Further T-ara hullabaloo?

[koganbot]

I worry that my posting this simply adds my own drop of piss to the general pissiness of the Internet. If Areum's in trouble, posting about it won't help her. If she's not in trouble, posting about it won't help her. My excuse is that the Internet's in trouble too (which I find fascinating), and that's what I'm posting about. (And anyway, participation at koganbot is down to a trickle.)

But in case you're not up on it, ex-T-ara-member Areum has been posting texts and vids on her Instagram that Netizens are characterizing as "strange" and "insane," and there's a recent post of hers that seems to take a swipe at Core Contents Media CEO Kim Kwang Soo and at the remaining members of T-ara.

I really have no idea if there's anything there, and I simply don't trust Netizens and K-pop "news" and entertainment sites to be remotely competent on the subject of whatever it is, if anything, that is happening with Areum. Netizens, Allkpop, etc. have a history of credulously and stupidly repeating each other's narratives and interpretations. Regarding Aream, what's specifically missing are:

(1) Authoritative and full translations of what Areum said.

(2) Any attempt to actually evaluate whether what she said and did are "strange" or "insane" rather than, say, hard to understand due to observers not having a full view of what she's responding to (or maybe not even hard to understand if we block out all the noise and preconceptions regarding the supposed weirdness of what she's saying). Since I don't know Korean myself, and for that matter don't know Korea, I feel at sea. (And I'm so out of it regarding modern technology that I had to look up "Instagram" in Wikipedia). What I'm looking for is someone going in with the sense of "Here's something I don't yet understand, here are some hypotheses, here's what I found potentially disturbing, here are some potential counter-explanations." I mean, my initial thought about someone posting a video in the middle of the night where she's talking to people who aren't there would be that she's acting or playing around; whereas if she were talking to people who weren't there in the middle of the day at a supermarket I'd be immediately leery (but would look to see if she's wearing an earpiece, hence is just on the phone). One bit of supposed evidence of her strangeness was pretty easily refuted by poster jus-sayin: "On Instagram, not sure if it's international but in Korea, her birthday's 4/19, so she posted at 4:20 saying a minute passed since her birthday. It's not that weird. Among fans, some send her tweets at 4:19 to wish her a 'happy birthday(time)' or they call it 'Areum time' so she's not losing it because she wished herself happy birthday." People have been linking her Instagram as if it's self-evident that what we see will appear weird. But is it?

In any event, thanks to David Frazer for alerting me.

Comments

Miami Dolphins

[koganbot]

Speaking of American football, is anyone in my earshot attending to what's happening with the Miami Dolphins?

http://mmqb.si.com/2013/11/05/richie-incognito-jonathan-martin-dolphins-hazing-nfl

I'm skeptical enough of mass self-righteousness* that I'm holding off deciding I know what happened.

*I'm self-righteously skeptical of self-righteousness.

[davidfrazer.livejournal.com]

Areum's mother says that she's fine but "She’s always had part of her with a peculiar way of thinking since she was young". Of course this is a translation, but "peculiar way of thinking" might potentially mean that Areum is mentally ill in some way.

[koganbot]

Or it might just mean that she's independent and doesn't trim her ideas to make them comfortable to the people around her. And she might not be all that bright or logical, either. And she might also be somewhat oblivious to how she plays to the world around her. But believing in ghosts is fairly accepted, in the same way that believing in astrology and believing that one can be somewhat psychic is — though not as accepted as the idea that God can hear your prayers and that through meditation (as opposed to, say, through conversation and action) one can commune with the world and with other spirits, etc. In any event, none of these are generally considered "mental illness" (well, I would put the being "oblivious to how she plays" thing into the category "learning disability," though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there's controversy among the professional categorizers regarding where "learning disability" and "mental illness" cross over into one another).

My point isn't that, oh, no, she can't possibly be mentally ill or in trouble but rather, that the fact a lot of observers think she is doesn't feel like evidence to me but rather like mob psychology, given the history these Netizens have of getting things wrong. Also, I'm put off by the quickness with which people reach for the term "schizophrenia." I have friends who are schizophrenic, though I don't think this makes me particularly knowledgeable about the subject. But there's a difference between thinking on the one hand that you're communicating with unborn spirits and, on the other, regularly hearing voices from these spirits in your head; or between, say, wondering whether the strangers on the street might be plotting against you and being sure you know that they're plotting against you, and what the plot is.

Of course, strangers on the street or on the Net, anyway, actually are plotting against members of T-ara, so maybe that's not such a good example.