2020

​3min

 

Idol culture is a unique East Asian culture, very popular in China, Japan, and South Korea. The most representative of Japan is group AKB-48 and underground idol culture.

 

Take AKB-48 as an example. They mainly rely on fans to vote for their favorite group members during the election period and offline performances to make money. It is worth noting that this voting does not limit the number of single votes, which means that if A ticket is $5. If the fans want, he can directly spend $1000 to buy 200 votes to vote for his idol. As feedback, the performance position of each member of the group and the close-up camera time during the recording. It's all determined by how many votes this member can get from fans. That is to say, if the girl can earn more votes and make more money for the company, she will be at the forefront of the performance and have the most Close-up camera time.

 

But the price to be paid to maintain high popularity and support is also huge. First of all, these girls are not allowed in a relationship. Also, for a longer career period, many girls joined the group extremely early. Some joined the group when they were just 12 years old. Regular and extensive training will definitely take up these girls' spare time. Once they fail to become famous, they will face many difficulties after leaving the group, such as not having sufficient professional skills. It can be said that when the audience is seeking entertainment and consuming these groups, the audience is also consuming the lives of these "Idol". The company and capital will not lose a single bit. In recent years, some companies have started to operate boys' groups in a similar mode, which means that in the future, there will be more issues that can be discussed in the face of this phenomenon.

 

Similar things are happening in the meat industry. We can often see animal faces printed on the packaging of some meat products. These faces are often cartoons and present a very happy state, but the reality is that these animals will only appear in this packaging bag after they are killed. Here, I don’t believe they will be happy about their death. Similarly, for the sake of production efficiency, many animals are kept in captivity in the breeding farm, and they may not be able to see the natural environment, grassland, and forest outside the breeding farm like other "real animals" until they died.

 

Our interesting social structure creates many ridiculous, unreasonable, and unnatural things. Both humans and animals look desperate trying to sell themselves. But do they really want to?

 

Reference Video PRODUCE48 (PICK ME) Performance