t better than anyone else’s in this regard.
As for the quoted stuff it’s not unusual or even that shocking for someone who steps down as CEO of a company (any type of company) to be either given a lower-profile position with more power over a specific area, or alternatively to remain tied to the company as a “consultant” or similar and kept on the payroll. Often whoever is taking over at the company in the CEO role benefits from the wisdom of who was there before.
Aren’t these the same niggas complaining about declining birth rates? Might be a problem if it was gold digger gay men and lesbians, but that’s not the case.
I don’t know. I’m not Solvejapanspopulationproblemsalypse, I have no idea what would work over there and what wouldn’t. I’ve never heard of anything like this happening anyway, if this was actually a big thing in Australia (as seems to be claimed) I think I’d know at least one woman participating, or at least have heard of it. Sounds to me like the whole thing is just journalists hearing about it maybe happening one or two times and extrapolating so they can meet their article-writing quota.
List of banned positions, acts for pr0n in the UK. This is all simulated classy sexy moves, no? Seems sus that they’re targeting the genre that women viewers generally prefer, no?
I wouldn’t say any of this is necessarily “classy-sexy” in the Kpopalypse sense by default. All of those acts can be performed consensually. (Although I’m uncertain what one or two of them are – what the hell is “butt drops?”) Even stuff like choking isn’t necessarily done as any part of rape fantasy, it’s just as often done because asphyxiation actually heightens the physical sensation of orgasm for many people. (The auto-erotic asphyxiation that INXS singer Michael Hutchence died of is the solo version, but it’s a much safer activity with a trusted partner who can get the ambos there quickly if there’s a problem.)
But as for your main point the UK is conservative and boring, yes. Is anyone shocked, no.
Do you personally count Japanese indie online SWs like Onlyfans creators as JAV’s?
I mean viewers generally count establishment US industry stars (eg Mia Malkova) who migrated 100% to OF still as porn stars.
Interestingly researching this lead me down a rabbit hole. Abella Danger seems to had an opinion shift over the years (5 Years ago vs this month) after witnessing a lack of passion/determination when shooting with chicks who started with OF.
I don’t think the classification matters much. What does it matter. Generally speaking when someone asks me (as they often do) “is this person in JAV” my assumption of the meaning of the question is “have they done adult videos where they are actually having sex (i.e hardcore porn where people fuck for real, whether censored/pixellated or not) as opposed to just softcore porn (gravure) or livestreaming or being a model or something”. It’s kind of hard for me to verify outside of the “JAV industry” anyway, because accessing free JAV content online is pretty easy whereas for the Japanese equivalent of an OF creator I’d have to actually sign up and pay for their content which I’m generally not willing to do just for the sake of answering a question on my ask.oppar or whatever (unless it’s Jay Park lol).
Thoughts? {debate on “is Goth House ruining Goth Culture” which goes nowhere}
(for context, Goth House is a spinoff of Onlyfans creator collective, The Bop House. Legacy Goth women have been upset that that these cultural appropriaters have attracted gooner men with warped preconceptions to their comments sections.)
Gooners being attracted to goth culture because goth girls are hot has been a thing looooooong before Goth House monetised it. I should know ahem. And goths I know have been complaining about their favourite subculture being misrepresented and misconstrued as long as I can remember. As time goes on it’s only going to stray even further from its roots, as that’s what tends to happen to subcultures in general when the media machine gets hold of them and people try to milk them every which way for a dollar. Look at how flanellette shirts went from the cheapest shit in the store in the 80s to designer fashion in the 90s because grunge got trendy for a while. But there will also always be people who like the old-school styles. I don’t see why these things can’t co-exist.
Why is Girlset flopping in comparison to Katseye? JYP partnered with Republic Records. Republic, like Geffen, is also run my American Jews. Do Republic just not have the same connections to the CIA or Mossad?
I get that this is trying to be a joke or meme or something, but it loses its humour value because there are dumb-dumbs who actually believe stuff like this and it’s not a good idea to encourage this kind of brainrot racist thinking, even as a joke. So taking it seriously: the music industry, the really really big parts of the music industry, are actually very small in terms of dollar value earned, compared to other industries. They’re also getting smaller all the time in terms of cultural reach as other aspects of popular culture take over (vlogging celebrities, computer games, television on-demand streaming) as the main forms of entertainment that people enjoy. And even those industries are absolutely dwarfed by other industries, like energy, or telecommunications, or fashion, or the military, or transport. So even in some alternate universe wacky world where the CIA or Mossad agents don’t have their usual jobs to do and weirdly have a LOT of spare time on their hands to engineer the Big Jewish Plot Of Something Or Other, they wouldn’t use music to do it, or even the entertainment industry in general for that matter, but certainly not music no fucking way in hell. The sad reality is that not many people even care about music these days. Even music fans don’t care that much about music (see the stuff about pre-debut fans earlier in this episode). I honestly couldn’t think of a less effective way to influence the population of the planet than trying to get musicians to do it, given how little people pay attention to the bullshit that comes out of musician’s mouths currently. It’s exactly the same reason why Illuminati/music theory conspiracies are horseshit. If the illuminati existed, literally going into any other industry except the music industry would be a smarter use of their time and influence. But people with pea-brains always think the entertainment industry is the root of conspiracies because they’re fascinated with celebrity I guess, so their favourite celebrity must be important enough to be involved in this stuff, right? Not really.
Not answering any more questions about CIA, Mossad and their connection with some bullshit or similar crap. Just for variety’s sake, mainly, because I don’t want to have to copy-paste versions of this same response in every QRIMOLE. These posts are already difficult and lengthy enough to do!
I know that when it comes to k-pop concepts (both in music and fashion), it’s usually a case of “throw something at the wall and see what sticks”. But do you think there’s a group that’s bafflingly difficult to pin down to a certain style/genre? Like a group that gives you the sense that the management have absolutely no idea what they’re doing with them?
No because that’s the mode of operation of all this stuff. K-pop idol groups don’t generally have a consistent “style”, because the style doesn’t come from the group, but from whatever employees and subcontractors are working with the group to help shape it, and that’s often a constantly rotating group of people with different ideas. Add in constantly changing trends and the pressure to stay current and the end result is things aren’t usually consistent. Yes sometimes there are exceptions, groups with overarching common conceptual threads (NewJeans, aespa) but it’s the exception, not the norm.
as of 26th Oct, Jiyu’s bob cut is back. the question is, did she have it all this time and was just wearing extensions in recent months?
More than likely. Extensions in general are extremely common for female performers.
Why does Caramel Candid get oppar’s stamp of approval but Band-maid doesn’t? Aren’t their concepts identical?
Yes they are, but Kpopalypse cares about music, not concepts. I know this is probably mindblowing for a lot of pop music fans, who tend to “listen with their eyes” and consume image, concepts, marketing etc way before the music is even a consideration, but that’s what sets this site apart from most others. Music is actually important here. Plenty of other websites, content creators etc fawn all day over marketing, concepts, image, gossip etc. I do comment on those things too, mainly for “narrartive colour” and to make comment on the industry behind it and what their priorities are, but those aren’t my priorities. None of that other stuff ever outstrips the importance of music for me.
[supposed news piece of Tzuyu’s mum dispelling dating rumours with a childhood friend or whatever.]
this woman is 27, 30 around the corner. do parasocial fans ever become self-aware and decide to grow the fuck up? legacy Twice fans are prob in their late 20s, early 30s themselves now too!
Fandom craziness levels isn’t strictly related to age. Companies do target young people but there’s lots of older people into this too.
Is “we’re not here to fuck spiders” a real Aussie saying? I feel like it was a meme on social media that Aussies decided to run with to trick foreigners.
I agree that it’s more of a meme than real slang. It is getting used more and more but there’s no doubt that it started life as a meme, it’s not “organically” Australian slang, but rather some meme-maker’s idea of what an Australian would say, which has then caught on to some degree.
is it even still kpop at this point?
“tripleS – “Andless” is approximately 95% English, by my estimate from the lyrics. The song is overwhelmingly English, with a few Korean phrases mixed into otherwise English lines and repeated in the chorus sections.”
Yes.
I put the definition of what I consider to be “k-pop” in the preamble of all my favourites lists, click here for the 2025 one.
I don’t give a fuck what language they sing in. Most pop from America is sung in English, that doesn’t make it Britpop.
how would you rank IVE’s “I am” clones, including “I am” itself?
A bit too tricky of a question as I’d have to remember them all, and there’s quite a few of them now. But I think “I Am” is a really good version of “I Am”. Whether “Rebel Heart” is an even better version, I haven’t decided yet. Maybe. For now you can be the judge, I’ll get back to you on it in 2030. I don’t think any other versions hold a candle to these two.
I had a really close friend group during college that I kept in touch time to time. Not like everyday, like we used to, but once a month or so. Recently, we found out that someone in the group was cheating on his wife (another member of the group) for a year. I felt bad for her, but more than that, I was angry at myself. I, as a grown woman, made a mistake and misjudged someone’s character. I never felt this way even when the idols that I fully stanned did horrible things. How can I cope with the fact that I mistrusted a close friend? And in the future, how can I better read people’s actions to save myself from the disappointment?
It’s not up to you to be a mind-reader. Some people are quite good at concealing their intentions. I’m not personally anywhere near socially intelligent enough to determine things like this myself, it’d definitely slip by me if a friend of mine was cheating on someone and didn’t want me to know. People hell-bent on deception can be exceptionally devious. So I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself, and I don’t even think there’s any responsibility that you have to determine these things. Just be there for the people you need to be there for and take care of yourself and those around you (who deserve it). Anything else is strictly optional.
Podcast clip demonstrating passive aggressiveness of ppl living in Japan’s Kyoto city. Are ppl like in any part of Australia?
I remember one time walking down the street with an umbrella (it was raining, obviously) and a woman walking the other way said “nice umbrella”. Definitely an insult (determinable by the fairly flat tone she used), she was basically saying “you’re a grown man why are you using an umbrella you fucking gaylord I get you take cocks deep in your ass all day”. I just said back to her “thanks” equally flatly, which was me basically saying in response “I’ll use an umbrella if I want to, go fuck yourself you stupid ugly bitch”. So yes this type of communication exists in Australia too!
This lady talks about the realities of being a working actor. Since touring/session musicians and audio engineer is also per contract, gig economy, is there much overlap with what she describes in the video?
Yes, definitely. There’s no guarantee that just because you have a good job one day that you’ll get another equally good job soon, or easily, or at all. Great money when you can make it (hourly rate for some work is amazing), but very sporadic and unreliable.
….long time no see…
K-poppy hung, I mean hyung
◕‿↼)
no! I mean hungit’s almost halloween
a most wonderful night
to grab and eat some peen
and twerk in the moonlight
but, ah!!! a fright!
༼ ༎ຶ ᆺ ༎ຶ༽a few questions before
the world is..
Nevermore?1.
I’ve been thinking about music genres and subcultures associated with them.
For example, I’ve been listening to a lot of the New Romantics again the past week.
Usually, people associate the New Romantics with the frilly clothes, the punkish music style, and UK focal point.
But a lot of people miss that the lyrics’ frame of reference is also one of its defining factor.
With songs like “Planet Earth” by Duran Duran or “Goody Two Shoes” by Adam Ant,
much of the lyrics aimed at an awareness of the contradictions of stuffy morality and the human passionate soul,
much like the Romanticism of the Hawthorne and friends.My question is what’s your favorite Halloween candy?
／(=✪ x ✪=)＼
will u be my halloween peen if i buy all of them for u? <32.
favorite halloween rock opera?
if it’s not little shop of horrors,
our relationship will be on the rocks for a bit,
but i’ll understand in the end3.
finally,
if u found out — oops I just farted
that u were the antichrist,
what would you do?
asking for a friend
(☉_☉)omg oppa, yes it’s a *platonic* friend..
u get jealous so easily
( ◡‿◡ *)
Oh sweetie, you’re back! Muah.
1. I don’t like lollies or candy, but I do like chocolate. Just plain milk or dark, no flavours or anything else to dilute the pure chocolate experience, although I don’t mind a good praline.
2. Repo The Genetic Opera. A must-see, simply no competition.
3. Who says I’m not?
(clip of nmixx members covering an adele song on a livestream.) why might aussie sis want one of the ear muffs to be slipped off her ear?
When you wear completely “closed” headphones (ones where the speaker enclosures totally surround your ear) it cuts out background noise and makes it easier for you to hear what’s playing through them – but this comes at the cost of hearing less of the natural sound of your own voice, and you also lose a bit of awareness of exactly how loud you are singing. If you’ve ever put headphones on and then spoken extremely loudly to someone by accident, you’ll be familiar with this effect. By wearing the headphones with only one ear enclosed, you can get the best of both worlds – an isolated backing track in one ear, and the natural sound of your voice at the correct volume in the other ear. Not every singer likes using headphones this way but some definitely do find it easier and this is why.
people are speculating that billie eilish got a boob reduction. your thoughts?
Lost a little weight perhaps. Surgery, I highly doubt it, wouldn’t be very on-brand for her. Angles, lighting, clothing choices and weight loss all can make a big difference.
(korean version of recent Lightsum JPN market release.) any reason for me to give this the time of day? sounds the same to me.
No, and I don’t generally cover different language version of exactly the same song for this reason (unless there’s also some other drastic musical change). I don’t care what language something is sung in.
I remember that from 2024 to early 2025 you seemed to be starved for work opportunities.
Gfriend’s Yuju contract with her prior agency, KONNECT Entertainment, expired in Mid-April 2024. She signed her current agency, AT AREA, on 12 March 2025. Time between the dates: approximately 11 months. (This is strictly about solo contracts. I’m not counting the temporary group contract for Gfriend’s 10th anniversary reunion album.)
Didn’t your drought of not having regular contract work come to an end around March 2025? Perhaps Yuju is sort of a good luck charm for you?
I’m still broke now. I have some work but it’s not paying as much as I’d like. I’m getting by but I have no discretionary spending and I can’t really save. Feel free to play Yuju’s videos some more, the luck might spread and it might help me out with a few things financially, we can test her powers, I’ll let you know if it works.
Not sure if you’ve answered this one before but have you ever listened to any Bollywood / Hindi / Urdu / Punjabi music? If so, could you name one or a few that you enjoyed? If not, would you ever be open to checking some out? (here’s one I like if you’re interested). Also, are there any Bollywood baddies that mrcs?
I used to live in an international residence with about 200 people in the same building and the Indian guys who lived with me would play that punjabi shit all the time. I find it so boring. I think it’s just the melodic choices that annoy me, I just don’t like the sound of Indian style melodies and scales that much.
I don’t watch Bollywood films either but some of the ladies in Bollywood are absolutely stunning. I’m not well versed enough to know any names though, feel free to recommend me some. Bollywood in general is a huge rabbit hole that I don’t want to go down because I know how deep it is and I’m worried I may not resurface, but I’ll make an exception for gentlemanly culture appreciation purposes.
seeya’s performing dark ages best 30 entry “hateful” with a live band, at every stop of their tour!
i hear the snare coming through the pa speakers, and then irl a fraction of a second later. i’m guessing that’s because the speakers are delivering what everyone’s playing in real-time, and then the irl sound takes however long it does to travel to everyone close enough to hear it.
is that normal for this size venue/stage, that there’ll just always be a couple spots with an awkward listening experience? (link to rough floor plan, if it’s anything. no tracking in the link as far as i can tell)
Yes you are correct and this is a normal artifact of seeing a group on a big stage, the sound takes a while to travel.
The best place to stand in a concert for optimal sound quality, is always right in front of the mixing desk. This is because while it’s impossible to get the sound perfect in every single corner of a huge room, the audio engineer (if they’re any good) is always going to at least try to make sure it sounds good from where he’s standing, and then work from there. Very good engineers will actually leave their desks to sometimes wander the venue quickly to check the sound in other locations and then come back to the desk to make adjustments, but I wouldn’t count on that. They just as often leave their desks to go chat up some girl at the bar or order pizza.
How do you feel about this?
TOP and Nana are dating and a big TOP fan site closes after 20 years. Did nobody teach these women any shame? grown ass women in probably their 30s acting like spoiled children who don’t want to share their toys. They should be embarrassed!
(the fansite argues that they were being treated as unpaid PR staff by TOP’s agency, being taken for granted. they cancelled an expensive TOP art expo thing, because parasocial fangirls were cancelling reservations en masse. who asked them to act as PR? who asked them to host an expo? seems like big cope to me.)
Don’t really care who dates who and don’t really care what fansites do either. Yeah the fansite arguments are bullshit. If you don’t want to do unpaid labour for your bias then don’t, you don’t owe them that and they’re not asking you to do it anyway.
please rate Apink members from most to least favourite. thanks.
Not answering this or people will ask me the same thing for every group and then I’ll be back to do a bias compendium again which I already put on ice a decade ago because I didn’t have time. It’s a slippery slope!
do you agree with her list? (“funkiest grooves of all time“, whatever that means)
Due to having no instagram account, I couldn’t see this list. I don’t like funk music much so I feel like I’m not missing a lot.
What do you think are going on with Seventeen Vernon eyebrows here? Shaped and then coloured in with a pencil? Completely shaved off and then drawn back on with a pencil? (he’s not too far off from looking like a Vulcan from Star Trek!)
I don’t really know. I’d ask my girlfriend as she’s more schooled in the ways of makeup than me and could likely identify the techniques used here. Later on I might ask her and add her reply to the comments below.
what’s your opinion of minzy ballad b-side? {link removed because I could}
Wait for me to get desperate enough for entertainment/content to cover a Minzy album and I’ll tell you then.
Question: What do you reckon is the likelihood that Nana pegs T.O.P regularly?
I definitely recommend that you see the “Always Lalisa” doco film at some point. Lisa produced it herself, so it’s noticeably “rawer” than some “doco” films produced by kpop companies. The overall framing narrative begins in probably 2024 when Blackpink had gone on a 1 year long hiatus to produce solo albums and spans to early/mid 2025. Lisa said that everything in solo year is working towards performing at Coachella on 11 April 2025 (the first weekend). The production of the “Alter Ego” album is very much part of the story, so if you do review the documentary movie, you could probably review the album at the same time (and do call backs to your review of the Alter Ego graphic novels).
These will be stream of consciousness me recalling things from the film, but I’ll try to organise them coherently for you. Grouping together bullet points that are relevant to each other.
Anecdote from Lisa’s mum: Pranpriya was Lisa’s original name, but a fortune teller in Thailand said that it would “translate” to “only shining for her mum” so Lisa’s mother changed her name to Lalisa, which would be more likely to make Lisa “shine for the world”.
Early part of the film deals with Lisa’s early childhood. She recounts tearfully about “Teacher Nok”, who led the hiphop dance crew she was member of as a prepubescent child to early teen. Teacher Nok was regarded as being very good at his job. Nok passed away of cancer, but Lisa did get the opportunity to tell him that she had been accepted as YG trainee during his final days in the hospital. She was probably 13/14 at the time.
CLC Sorn was interviewed. She said Lisa that helped “pave the way” for foreign trainees in Korea. I.e. They had no infrastructure for them back then. (Lisa was 14 when she became a YG trainee in 2010.)
Part of the film covering the initial making of the Alter Ego album:-
-Lisa was forced into the box of rapping by YG, so she had zero confidence in her singing. Lisa recalls an anecdote where YG company made her record an entirely different song, despite Lisa and (I think) the engineers considering it sounding perfectly fine. Recalling this had Lisa in tears. I think the American producer (or it might’ve been a vocal coach? I can’t recall exactly) she was working withsaid that her singing voice sounded fine. They played a clip of the US producer/vocal coach/whatever saying that Lisa was solo now, so she’d have to cover all bases herself for songs (singing, rapping, etc).
-Lisa had to start from square one with zero knowledge in producing an album, because YG produced all the songs for her group.-Interview clip where Lisa’s mother says that Lisa loves children and would want to have some of her own some day, but it’s difficult because it would require putting her career on pause.
-Lisa’s stepfather is a Swiss “passport bro”, who’s been in her life since was 3 years old. Her stepdad currently has health issues and needs regular dialysis. She hopes that he lives long enough to walk her down the aisle of her wedding ceremony.
-Lisa says that parasocial fans will have to deal with it when/if she gets married (she said it in a kinder sentiment than my bluntness here).
-Shows interview clip where stepdad hopes that Lisa has gets someone in her life to support her (future husband, I assume).
-They show a clip of a family dinner where Lisa and her mum say it might be realistic for her stepdad to be on solo tour with Lisa. Stepdad expresses doubt because they’d have to prepare all of his required medical stuff in each city stop.
-Lisa explains about the dating bans for kpop idols, so if they do want to date they have to do it in secret. She reached the age of 25 and found that she had zero/little life experiences in “certain areas” so she thought fuck it and started a secret relationship. The ballad song “Dream” on the Alter Ego album is about that secret relationship (the autobiographical “Dream” song lyrics places this in 2019). She was confident that the fandom “detectives” are totally barking up the wrong tree with their “suspects” of who her ex-boyfriend is.They cover the leaking of the Alter Ego album. Lisa was disappointed in this because it stole some of the magic of the roll out plans for both herself and the fans. She hopes that leaker doesn’t do it future to herself and other artists.
The post-release reception of the album is covered. Lisa was disappointed that it was very mixed. They have a montage of video snippets of fan reviews from social media. They have an interview clip where (I think) a higher up employee in management at Lisa’s LLOUD solo agency speculates that fans didn’t understand that the concept of album, which was built around the 5 different “alter egos” of Lisa. ( I.e. The ones which the graphic novel is about.)
-They have a segment on the “YG leaker” (ChatGPT says this news period was around late March/early April 2025.), who published the trainee clips of Blackpink members Lisa, Jennie and Rosé singing/rapping US R&B and/or rap songs where they say “the N word”. They show a montage of social media videos by (cultural imperialist) African Americans saying that they’re no longer fans, labelling the Blackpink members as racist. Lisa defends herself saying her native language is not English and that she grew up in countries not connected to USA culture. Lisa says if she had know about these contexts, thar she never would’ve said that word while covering the songs.
-The YG leaker issued a death threat to Lisa specifically. She wonders what she did wrong to this person to warrant this.
-Her team couldn’t do much about the death threat because of US laws. It was recommended that they leave it to the authorities to investigate anyway, because they were deep preparation for Coachella (and maybe doing further promotion for the Alter Ego album, I can’t recall exactly.)They show practice sessions for Coachella. Some during theses they show a montage of “hater comments” from social media.
-Lisa expresses disappointment of not being able to go anywhere public in the US. She understands the “social contract”, including trade offs of being a celebrity in the public eye, but it still gets to her at times.
-They mention the sasaeng stalker fans tracking all of her moves.During the Coachella practice stuff they show a clip of an American vocal coach lady saying that she noticed easy lines like parts of the chorus in “Rockstar” that Lisa hadn’t been singing. The vocal coach encouraged Lisa to get into habit of singing as much as possible as a solo performer, possibly sacrificing focusing on dancing for some parts. Lisa explained to the coach that it was difficult for her, because these were the only times where she had time to catch her breath, in-between stuff like all of the constant outfit choices required for the Coachella performance.
-The grand finale of the film is the Coachella 2025 live performance. It was structured to reflect the alter egos concept of the album.
-They a show montage of social media videos by fans where the Alter Ego concept album finally “clicked” for them after seeing the live performance.
27.63%.
You’ve done such a good job of summarising, I don’t really need to see the Lisa film now, do I? 
Hi, Kpopalypse! I hope you’re doing well! I’m sure you’ll talk a bit about this before you even answer, but people are obviously going insane on twitter over A2O’s debut (their age, the AI stuff…) and questioning how/why people are stanning them. Obviously, stantwt is aware of these things, but do they not realise the average person just listens to a song and doesn’t really think about all those things? At least that’s my experience just… interacting with people irl lol. Not to mention, it seems hard for them to understand you don’t have to be a stan or an anti. You can enjoy a song or a performance and not be overly invested in the artist. Most people are not, in fact, “stanning” 13-year-olds; they simply enjoy the song. Also, there’s always discourse about how idols keep debuting younger and younger and whenever you point out that artists like BoA or Taemin also debuted at 13-14 and the industry has always been like this suddenly there’s a lot of excuses? I think maybe some of them feel uncomfortable with the fact that, yes, the industry is Bad, it was also Bad then, and they’re just trying to find excuses as to why their group is okay/an exception
Very young people debuting in k-pop is nothing new under the sun, yes BoA is the classic example but strangely everyone seems to have completely forgiven SM Ent for that, nobody is starting angry “those bastards debuted BoA underage” threads or considering boycotting BoA now because of her early debut. People say they care about underage debuts but they really don’t, because if they did it would be reflected in how those groups perform. Even taking casual music listeners out of the equation and looking at die-hard “concerned” fans only, they’re still going to support the group. Companies debut idols young for various reasons but the main one is that younger groups tend to draw in fandoms more easily, and a lot of young fans get extra excited when they see people their own age in groups, because its relatable for them, it increases the parasociability. They can then stretch out the marketing window for longer. And all the better (for the company) if there’s some subutle sexual suggestion there to get the fans hooked. It’s not going to change, because fans won’t change, so why would the company change? They literally have no reason to. The shit works.
Do you think f(x) or Redvelvet have better concepts for their albums/overall image?
f(x) were more interesting but maybe that’s just because they happened earlier. By the time Red Velvet debuted the precedent for weird concepts had already been set so their concepts didn’t seem that interesting. Whereas f(x) literally blew people away at the time, there was nothing like that in k-pop back then.
Is the best tell me cover?
They kind of ruined it by dropping out most of the vocal, they should have kept he original arrangement. Yeah yeah I know you’re really asking about the sex appeal but honestly those outfits aren’t doing them any favours.
Chaewon fido pretty smart?
Smart enough to not listen to Chaewon!
Hello! I don’t know if you’ve heard yet but the first ever Eurovision Asia is coming soon. Seeing as you’ve answered a few Eurovision related questions before, I mostly wanted to ask 2 things.
The first question would be which among the current selected songs would be your potential winner. The second question is more specific to the Korean entry and your specific thoughts on their choice (since it IS Kpopalypse after all)
I haven’t heard all the Eurovision Asia songs and since I’m not EuroAsiapopalypse I am not going to check them out and throw down on them because that would be another roundup all its own and it would hold back this already-late post way too much.
The Korean song is quite weak. You’d think Korea would come to the party with a banger especially with all that national rivalry but it’s pretty clear that Koreans still just throw shit to the wall and sees what sticks, they don’t seems to understand why people would musically like k-pop.
Gun to your head. Listen to shit korean ballads or shit australian ballads for the rest ofye life?
Shit Korean ballads. Shit music is slightly less offensive when I can’t understand the words being sung.
Kpopalypse, I’m from Brazil and my family has a strange trait: our feet NEVER smells. We believe that this is because of our indigenous genetic heritage (but we also have black and white members too, like most brazilians ). It is something interesting because we basically wash our feet only because of brazilian hygiene tradition, not because we need to. Hell, I don’t rub my soapy hand or bath sponge in my feet nails in like years, and there’s never a single bad or funky smell even after a hard day of work. This must be because of the fact that our feet are also VERY dry (I need to use corporal moisturizer cream in mine after a bath for example) in natural conditions (as brazilians rarely use sneakers inside their homes, most uses slippers). Since I’m not accustomed to smelly feet, everytime I am in direct contact with someone who has this problem I feel like I’m being personally attacked right in my nose. It feels very hard to treat a smelly person in a kind way when you feel such a visceral need to move away from them! Considering that:
1. I noticed in my personal experience that a lot of white people have serious problems with smelly feet (and some black people too). Do this resonates with your personal experience too? And yes, I am considering biracial people way less in this consideration and using cases of people with less miscigenation (almost all grandparents of a certain ethnicity) in the analysis.
2. Around where I live there’s basically no asian people. I’ve heard that some of them don’t really smell in their armpits but, in your opinion, does this also applies to their feet?
3. Do you (or some other person who might have this problem) also need to use special products to deal with this?
4. Not exactly a question but some tips for people who might be passing for this trouble (I researched this with people who had the problem and managed to control it):
a) Try using slippers when you are inside your house. This let your feet “breathe” as the sweat can go away instead of being accumulated on the skin and under your nails
b) Use your footwear in a rotation system. Example: if you go out to work 6 times / week, try using 3 different pair of footwear (like 3 sneakers) so 2 of them are “drying” while you use one of them
c) If you also workout, practice sports or just like to walk for like 1 hour per day, also considering doing the rotation system for other pairs selected only to physical activities
d) Prevent yourself from walking barefoot ,even inside doors. Even people with dry feet have a higher chance of catching fungi that live (in spore form) on the floor who raises chances of infections that disrupts the skin barrier and usually brings itch and also bad smells.
e) Try to wash your feet everyday, like it was your asshole, lol. If you don’t wash it, it will probably accumulate dirty things that will make it smell bad (and that also could be harmful to your systemic health). If you can’t take a shower everyday, at least try to wipe between every finger (like flossing between teeth) and dry it with some clean paper towel.
f) Remember that odour is not caused my sweat only. We also have other glands that liberate fats and other molecules that skin bacteria (and fungi) uses to live and THAT is the cause of bad smell. This means that if you wash your feet before you wash your bum, bacteria from up there can migrate to your toes and multiply down there. Always wash your feet last in the bath. Also don’t forget to delicately dry them after cleaning them (skin usually responds better when dried with less friction).
g) Search for a dermatologist if you suspect of some weird spot, itch or weird nail or if everything else in a) through f) fails. Some products advertised for smelly feet can be harmful to your health, so it’s better to seek help of a professional if the previous tips don’t work.
h) I do reinforce g) because I already had contact with people who didn’t searched for a dermatologist and tried using the internet or other less qualified professionals and ended up with some very undesired consequences (pain and burning sensation on the feet skin, for example). I don’t want to ever stimulate people to be more hygienic to the point that they hurt themselves.5. Off-topic: since I spoke about the fact that I carry genes from indigenous, african and european origins, there’s also an genetic proof about how my country was founded (probably it can also be used to prove how Australia and New Zealand were made too); women can’t pass down the Y gene (they are XX) so when a man is born he carries Y chromossome directly from his dad only (and from his grandfather and so on). Similarly, humans never carry the mitochondrial DNA from their fathers (the mitochondrias of the sperm cell are degraded and are not incorporated in the ovule fecundation), so whe always carry our mother’s mitochondrial gene (and grandmother and so on). So, if you pick a large pool of men of a certain country and study their Y genes and mithochondrial DNA you will get info about the origin of his long lost grand-grand-father and grand-grand mother. And that’s exactly what they did found out in Brazil, that almost all the population had the Y gene from Europe and all mitochondrial DNA from Africa or from South American Indigenous people! In the context of recent created countries like Brazil (526 years ago, supposedly) and Australia, this biological fact proves that large quantities of european men had sex with women from another origins, while a very small quantity of european women had sex with men from other origins. While this does not prove by itself that rape of non european women was used as a tool to rise the colonies population, it is quite plausible to infer that shit when associating this proof with all the written historical registries of slavery and social customs.
I wish a nice and odourless month for you and all caonimas!
I can’t say I’ve ever noticed anyone else’s foot smells as I don’t tend to get that close to other people’s feet in my daily life. So sadly I can’t throw down on any of your questions. Caonimas feel free to participate in the comments below. Thanks for your feet odour tips! Agree that rape was a large part of colonial activity in many countries back in the day.
where do you fall on this debate? should aussies be allowed to protect their homes from intruders without having to worry about criminal charges for themselves?
Ignore news items from the big TV stations in Australia (Nine, Seven, Ten). Lots of right-wing populist bullshit and fear-mongering, I stopped watching literally everything from these channels decades ago. Australians already can protect themselves against intruders, there’s just a doctine here of “reasonable force” i.e if someone breaks in because they accidentally got the wrong house you can’t brain them with a baseball bat. But if they try to brain you with a baseball bat, then you can use whatever force is reasonable and proportionate to drive away the threat. But you can’t fucking murder them for a break-in, you do what is reasonable. Unless they try to murder you, then the goalposts of “reasonable” move. It’s the difference between leaving them bleeding to death on your front door because they tried to kill you versus leaving them bleeding to death on your front door just because they pissed you off by trying to steal your PS5 and you don’t like them very much. Americans would probably be okay with the latter, but culturally this doesn’t sit well with Australians.
is this industrial? {link removed for the good of humanity}
No. I’m not convinced it’s anything.
can you explain this. her voice is obviously being filtered, but you can still hear it cracking a lot? i thought that they’d be able to clean this up digitally? (mind you, she’s probably not an audio engineer herself.)
A bit of voice wavering in a gentle acoustic ballad can make things sound more “human”, she probably left it in on purpose. I know that we’re all addicted to digital clean-ups but context is important and sometimes the gadgets are best left off. Those things are sometimes your enemy when trying to get a very initmate feel on a recording.
Hello is it bad that i view all (and i mean all) k-pop idols to be extremely soulless, vapid, shallow husks of people devoid of any life aspirations and personality beyond being a walking advertisment for any given brand and promoting eating disorders and giving psychosis to little girls? Infact i think the vast majority of them are immoral and *bad* people for said things, its not that i want to but i think it is inevitable when you think things through.
I don’t know if it’s bad morally, but it’s certainly incorrect. Remember that some of those same people are little girls with eating disorders, for a start. Beyond that, most of them are just kids with a dream, or adults who started pursuing their dreams as kids. There’s plenty of personality there but you don’t see it because it’s deliberately hidden from you, or at least carefully curated and edited to the point where yes it does look soulless and shallow. But I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that appearances in k-pop are not reality… and believing that they’re all soulless is just as wrong as believing that they’re all wonderful angels… what they really are, is employees, doing a job that none of them probably knew was going to be as shit as it is. If that looks soulless to you, you’re probably not imagining that, but it’s not because they don’t have souls, it’s because it’s a soul-sucking job.
Hi oppar, when ever in qrimole or livestreams u do, you always get artist reccomendations where you often respond with that you cant really listen to it cuz of time constraints… why do you do this to yourself? It cant be good for your mental to subject yourself to dogshit kpop 24/7, excluding time where you wokr on ur book or jerk off ofcourse
Yeah it probably isn’t. Feel free to buy a book so I can afford my next psychologist session from dealing with all this shit tysm uwu <3
Hi, Oppar! I found a retired artist I like whose music is mostly nonexistent on the English-speaking internet. I’m thinking of buying their CDs secondhand, ripping them, then posting them on YouTube. How can I do this while retaining the sound quality as HD as possible? I’m willing to pay for software/cables/whatever if needed. Thanks!
Absolutely don’t do it. They probably retired for a good reason and may come after you legally with everything they have. Or even illegally, which could get even worse for you. Not even joking. Very very bad idea. Do not do this.
helpful for you? in helping to promote a book as an author.
Not really. What he says is absolutely true for the middle class of authors… and that’s definitely not me! So his advice, while interesting, is also useless, at least from where I sit personally. I’m much smaller scale than this and always will be, my content basically guarantees that I’m not going to blow up huge one day, and even if I did I wouldn’t have the promotional capacity to maintain my momentum (and he breaks down quite accurately what that promotional capacity looks like). For me the books are just a nice little bit of on-the-side content that I produce mainly for the readers who like my fiction writing and/or just want to have some “Kpopalypse merch” in their house, which is a minority of readers. They don’t do big numbers, and they are not designed to appeal to “regular” k-pop fans. In fact I’d say that being a huge k-pop fan is if anything going to make you less likely to like the books – people who are just casual readers of books in general tend to react more positively, whereas people deeply invested in the k-pop space (outside of my own readership) don’t really know how to engage with the books at all. The books are mainly for YOU, the dedicated caonimas who are willing to read this far down a QRIMOLE post, they’re not going to go viral within the k-pop community (unless excerpts of the most problematic parts get on social media one day, always a possibility hahaha).
GAMING QUESTIONS
Thoughts on Game? Clone of classic Nintendo series, Star Fox. (yes, it’s on Steam)
Looks like something that I wouldn’t care about. Space shooters are generally boring. Furries are even more boring, and I don’t even understand why it’s furries in this thing as there’s not even any yiff in it. But aside from that I don’t care. Didn’t even download the free demo it’s just that uninteresting.
Do all of these survivor games seem like reskins of one another to you? Watching this game trailer and it looks mechanically identical to Vampire Survivors.
Yes there’s a ton of these games now and they are all exactly the same pretty much.
Thoughts? They announced the official name of The Elder Scrolls 6, 15 years after Skyrim came out (2011).
The setting is the desert + coastal region of Hammerfell.
My predictions: Desert = excuse to recycle Starfield’s (2023) boring ass Radiant proc gen side world system. Coastal region = excuse to recycle Slopfield’s ship systems.
The writing has been piss weak in Bethesda games since TES4: Oblivion (2006). Their strengths were in supplying a hand curated, open world (with environmental storytelling), for ppl to explore. Slopfield did away with this largely, replacing much of the open world with boring ass proc gen in real time, side-world planets.
Why don’t you like these games? They’re hugely player driven and light on story, so shouldn’t they be up your alley?
I’ve often wondered this myself, and every few years the question nags me to the point that I reinstall Oblivion and give it another shot. I always last an hour or two at most before just giving up. I like the idea of the big open 3D world you can explore, but the enforced clunky combat always annoys me pretty quickly and kind of makes me not want to go anywhere. If combat was easier, or there was a way to skip it entirely and still progress the story (think about how Minecraft encourages exploration by only being dangerous at nighttime), I’d probably be more interested, maybe?
These Korean developers seem like madmen. Look at much new content (inc all new game mechanics) that they’ve packed into a $25 USD expansion! Your thoughts?
# Crimson Desert DLC — concise transcript summary
## Main argument
– The video argues that Pearl Abyss is redefining expectations for game expansions with Crimson Desert’s upcoming DLC, Charting the Unknown.
– Rather than simply adding quests and locations, the expansion is presented as introducing several substantial gameplay systems that could each form the basis of a standalone game.
– The narrator compares this ambition to The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, suggesting it could establish a new benchmark for expansions.## Key features discussed
– New story content: Additional quests, characters and storylines for all three protagonists — Cliff, Unk and Damian — with a more balanced focus between them.
– Piracy and naval exploration: Build and customise ships, recruit and manage a crew, gather upgrade materials, engage in naval combat, explore islands, liberate them from enemy factions, capture strongholds and establish bases.
– Underwater exploration: New diving suits, underwater ruins, caves and shipwrecks, plus the ability to traverse underwater using giant sea creatures and submarines.
– Relationships and romance: Expanded NPC dialogue options, relationship-building, friendships, romance, marriage and weddings. Characters may visit the player’s camp.
– Construction and customisation: Build properties from scratch, customising walls, windows, doors, wallpaper and flooring. Captured forts can also be customised.
– Business management: Turn captured facilities into businesses, assign staff and equipment, choose products and prices, customise premises and staff, and manage operations such as restaurants and tailor shops.
– Boss gauntlet: Fight successive challenging enemies to unlock rewards.## How the narrator compares it with other games
| New feature | Comparable game |
| Naval exploration and piracy | Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag |
| Underwater exploration | Subnautica |
| Relationships, romance and marriage | The Sims |
| Property construction | Fallout 4 |
| Business management | Two Point Museum and other management simulators |The narrator’s central point is that these systems go beyond the usual expansion formula of adding more content to existing mechanics.
## Pearl Abyss’s development approach
– Frequent updates: The narrator claims the studio has released more than 17 major updates since launch, adding new gameplay mechanics.
– Story improvements: Following criticism of the original game’s writing and narrative structure, Pearl Abyss allegedly reworked the campaign with new dialogue, cutscenes and mission structures. The narrator says the revised story is substantially better.
– Ambitious feature additions: The studio is reportedly adding systems the narrator previously considered incompatible with the base game’s design, including dialogue choices, romance, naval traversal and detailed construction.
– Fast development: The narrator contrasts the expansion’s claimed scope and short development period with the multi-year development of expansions such as Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, Dragon’s Dogma 2’s expansion and Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.## Price and expected value
– The narrator states that Charting the Unknown will cost $25.
– They argue that the amount of content could make it exceptional value compared with other major expansions.
– The narrator estimates that it effectively adds several distinct gameplay experiences to the base game, while the original game continues to receive updates.## Overall conclusion
– The narrator believes Pearl Abyss is challenging the idea that a game must remain constrained by its original launch design.
– By responding to criticism and adding new types of gameplay, the studio could make Crimson Desert appealing to players who previously disliked its combat focus, limited role-playing systems or lack of construction and management features.
– The video ends with an enthusiastic prediction: if the studio continues at this pace and delivers on the announced features, Crimson Desert could eventually become one of the greatest games ever made.Important distinction: This is a summary of the narrator’s claims and predictions, not independent verification that every feature is confirmed, that the expansion will deliver the promised depth, or that the stated price and schedule are final.
What a bunch of yap. (Not you, I mean the quoted stuff.)
One way to easily detect if a creative project is going to fall on its ass, or otherwise just be incredibly messy and disappointing upon release, is by looking at the scope of the idea being promoted. The best games tend to be designed from the ground up as quite limited in scope, as soon as you get “scope creep” (we’re going to add X and Y and Z and A and B and C and it’ll all be functioning on release day), or even worse, someone who says a game is “the everything game” or “the only game you’ll ever play” or other words to that effect, then that’s a big red flag. Really good games generally have a very narrow and specific idea, and if they build, they build from that idea. It’s the same with films, books, etc. Don’t try to write “the great American novel” (or whatever). Just write a good story with a central idea that works.
is this just a coincidence? australia seems to have a largest presence in the global gambling industry world (eg large online betting company Stake. companies that specialise in casino machines, like slots one-armed bandits.) the Ultimate Team gambling mechanics in annual sports games by EA proved to be so lucrative, that they promoted inventor australian Andew Wilson to be the CEO of the entire EA company.
Probably not a coincidence. Gambling has been a big part of Australian culture for a while. Not sure if it’s as popular with very young people as it is with the older generations, but it’s definitely still huge. And why wouldn’t EA want someone who can make money running their company. And gambling is how a lot of big gaming companies make money now, with lootboxes and game mechanics that exploit randomness, confusion and human frailty. You might find the following videos interesting.
what’s so bad about the Serious Sam games? why don’t you like them?
I just find that style of gameplay boring. It’s a “run backwards and shoot” shooter. Very tedious gameplay loop, have never gotten more than a couple levels into a Serious Sam game without getting thoroughly bored.
@1:12 your thoughts on his theory of game publishers releasing low effort “remasters” and delisting original version as an excuse to get more money out of legacy games?
(context: Sega released a shitty outsourced remaster of Total War: Shogun 2 with AI slop replacement art work with the usual errors like multiple fingers; performance issues; new bugs; unfixed legacy bugs. the community review bombed the remaster to hell and within like 12 hours Sega delisted the remaster and TEMPORARILY relisted the original version, while they patching the remaster.)
for your education: The modern concept of a game remaster was a reaction to 2013 PS4 not having backwards compatibility (will abbreviate as BC going forward) with PS3 games, so many game publishers started up the scheme where they do ports of PS3 gen games to PS4. (previously the PS2 had BC with PS1 games, so customer expectations had been built. later models of PS3 had no PS2 BC, as it was achieved with real hardware PS2 chipsets shipping inside the console, not emulation. PS2 BC was removed from PS3 to bring the prices down, because they were getting beat by the 2nd gen Xbox in the North American market.) many of the early efforts of this remastering trend didn’t come to PC, because releasing them onto PC too was arguably unnecessary because PCs have been built on x86 CPU architecture since the 1980s, thus have had BC all along. publishers started bringing these remasters to PC too, probably because A. customers complained that console users were getting preferential treatment and B. they realised there’s an untapped market of sheeple that they could milk on PC.
the PS5 console gen is now like the PC market back in 2013: we’re now onto a 2nd gen of consoles based on x86 CPU architecture, so PS5 has nigh full BC with PS4 games. thus there’s no need to re-release PS4 gen games for PS5. PS5 specific enhancements can just be patched into PS4 games. so remasters are now more or less scams for consoles too, like they were for PCs in 2013. (more or less consoles prior to PS4 reset game libraries with each new generation. consoles since 2013 have been like PC. so the PS5 could be viewed as just a PS4 with upgraded specs.)
I’m still yet to even play a single remaster. I think that they’re very rarely needed as the few originals still worth playing often work fine with third party modifications, and the rest were forgotten for a reason. A few dev teams have worked out that spinning up remasters is a good money grab but they will run out of decent titles soon.
NOT QUESTIONS
I love qrimole. I pull up with a chair a cold drink and my comically large top hat that happens to be shaped like a neutered penis. It’s like being a 20th century man finally getting the daily paper
Glad you’re enjoying! Enjoyable JAV of the month is MIDA-776.
(Content warning for caonimas: I talk about beauty standards and weight below)
Dude I found the best faces results depressing. In virtually every fancam there are multiple backup dancers who are more skilled, enthusiastic, and interesting to watch than the idols. I mean in Le Sserafim’s “Celebrate” they have backup dancers on stationary bicycles the entire time who don’t falter once – that must be exhausting. This is even relative to idols who are fairly good performers for the industry like Yves and Yujin. Sure the backup dancers may not have as much makeup or as much of a “conventionally attractive” look, but personally I’d much rather watch and be invested in somebody who’s amazing at what they do. I’m starting to feel like the whole Korean idol industry is like DEI for underweight pretty girls/boys.
I feel like I just can’t motivate myself to get that invested in idols anymore because it looks like they’re in a (fairly good!) school talent show instead of cutting-edge performers, and even the promo shots feel like parodies of what companies want you to goon to. I used to look at them and go “that’s impressive, I couldn’t do that” but now the standout quality is their homogenized vibes. Maybe I’m just older/more able to be interested in what’s real now? But it feels like the overall skills and drive to give an amazing performance have gone downhill, like you punch into Music Bank and dissociate through it to pose with a lip balm or something.
I’m also depressed abt my girl Wendy, who was one of my favorite singers and personalities for a long time. I know it’s not fair to put industry beauty pressures on one person, and internet bullying plus whatever went on at SM were likely very traumatizing. I wouldn’t talk about this in a more public setting because I don’t want to put anyone on the spot. But I remember she used to look like a regular (beautiful) woman, very fresh-faced. It’s hard for me to follow anything she does now because of the chipping away at her face and body and massive padding and editing to hide it. It feels like if Eugenia Cooney-lite was in the music industry. I know she’s still talented and good at what she does but it’s hard not to feel crushed when somebody appears more like they’re in need of medical treatment than to do a super demanding performance job. And I know not all diseases are visible at first and she’s likely been suffering for a long time even when everybody was praising how she looked. Idk man. I just wish she could have pursued her dreams and blown everyone away without becoming more of a stick over time.
No questions unfortunately so feel free to sicc porn at me lol. I won’t watch it though sorry
Thank you for your input! I have noticed that as I’ve gotten older, the amount of things I give a fuck about has decreased, so theis may be happening to you. It’s healthy, embrace it! Fresh-faced JAV of the month that I certainly do not expect you to watch is HRSM-165.
BEST QUESTION
hi oppar, just cross-posting a question from stream as you suggested
what are your thoughts on erotic fiction, particularly kpopfanfiction with real kpops? do you think writing sexually explicit fiction about real people is problematic at all, and should it be kept for purely fictionalised universes (sort of like the girls909 novel)?
my other query; for idols who debuted as minors but are now adults, is writing erotic fiction about their adult selves fair game or should it be avoided?
I ask because I come across a fair bit of kpop fanfiction on reading sites nowadays and I’m not sure how to feel about it, especially when I sometimes enjoy the stories being written.
thanks oppar
I don’t think writing erotic fanfiction about real people is an issue. People who sign up to be a k-pop or a celebrity of any sort know that this type of thing will happen. It can happen to anyone in the public eye. There’s even erotic k-pop fiction with ME in it somewhere. I don’t think it’s a problem at all. The only point where I think it actually becomes a problem for the artist is when people try to pass off the fiction as real events, because then that crosses the line into defamation. Other than that, I see no issue.
K-pop idols who were minors but now aren’t… I don’t see how that changes anything. We all were minors once, even me back in 1863. But let’s assume – just for argument’s sake – that someone does go ahead and writes some hugely sexually erotic fanfic about someone and that person is a minor. I haven’t ever read any such fanfictions, but I’m sure it happens all the time especially with girls lusting after young guys in boy groups (as women are the majority of fanfic writers). Now if you went and asked any underage person in a A/B/C/D-tier k-pop group what their top dozen concerns were regarding being in the industry, assuming they were even allowed to speak to you honestly about this, here’s what you’d likely get:
- I miss my parents
- I don’t get enough time off or freedom in general
- We train too hard and don’t eat enough
- Why do I have to be micromanaged all the time
- When will I make some money
- I hope I don’t get sick because the company will still make me work
- When does it get glamorous like I was promised
- Why can’t I be myself a bit more in public
- I hope to god my bosses know what the hell they’re even doing
- I’m bored and lonely
- Why can’t I choose my own style, the look the company wants isn’t me
- Can trainers stop being so mean
- I want to tell people how I really feel about things but I can’t
I promise you that “someone might be writing an inappropriate erotic fanfiction about me” wouldn’t even be on the list. That’s not to say that they’d like the idea, but they simply have bigger fish to fry. There’s probably the above list plus about fifty other things at least that they would give a fuck about way, way more, before something as trivial as what someone wrote in some bullshit story even rated a mention. Fans think fanfiction is terribly important, because they’re fans so of course they do – but it really isn’t. What’s actually important is standing up for the human rights of young people who don’t have a voice to do it themselves and talking about the things that actually affect them. Maybe a little more of that and a little less of the caring about what’s in some fanfiction story would be nice.
For anyone who has read the Shin Hana books, that list above should look familiar, because the books touch on all of that stuff at certain points. That’s because underneath this site’s cuntiness I actually give a fuck, whereas your average k-pop fan only cares about being seen as morally correct, they don’t actually give a shit about morals or the people in the business, not in any real way. Fans join fandoms for the feel-good experience of being a fan, and they often don’t really consider who they hurt along the way as long as they don’t get called out on it and publicly shamed. That’s why this site bothers so many of those people and it’s also why kpopalypse.com is never going to do really big numbers that the revenge-porn spreading or suicide-as-clickbait utilising sites do. Thank you for your support, I’m grateful for all readers and I will keep bringing you the trufax!
That’s all for this episode of QRIMOLE! This series will return next month!
Oh, and do you have a question that you’d like to see answered in the next episode of QRIMOLE? If so, use the question box below, or if no box appears, click the Qri on the sidebar to open the box as a separate webpage! Kpopalypse will return!
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