Schrödinger's discourse

Who is talking about K-pop anymore? Do you know? Do I know? Sometimes it feels like nobody, and everybody.

I'm sitting here drinking coffee on Sunday morning and eating some amazing rugelach from my favorite bakery (if you're in NYC ever, try their babka I swear it's amazing) and thinking about how we're all talking about pop culture differently than we were a few years ago. It's not just a pivot to video like past eras; it feels like we've pivoted to parveness. "Pareve" meaning neutral in terms of Kosher. Candy, full of sugars, is often parve. Vegetables are always pareve. It lacks the fatty depth of meat or dairy, but that doesn't mean it's bad.

With the waning power of Stan Twitter, the Anglophone stream of K-pop discourse in 2025 seems a bit disjointed: there's, of course, TikTok and Instagram. There's Reddit, Facebook, Discord, Slack, podcasts, Substack & other newsletters (this is published on Ghost because of Nazi reasons), Twitch, Bluesky, and also the company sanctioned apps like Weverse and Bubble.

But, personally, most of how I engage with K-pop nowadays is in group chats. Friends and I send one another links and hot takes, and it turns out we're not so dissimilar from the current American administration (except that us doing it isn't likely illegal). Semafor recently dubbed us in the "Group Chat Era" for political reasons, but us pop culture aficionados have already been aware for a while. Nobody, it seems, wants to discuss things in public the way they once may have, as the power of connectivity via social media wanes.

There are a lot of reasons that we can think about how the disjointed state of social media led to where we are today, political, cultural, and viral; I for one struggled quite a bit and took myself away from my Twitter addiction at a certain point in 2024, and then decided to opt out of posting on the site entirely once Musk bought it. This was for my state of mind, and although I'm active on Threads and Bluesky minimally, I'm not inclined to get back to posting in full force once as I ever was. It seems that increasingly people are moving away from posting publicly because instead... You can just enjoy conversing with your friends and smaller groups of people.

Which is why, perhaps, I didn't realize that something I allegedly said in an article was going viral and people were talking about it until a friend told me there was a discussion about the article on r/pophead.

So, to go back a few weeks: I spoke to a journalist writing a piece about K-pop. I had liked how the reporter had framed their query in emails to me, and I enjoyed our conversation. We spoke for an hour, and I was very clear about my thoughts on things. That, of course, gets edited down into sound bites. I've been there, I've reframed thoughts into a line or two. We all do it, as reporters. That's the job. I didn't like how the writer framed my quotes, and I just... Did nothing. I didn't tweet. I didn't email the reporter. I didn't feel like I had to. The piece isn't mine, and it had interesting things to talk about, even if I disagreed with the framing. But I have written about the topic at hand dozens of times, and I knew what I meant (and I have a recording). I should probably thank my therapist and the thousands of dollars I've spent on her, but for the first time in a long time, and perhaps ever, I didn't feel the urge to immediately post on social media about it. I vented to a few friends in a group chat and moved on.

It hit me then that I could move on because I had moved myself away from the discourse; I stopped caring, because it didn't matter to me. It's like the classic "if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears does it make a sound?" quandary. If nobody's talking about you where you know they are, it somehow feels like it doesn't matter. It still might, but to you, in that moment, it doesn't exist.

And in general that's how disparate K-pop discourse, and perhaps all pop culture discourse, feels nowadays. You are opting in or out, you are engaging or you're not. You're consuming, but you're not keeping it with you. The algorithm of our various apps feed us content, but the way we discuss it is changing. It's intimate rather than extroverted, for better or for worse. This means we're not sharing as many ideas, or hearing as many opinions.

Culture writing is largely dead or dying. Many people are struggling to find work, and some of us, like yours truly, work for some of the companies that have both built and perhaps ended the social media era because capital "D" discourse doesn't pay in 2025; it just enrages. It's like every day being publicly online can either be chaos or quiet, and I think many of us are opting for the more private conversationality rather than wanting to fight and rage about things like K-pop when there are so many other things going on.

This doesn't mean people aren't talking, but the way we're talking is different. I've seen 613 videos on my feed over the past few days about Katseye's "Gnarly" and whether it's good, terrible, or terribly addicting. But I have only heard takes about why it's that way in group chats. I see people discussing the drama that (G)I-dle used to announce they're dropping the "(G)" and become i-dle, but only a few people seem to realize this is how it always has been in Korean, and this is something that seems like they've wanted for a long time. Maybe my algorithm just sucks, but either way the general sense I have in May 2025 is that people aren't talking about pop culture the same way they once were. The depth is disparate, and the drama is fleeting; many of us are simply burnt out from it all, and soundbites reign.

I feel a bit depressed about it all, to be honest. Pitching has never been harder. Getting artists or companies to talk in-depth about things is at an all time low. They want covers and videos, not content. I haven't written in months. I'm working on a story at the moment and feeling like a failure. Part of this, it feels, is a personal failing. But I also recognize that the value of content and discourse continues to be fading, fleeting. It's coming at a time that feels worse for me, because I've already sold out, leaving the industry behind because the industry has left me behind, making it impossible to pay my bills and live life. It feels like a moral failing to not be a starving artist, to not continually create in this environment where it feels like people only want content for bite sized discourse that enrages, and then wanes.

A few days ago, I spoke to a class of students and the professor, a good friend of mine and reader of this newsletter, said I publish Notes on K-pop monthly. Guys, this was supposed to be a weekly effort. But between my day job's stresses and the state of the world, and the state of discourse, there's altogether too much going on and the feeling that nobody cares to read about it all. That, obviously, is not true. You, I hope, are still reading this. But I think it says a lot that none of us are really reading the same things anymore, or talking about them the same way we once were.

Communications are changing, and culture discourse with it. I want to write more, talk more, discuss and discourse more. I personally am going to try to engage a bit more, in a thoughtful, hopefully productive way, because it feels off-kilter to see a world where there both is and isn't discourse about things that we should, and want to be, thinking about. This piece ended in a bit of a different place than I expected, perhaps reflecting myself more than the point I wanted to make about how the disparate state of pop culture conversations. I think this and the last post have been me feeling a bit all over the place about discourse, and I'm going to try to be better, and neater, as a writer. Feedback is always appreciated. But in the meantime, thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy this discussion about discourse in a discordant time.

What I'm reading

"With his coming out, JUST B's Bain makes K-pop history" by Samantha Lui of bunni pop

"JUST B’s BAIN coming out changes K-pop history" by Taylor Glasby for Dazed

"I Was a Black K-pop Fan For 2 Decades—After Endless Cultural Appropriation & Racial Slurs, I’m Letting Go" by Tabby Kibugi for Teen Vogue

"The RPF Question" by Sacha Judd for Fansplaining

Also, some people had really insightful takes on my last piece. Please read them. We love thoughtful discourse!

What I'm listening to

I wrote this while listening to Kwon Jin Ah's The Dreamest album.

Also listened to "Talk That Talk" by TWICE while grabbing an image that felt appropriate.