What's your pet peeve in RL?

[Firewind]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

BBC News - AKB48 pop star shaves head after breaking band rules

What the fuck Japan?

[Satori]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

She should go back and do the rest, It's patchy as hell !
Provided she's not underage who really cares if somebody is slipping her a length on a regular basis?
I'd never heard of her/them before maybe it will boost their career after all it got Britney a load of publicity.

So who's going to do the "Leave bald Jp sex girl alone" video?

[Armando]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

(11:54:15 AM) Friend: I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but the South Park Jonas Brothers episode is no exaggeration; they really do spray little girls with their jizz cannons.
(11:58:56 AM) Me: Lol?
(11:59:23 AM) Friend: Ever see that episode?
(12:01:29 PM) Me: Nope
(12:05:09 PM) Friend: The Jonas Bros. are a manufactured singing act by Disney. They're famous for having publicly pledged to be virgins until marriage (they even wear purity rings). These guys are ridiculously famous, like they fill stadiums full of frothing preteen girls.
(12:06:56 PM) Me: What
(12:07:04 PM) Me: Is that the kind of message they want to be sending out?
(12:07:15 PM) Me: That virginity is still a thing and you should totally feel bad if you don't have it?
(12:08:29 PM) Friend: South Park made an episode about them, calling out how Disney sells them as virginal while their music and live act are anything but. The episode was a portrayal of how Disney is selling sex to preteen girls, and included a scene where the Jonas Bros. grab onto huge water cannons in their live concert and start spraying white foam into the awaiting faces/mouths of the little girls in the audience.

Until today, I was not aware that they do in fact employ these cannons for real
(12:09:11 PM) Me: What
(12:11:35 PM) Friend: Hot Foam In Your Face - Video Clips - South Park Studios
(12:13:34 PM) Friend: Jonas brothers spraying the crowd with foam- 7/26/08 - YouTube
(12:17:08 PM) Me: Man, this is retarded as hell.

I have a headache now.

What the fuck Japan?

I'm not really surprised at this considering the exact same thing happened with an anime character. Still ridiculous.

[Melody]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

They portray an image of cuteness known as "kawaii", and have become a huge phenomenon both in Japan and increasingly in other Asian countries, correspondents say.

The condition for being part of such a successful act is that the girls must not date boys, so as not to shatter their fans' illusions.


So she has to hold herself to appease her fans? Nope. Fuck that. That kawaii is bullshit. What the fuck ever happened to Moe Moe Kyun?


As for the girl, I hold no pity for her because of the following reasons.

-Signed a Contract
-Agreed to it
-Broke Rules
-Trying to avoid punishment

In the immortal words of Chris from Total Drama Island, "Sorry, dems da rules."

[Firewind]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Police spies stole identities of dead children | UK news | The Guardian

Basically the Undercover Police in the UK have been stealing the identities of dead children to use for undercover cases.

But not to infiltrate something that is a serious threat like Terror Cells or Neo-Nazi rings... But to to spy on a bunch of Hippies...

What. The. Fuck?

[Feba]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

For those who aren't aware, AKB48 is a giant sensation, across pretty much all of East Asia. They regularly top the charts in Japan, and are very well known outside Japan as well-- in fact, there's an AKB fan store and café in Taipei (and yeah, I've been there). There are a number of "sister" bands from the same producer; inside Japan, there's SKE48 based out of Nagoya, and NMB48 from Osaka (as well the lesser known "rival" band Nogizaka46, and the now defunct "adult idol" band SDN48). There is apparently also the newest Japanese group, HKT48, based in Fukuoka. Outside Japan, there is JKT48 from Jakarta, and SNH48 from Shanghai has recently hit the scene; and other bands are being formed, such as the somewhat ethereal TPE48, right here in Taipei. That's the same producer, so we're not counting the various ripoff groups either. Incidentally, I have a friend who bears a strong resembelence to one of the members; the first time I met her, someone stopped us to ask if she was in fact an AKB member. She would frequently complain about harassment because of it-- there was once when she was late because she had the brilliant idea to put her hair in pigtails, which got her mobbed by a group of middle school kids.

Their business model is essentially that, with the large size of the band, some portion of it is always in their home city (Akihabara, in the case of AKB.), which allows them to have concerts every single day in their personal theatre, instead of occasionally performing in theatres owned by other companies. And from what I've heard, despite performing every day, they are still normally sold out. The members who are not in the nightly show are spread out performing in various events, TV shows (ranging from game shows to dramas), and things like that. The idea is to have an idol band that is much closer to its audience; for example, in the past, they held an event where, with the purchase of an album, you would receive a ticket. At the event, the ticket could be traded for a handshake with a single member of the band. Many fans bought multiple albums (which don't come cheap), simply so they could meet more of the idols. They have also released at least two versions of a video game (as in, software versions. The first game at least also had 48 different versions of the cover art, one for each member; there was a special edition PSP kit released for it, at an ungodly price) wherein the goal was to date one (or more) of the members of AKB until she confessed her love to you, at which point you could decide whether to accept her proposal, or reject it. The game was fully dubbed, and the confession scenes at the end were done in FMVs. I know this because I've played it. And yes, in the game, they do discuss how you would have to keep your relationship secret because of the job.

And I think that's the heart of the matter here. AKB is selling an image, and when you're in the public eye, working for a company, you ARE responsible for the image you put out. Do I think it's absurd? Sure. But at the same time, it's the conditions of her work. She knew she was barred from dating, and she knew the Japanese papparazi are fucking assholes. This is not the first time this has happened to a Japanese idol. To be honest, though, her reaction is probably mostly faked for the benefit of moe. If she's sad, she's sad because she had to break off her relationship, not because she disappointed the fans. I would compare AKB to something like the Japanese version of the WWE-- we all kinda agree that it's fake, but there's still a lot of people that really want to buy in to the fantasy, or at least find something amusing in it.



Incidentally, if any of you ever find yourselves in Taipei, look me up and I will totally take you to that AKB cafe. It's surprisingly affordable, even if the waitresses aren't much to look at.

[Satori]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

does the number 48 have some kind of significance over there.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

I always thought it was for aesthetics and divisibility. 48 is 3*2^4, so you could hypothetically do something like, say, have three groups of 16 girls (still a decently sized lineup) in three different places at once.

[Ketaru]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

This probably isn't the reason, but 4 is a number commonly associated with death and 8 is a number associated with good luck.

[Feba]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

I always thought it was for aesthetics and divisibility. 48 is 3*2^4, so you could hypothetically do something like, say, have three groups of 16 girls (still a decently sized lineup) in three different places at once.

This is in fact the case; AKB48 is divided primarily into subgroups Team A, Team K, and Team B; NMB48 is divided into Team N, Team M, and Team Bâ…¡. Beyond that, I doubt that there's much significance to the number. Incidentally, AKB48 is read as A.K.B. Forty Eight; not using the Japanese pronunciation, so I'd say there's a fair chance that they simply wanted a cool sounding number.

EDIT: I looked it up; apparently AKB actually operates with quite a few more members than that much of the time. I'm not sure why that is.

[DakAttack]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

EDIT: I looked it up; apparently AKB actually operates with quite a few more members than that much of the time. I'm not sure why that is.

Because avarice knows no bounds.

[Aksannyi]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

The fact that the closer it gets to Valentine's Day, the more I'm going to be subjected to sweet talking and mushy mushy way too public posts on Facebook. Closed doors, people, closed doors. No one wants to hear about your sweet pooky, even if your sweet pooky is your dog.

[Aksannyi]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Because quoting myself lolz

Just when I think things are going well (enough) at work and I can manage to keep myself out of the laser death-rays of Boss Lady's true sight ...

That's when I get reamed over something by someone who isn't my boss. Someone who isn't in charge of me at all. Hell, someone who doesn't even work in my department. This same person always seems to have it out for me, if I send an e-mail up to cover my ass, she's the first one to berate me for it. I get phone calls on my time off - and I can't not answer calls from work, because it might be my team, the people I lead, who may actually need me and I feel like I need to be available for them. I've gotten yelled at for everything under the sun with this woman, and the worst part is, she has no fucking jurisdiction (for lack of a better word) over me, she's just been with the agency forever and thinks that means something and she can boss anyone around. I can (and will) go to Boss Lady about it, but it won't change anything because honestly, all it will do is breed more resentment toward me when I haven't even done anything wrong to this woman in the first place.

Fuck this crap! Even when I'm winning, I'm losing.

Goddamn. If I could do this job without all the petty middle school bullshit drama and wannabe politics, I wouldn't mind going there so much.

So this was about two weeks ago ... guess who's transferring to our department ...

She is going to be underneath Boss Lady and me, and this was not at the decision of either of us - in fact, Boss Lady and I spoke about this and we are both "WTFing" at pretty much the same level. Quite a lot of apprehension as we know she won't be taking directives from either of us too well. We are hoping that she was moved here and they're trying to force her to quit.

But ugh. From someone acting like she had some charge over me to suddenly being nothing, yeah, that's going to cause some friction.

The funny thing is, both Boss Lady and I had the same "sick to my stomach" feeling about it, so at least I know someone's on the same page as me, for all the clashing she and I do, we really do want the Ops center to go in the same direction.

[Ketaru]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

The fact that the closer it gets to Valentine's Day, the more I'm going to be subjected to sweet talking and mushy mushy way too public posts on Facebook. Closed doors, people, closed doors. No one wants to hear about your sweet pooky, even if your sweet pooky is your dog.

Thankfully, I probably won't be getting those. I just recently set a bunch of people who are prone to post those so that the only thing I see from them are "Only Important" posts. Immediately, a lot of posts from this particularly nauseating couple (coincidentally, they are 2 childhood family friends who I care nothing about) just disappeared from my feed. There's only so much Facebook flirting one can take...

The guy likes to also go onto the girl's Facebook account to make poop jokes. Classy...

[Aksannyi]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Taxes really went up this year. I got promoted, but you wouldn't know it by looking at my paychecks. The overtime has also dried up temporarily (no fear, it will come back, it always does), but damn. Nice trick, promoting me when taxes go up so that I end up making less (take home) than I did last year.

It could of course be worse, I could be making the same hourly rate as last year which would mean even less, but shit man. This is totally lame.