#more than they did the rising popularity of Jpop idols

[cursedpinterest]

ed tw

i'd argue that the waifspo/coquette stuff is more of a branch off of thinspo/edblr than a reincarnation, if only because it's almost the exact same posts, photos, memes, etc, just with different tags. argubly, its even an evolution of it

unfortunately, I was on edblr for a long time (2014--2020), so i sorta witnessed the gradual evolution from triggering posts in self-contained tags to triggering but #aesthetic posts that were cross tagged. at first it was relatively mild--like cross tagging 'grungy thinspo' in the main grunge tag, etc.

but weirdly with the kpop boom of the late 2010s (esp 2018 and 2019) there was a big explosion of cross tagging into kpop fandom tags, and then into anime tags, and other """delicate pastel stuff""" as well as other aesthetic tags, esp dark academia and instagram it girls

there was always an uh 'market overlap' so to speak. like a lot of people would use anime characters or k/jpop stars as thinspo, but they never crossed tagged them before. they'd tag it like #anime thinspo or whatever, but not the name of over character along with it, yknow? i know right before the pandemic there was a migration from edblr to edtwt, plus since the beginning of tumblr edblr got a lot of their thinspo from pinterest. since cross tagging is more common on those sites maybe some users assumed it'd work that way on tumblr too?

so maybe the coquette nonsense is just a congealing of all that that leaked elsewhere online. that's just a guess though

sorry if this is too long. im not even sure why im telling you all this but ig since you have to deal with it a lot of the time you deserved some context. anyway, i love your blog

first i just wanna say im sorry you went through all of this, and i genuinely hope you are doing well 🫂

& yes i think you are correct with it being an evolution more than a reincarnation, i just couldn’t really think of a way to promptly describe it in the tags at the time. i luckily escaped from proana/ed spaces before i got onto tumblr, so i didn’t know much of edblr apart from the weird shit that escaped containment, for a lack of a better word, but once i started using pinterest more often after polyvore died, as many young people (esp girls) did, i saw a kind of rise in the “aesthetic” side that was probably, looking back, just thinly-veiled thinspo.

now i feel that the shit im seeing on tumblr with the coquette girls and the whisper pinterest girls is much more blatant, like im getting flashbacks to when i trolled proana forums, back before tumblr or pinterest were popular. although, im sure that kind of brazenness always existed, i just wasn’t as aware of it as i am now, probably bc i avoided that shit as much as possible, and now i kind am more perceptive to this shit i guess.

i know that waifspo is used instead of thinspo since it isn’t censored like thinspo is, so i feel like “waif” and “coquette” are recent labels that are attached to stealth ed content. pinterest has been trying to crack down on thinspo lately, but it’s just relabeled now to post about it sneakily. it’s sad that there are so many little thinspo dog whistles floating around since most social medias have cracked down on the obvious terms. i fear for the young people just now getting on the internet and potentially being brainwashed into this shit.

and re: the kpop thinspo, i made a post about that like a month or so ago but it’s truly darksided… like i got into kpop during the pandemic like a lot of people and every so often when i would look up content about groups i liked, i would see pictures of idols with captions like “omg weight goals” with proana hashtags. the saddest thing is that a couple of these idols have opened up about being forced into extreme diets by their companies, or how they developed eds bc of the industry, and ppl are still tagging pics of them looking unhealthily thin with “body goals” like it’s just such a blatant disrespect, they aren’t fans they’re fetishizing these idols suffering.

sorry for getting into it lol… i just have a lot to say, as im sure a lot of ppl who have also lived thru this do as well. but don’t apologize for this ask i really really appreciated it!!! i honestly think there needs to be more discussion about eds, specifically re: the online communities garnered around them and how they promote people to basically self harm, so yea, thank you for the ask💞

#ed mention #ed tw #sorry if this is incomprehensible it’s late i just had a lot to say #i see people commenting body goals or weight goals on pinterest all the time it’s so horrible

[starberry-cupcake]

Today I found a video in youtube that attempted to compare jpop and kpop through things like “most popular boybands”, “most popular female singer”, “most popular male singer”, “best vocals”, etc. And you could clearly tell that the person who did it was either well versed in only kpop or in neither and it brought me back to 8-ish years ago when I started to slowly make my way out the fandoms in general. They were using youtube views to measure popularity, which meant you got j soul brothers competing against bts, juju competing against taeyon and akb48 competing for vocals instead of a band like little glee monster or goose house. Jpop was never intending to cater to the mainstream whereas kpop started doing that from 2009-ish/2010-ish onward. You’re not gonna get the full scope of jpop from youtube or spotify because that isn’t where they are. If you don’t check niconico, cdtv, live performances and events and stuff of the sort, you’re not gonna get fair comparisons, because jpop has a different dynamic. Johnny’s aren’t what they used to, but they fill tokyo domes every year systematically and they aren’t in youtube. Utaites are rising even more than regular idols with each passing day and they upload in nico nico. Bands which primarily focus on vocals are rarely gonna subscribe to the same marketing that bands that focus on niche idol culture and niche idol bands are going to use other platforms that best fit for that specific culture and place, especially aiming for fan events and live interaction rather than the online one. You can’t measure jpop and kpop with the same stick, at least not kpop from after 2010. If you wanted to compare Arashi with SS501 back in the day, maybe, but right now they’re entirely different scenes. Jpop didn’t normally attempt to cater to outer markets, sometimes it was for the better and sometimes for the worse, but don’t come at me telling me j soul brothers are the epitome of the jpop boyband or that juju is more popular than ayumi hamasaki or namie amuro or that akb48 is in any way comparable to your regular kpop girl band (maybe Faky would be a closer pick for that). 

#luly rambles #about jpop mainly #and people comparing it to kpop #delete later