The big revelation I had, waiting in line to get a hot chocolate before trivia (we came in 2nd, AGAIN), is that I don’t particularly want to be a freelance writer—or more specifically a reporter. That has never been my bag. I wish it was because then I would have fairly clear goals and a career that can be externally parsed by normies and old people.
But unfortunately, it occurred to me that (among other things) when I grow up I want to be a blogger. Blogging is fun in a way that ~Writing An Article~ isn’t. Academic writing is also fun, but in a different way. This whole attitude I have of only wanting to do fun writing is definitely stupid but I’m going to try and see where it takes me. If all else fails I can start taking my ADHD meds again, right?
With that being said, I’m going to try to put out weekly bloggy updates on Fridays because I think it would be a nice challenge. If you like reading this first one please send it to people/tweet it/subscribe/be nice to me! I’ve promised myself that if I can do 4 in a row without skipping I’ll open up subscriptions but for now it’s all free.
This week in fandom
VLIVE, a popular livestreaming app launched by Korean web giant Naver in 2015, hosted hundreds of channels of Kpop acts, including BTS and and Blackpink. Hybe, the label of many of those acts, had a competing app called Weverse, and sensibly decided to buy out VLIVE and consolidate the archives and audiences of their artists. However, VLIVE was independent, so not all of the artists who had presences on that platform are Hybe artists who will now go on to pop back up on Weverse.
A fan-run multi-artist archive of VLIVE content including those videos not falling under the transfer protocol was summarily copyright-blasted into hell, leading to an outpouring of distress on social media from fans who had depended on the archive for access to videos of their favorite bands.
All is not lost; fans of non-Hybe band Stray Kids can access a bountiful archive on YouTube, for example. But I do think that these moments where the fragility of digital content becomes suddenly and terrifyingly apparent are no less fascinating for their regularity, like eclipses that freak everyone out and sends them running for the hills. Obviously Twitter and HBO are the big ones of late, but VLIVE is an interesting case study because many of the people the most distressed about this are young enough to be facing the faceless evil of corporate content ownership affecting them personally for the first time. In the context of Kpop, too, when the sheer amount of free content pumped out each week is more than any one person could digest, and the value therein is more or less purely emotional, it becomes a little bit of a different equation than TV shows or tweets. The videos slipping through the cracks are the very stuff and sustenance of sustained obsession.
Back in 2014-15 I did some fan archiving work for a band which had been active in the 2000s. This involved downloading and rehosting a lot of webpages and videos from sites which, a mere 2-3 years after I scraped them, had completely vanished. If not for my timely obsession, a lot of content would have been gone forever. That experience was definitely a big influence on my choice to do my undergraduate thesis on the “lost web” — so I hope some of the Kpop stans affected by VLIVE’s closure become invested in the larger cause of digital preservation.
This week in polar exploration
Last summer saw the first archaeological dives to the wrecks of Erebus and Terror in Nunavut since before the pandemic. Parks Canada, the governmental department responsible for the ongoing excavation of the fragile wrecks, is brutally slow and not particularly transparent as far as updates go, so enthusiasts are used to surviving on the barest of tidbits that leak out in the months after each dive season. This year the biggest news is that during the autumn dives, one of the 275 artifacts recovered from Erebus was a leatherbound journal found in the steward’s pantry. Experts believe that if it has writing in it, they may be able to read it after careful lab treatment. The steward in question was Edmund Hoar, captain’s steward to Sir John Franklin himself, so it’s possible it could include some seriously juicy deets about the expedition’s fate. Obviously this is incredible news. Past drops of century-late Franklin news include: the 2014 and 2016 discoveries of the wrecks, and 2015’s “they definitely ate each other” bombshell. However personally I hope it’s a snarky Very Secret Diary a la Cassie Clare with plenty of notes on Hoar’s haircare routine and notes on which guys on the ship he doesn’t like.
A bad TikTok I made
Things I read this week that I liked
The Power of Indulging Your Weird, Offbeat Obsessions by Clive Thompson
This type of curiosity can be a lot more powerful than the type propelled by a desire for money or repute. In these latter cases, if the payoff (the hunt for knowledge, for an insight, for a breakthrough) doesn’t seem like it’s going to come soon, the risk/reward ratio looks too grim, and we give up. But with pure curiosity, we keep going. It’s an intrinsic motivation versus an extrinsic one.
Franz Kafka, Party Animal by Becca Rothfeld
Kafka takes evident pleasure in posturing as an incurable, and he is unfailingly dramatic about minor infirmities. When he has a headache, it is as if he has “two little boards screwed against my temples”; when he cannot sleep, he feels as if he has laid his head “in a false hole.” He was keenly sensitive to sound, and in a short piece later published in a magazine he whines that his bedroom is “the headquarters of the noise of the whole apartment.” His letters have much to say about his phobia of mice. As his biographer Reiner Stach so aptly puts it, “For this man absolutely anything could become a problem.”
Algorithmic pathways by Kyle Chayka
My wandering to find more background, to figure out what it is that I like about this music, reminds me of a desire path, those DIY tracks through grass fields or cutting sidewalk corners. If the algorithmic feed is the sidewalk, conveniently providing a clean and clear-cut avenue to progress on, a personal cultural pursuit is the messier desire path, which moves in unexpected directions.
Banger of the week
Ok that’s it byeeeeeeeee!!!!!