Today… well, today I says to myself, “Kimi, what is it about media blogs?” I hate them and yet I admire them. I don’t mean the download-sharing kind, of course, but the ones that get by solely on posting pictures and YouTube/Dailymotion/Veoh/imeem/what have you links.
I hate that all their content is mostly based off what they’ve probably leeched from the Internet. (But if it comes from their own wallet, all the more power to them.) I hate that there is little actual thought behind the decision other than “I like this, people might like this, so here you go”. Insert smiley or one-liner on the media in question, press “Publish/Post”, watch the comment and hit counts fly.
Perhaps a great deal of it is because while I value a pretty face and watching choreography, a good deal of my music fandoms are not visually based. I’ve never found much merit in photobooks, partially stemming from some disappointment with my collection of artbooks that sit gathering dust on my bookshelf and the fact that I’d rather have them sit pretty than do anything to them. Trading cards, too, are considered more as a collectible item (going back to my days in high school where I amassed over 300 booster packs of Japanese Yu+Gi+Oh! cards for the sole purpose of having the collection). And while I like looking at pictures, I am not the person with several gigs in pictures of their favorite artist(s).
No, my music fandoms develop because of that same music, and rarely go further. I’m perfectly content to listen to people like Younha or Gackt or even, say, AAA without wondering what sort of person they are, or being obsessive about how they look. (Sure, Shuuta being hot helps. Urata’s body helps even more. But I got into them because I liked their music and I liked their dancing. Not how they looked. Thankfully, because they looked pretty bland early on.) Only recently has this changed, as my purchases of Japanese magazines increase, but I’m still fairly selective about the magazines I buy, preferring to preview the photoshoot before deciding on any actual purchase. (But we chalk this up to how expensive buying said magazines in this country is. My poor wallet.)
And I suppose to some extent, the download blog earns my ire as well. I’m grateful, sure, because they widen the ways to get your Japanese media. But when I know that they get over hundreds of hits solely for the downloads, it kind of hurts. Especially because this little blog, no matter how much I pour into it, barely averages about 100 hits overall a day, but half of them for nonsensical google searches or what lyrics I’ve color-coded for my amusement. I say this with a sad confidence, you know – let it beat! was a download blog too and it averaged 100 hits for whatever my latest post was… until the next one came along.
But I feel justified – even the teeniest bit - in knowing that I fleshed out those same downloads with hopefully interesting text. Whether or not people read it was up to them, but at least I wasn’t completely relying on the allure of Koda Kumi’s pumping hips, Domoto Koichi’s angsty face, or AAA’s way-too-many releases to draw people in. I had my own opinions and ideas to share, at least.
For that same reason, I admire them. I admire the gall those same media blogs have in doing that. And of course, their success. Because not only do I think I could ever do that, just post a picture or a video link, but my head might possibly explode if you ever put me in front of a keyboard and blogging program and told me I wasn’t allowed to type under pain of everyone in the world collectively crying “Bullshit!” and stoning me to death. Actually, I’m a bit surprised it hasn’t happened yet – the latter part, that is.
…it might be hard to tell, but this post wasn’t supposed to be a criticism of media blogs. Oops.
No, this post, with great pains, sends me temporarily joining the legions of media-sharing blogs once more. With your weekly dose of fangirl rambling, of course.
