POSITIVE POST – Kiss Of Life

When times are getting you down, and the entire k-pop world seems be consumed with negativity, you can count on Kpopalypse.com to bring you the POSITIVE content that you need to help you make it through another day in the toxic world of the kpoponlineosphere! Let’s take a look at all the POSITIVE things about k-pop girl group Kiss Of Life!

REASON WHY I FEEL POSITIVE ABOUT KISS OF LIFE AND YOU SHOULD TOO #1

Easy identification makes for a smooth group appreciation experience (also, horses)

In a scene crowded with lookalike girls and boys, Kiss Of Life don’t have that many members and those that they do have, all have a fairly unique appearance, so they should be relatively easy for me to identify. However I will admit that I’ve been slacking on my research regarding this group. Here’s my current knowledge of the group lineup at the moment.

Clearly I’m missing some key knowledge here, so in order to “learn history and culture”, “educate myself” and “grow as an individual” (something k-pop fans love to tell others to do apparently, even if they’re not quite as keen on doing it themselves because they still act the fucking same as they did in 1997 whenever some new bullshit scandal comes out but anyway…) I will now fill in the gaps in my knowledge, starting with the most important members first.

Now I’ll admit that it’s very difficult for me to keep track of this shit. Veteran readers will know that sometimes I get the images wrong when learning about new groups (it happens in objectification survey results posts from time to time and I always get swiftly corrected, tysm readers) but I’m pretty sure that this is the same horse. After all it’s the first horse that I found in Google image search when I searched up the group and we all know that Google image search never lies.

Here’s the horse again, which seems to be following Natty around. I guess it must be those riding pants, or maybe the horse wants to give her a lecture about her life choices like he did so kindly for Seungri in Seungri Simulator 2. I realise the horse does look a bit different in this picture but I doubt that the horse “got prettier”, you must remember that makeup, lighting and Photoshop can really transform an idol’s appearance.

But what about the other members?

Here’s the rabbit, posing diligently with all four members. You won’t find a harder-working rabbit in k-pop, I mean Pink Fantasy disbanded, and what has Apoki even been doing lately, probably on hiatus for some problematic behavour I suspect, Kiss Of Life rabbit would never.

And here’s the butterfly (also the maknae), flying outside of the local GARIAARRRAAGAIIIAHAR with some other member trying to grope it and also staring slack-jawed in a really creepy way. Poor butterfly must feel like Jeewon felt in Cignature when her groupmates kept trying to feel her up in the dorms. #protectButterfly

As for the less interesting members, I know who Natty is, she’s the one who always has straight black hair, sometimes the length changes but it’s always straight and black. Gosh if she ever changes that hair, or if the others ditch the cornrows and start using her hairstyle as well, how will I even know how to identify her? No idea at all, I guess I’ll figure it out when the time comes, but for now, we’re good.

This member here is allegedly called Julie. I don’t really know Julie that well yet. Some trivia – apparently Julia is American and lived in the USA until she was thirteen, which is why she definitely knows everything about American culture, because I too knew everything there is to know about Australian culture when I was thirteen.

This members is allegedly Belle. I’m told that Belle is the one who can sing a bit, but that’s really not very interesting because nobody with a brain or a life cares about k-pop vocal so let’s just move on. Also, like Julie she’s American, so she has “growing up in the richest country in the world” privilege, so we have to ignore her to level the playing field and make things fair for other k-pops.

My sources tell me that the last member is Haneul, she’s the one who gets the least lines in songs. To make sure that this post doesn’t push her out of her comfort zone, this write-up about her also has the least lines.

So overall that wasn’t too difficult. It’s taking me back to the days of other unproblematic groups like 2NE1 and how you could tell all the members apart easily. Bravo to Kiss Of Life for nailing this important aspect of being a kpop.

REASON WHY I FEEL POSITIVE ABOUT KISS OF LIFE AND YOU SHOULD TOO #2

Kiss Of Life are bringing adult sexiness back into k-pop, which is a good thing

It’s no secret that after a mid-2010s peak that coincided with the height of AOA’s chart domination, adult sexiness in k-pop has been on a downturn ever since. We all know why this is. We used to have stuff like this:

…but “concerned” k-pop fans started complaining that it was “sexualisation” (as if being sexual is somehow bad) or “exploiting women” (as if the entire k-pop idol system isn’t already thoroughly exploitative of every single performer both male and female, regardless of what does or doesn’t go into the music videos, but that’s another discussion you’re too chickenshit to have because then you have to confront your own complicity in the capitalist system and oh no we can’t have that so let’s just move on) and agencies keen on maximising their market share decided to listen to the whining and change things up a bit.

Now instead of adult sexy concepts, we get dogwhistling instead, because it sells better and it’s easier to defend:

• countries that k-pop is trying to break into that have conservative rules about skin exposure don’t get their feathers ruffled
• because there’s less “visible” sexiness, younger people can be pushed into the concepts thereby extending the period that Korea’s shit beauty standards considers them “marketable” because they have a younger start, which means more potential ROI per idol
• any complaints about pedophile-pandering can be hand-waved away with, a neat bit of DARVO: “but it’s just a song about cookies, honest – what, you thought it was something else, are you SOME KIND OF CREEP OMG we are PURE AND INNOCENT and YOU are the PROBLEM, NOT I, THE GOOD AND MORAL PERSON“
• The young audience and others that are too naive to “get it” don’t get turned off by any obvious sexiness, swallow the agency’s bullshit justifications and will cape for it hardcore
• the pervert audience secretly understands what’s really going on

But wait… that’s all changing now thanks to Kiss Of Life.

If you want to keep the tadpoles out of k-pop, why not support sexy concepts where sexy people are allowed to be sexy without any under-the-radar bullshit. Poop song but whatever, it’s not like anybody’s listening.

REASON WHY I FEEL POSITIVE ABOUT KISS OF LIFE AND YOU SHOULD TOO #3

Kiss Of Life cancelled their KCON appearance because they are better people than you

Kiss Of Life were booked to attend KCON in LA this year, but like me at your mother’s house last night, they pulled out before they came.

Nobody knows why this happened, but it’s probably because they had a birthday party to organise.

However whatever the reason, not going to KCON is just smart. Every year when KCON happens there’s always huge mobs of k-pop fans bitching about how horrible it is, waiting in all those queues for the venue, queues for the toilets, queues for the fanmeets, queues for the merch, queues for the food, then you eat the food and it’s shit, the sloppy organisation in general sucks knobs, there’s scammy shit like charging a captive audience house deposit prices for water bottles and so on. “We definitely won’t go next year” they all say… and then they find out their bias is on the list next year so it’s like “oh wow, we kinda HAVE to go now”… Kiss Of Life just saved you all that potential awkwardness. They know that you really wanted to see them and support their “education” and “growing as individuals” after their cultural oopsies but they know you would have a bad time at KCON generally so they decided to make your decision not to go easier. Now you can stay at home and not spend on crazily overpriced concert tickets, you should be thanking them for saving you the money. Angels.

REASON WHY I FEEL POSITIVE ABOUT KISS OF LIFE AND YOU SHOULD TOO #4

Kiss Of Life is a good reminder of the full k-pop scandal defence playbook

Have you ever played a computer game where there’s a character that transforms each time a new level is reached, but for some reason you have to nope out of the whole equation before you get to the final level? Maybe it’s just too hard, or maybe the developers introduced mega bugs plus even more predatory gacha than before plus retconned their entire original storyline and it made you not want to play anymore… well, anyway, following Kiss Of Life lately feels like watching a levelling up process… of hoping your fans like you again, but unlike your computer game character Kiss Of Life actually max out their levelling at the top. This gives us a good opportunity to explore each level of the k-pop apology process.

But wait! K-pop fans do sure love their teasers, so it’s only right that we’ll start off with this “teaser apology”. Julie clearly had a feeling that maybe the livestream wouldn’t go down too well, but let’s not throw a KKK uniform on her just yet – she might have just meant that maybe we thought birthday parties in general were lame or something.

So the first level is the official company apology. Pretty bland and basic, definitely doesn’t contain the appropriate amount of grovelling and boot-licking that k-pop fans wanted to see to fulfill their power fantasies, basically it’s “we’re sorry that you perceived this as offensive, actually we were having a great time, sucks to be you I guess hey LOL” but in corpo-speak. Usually does the trick in most cases because the hardcore fans will still cape and then the fandom has a big Internet fight and then two weeks later they forget about it when something new and shiny appears because nobody actually gave that much of a fuck anyway.

If that doesn’t work, then it means that someone probably actually did care at least a little, so we move onto the next level which is individual apologies. Oh wait, this is Julie apologising for some other thing… but hey whatever. She does get herself into trouble, that girl, tsk tsk. I like the “thank you for understanding” at the bottom though, sort of implying that understanding is going to be given by default, even though that’s a bit of a stretch because k-pop fans don’t generally understand much at all. Personally I think Julie should apologise to me for making this post harder to write by fucking up in the same way multiple times.

The next level after this is the “handwritten apology”, which will be familiar to T-ara fans and anyone else who has followed an idol that got themselves into very deep shit. If you don’t think you’re hearing faint sucking noises while reading it, you know that you haven’t apologised hard enough. Some people were bummed out because black fans didn’t get a special mention here, with the group apologising more generically to all their fans instead, but that actually makes sense because a lot of the people complaining probably aren’t black fans anyway (remember most people who follow k-pop don’t have a public presence and aren’t as honest about their backgrounds as I am, so a lot of non-black kpop fans use that opportunity to cosplay as black kpop fans online so their opinions have more c-word… a type of “digital blackface“). The group probably avoided singling out black fans deliberately anyway because they were worried that one of them might fly into a Krameresque rage and start writing racial slurs frantically all over the page before storming off in a huff. You can’t be too careful.

(Note that if your idol can’t read or write in the language of the target audience a “90 degree head-bowing apology video” will also suffice for this category of apology.)

The next stage of the apology process, if people still aren’t buying it, is that you have to actually release a video for a song. Don’t worry, you don’t have to write a new song just for this, that’d be too much effort and there probably isn’t time – just find some album filler B-track, or some other song that came out years ago but never got a video the first time around, and throw it out there with a brand new video and just make sure it fits the bill musically and visually. It definitely has to be an emotional ballad, something asking fans to give the group “one more chance” to “let them in” to your heart again, and it can either have the group crying a lot, or alternatively a reminiscing montage “for the fans” type video showing them being happy while pleasing their fans will do nicely, just anything emotional basically. Don’t you miss them? Don’t you remember how they were once your faves, before you CANCELLED them, you MEAN person? Just imagine how miserable your bias is right now. Don’t you want to have fun again? Don’t you remember how you loved them? We know you’re mad, but somewhere deep down inside, you still remember how it used to be, and you crave that connection again. It’s okay, we understand you. We’ll let you turn back time, we don’t mind. We all make mistakes, but let’s make peace. Now stream the fucking album, bitch.

If none of that shit works, then I guess you gotta cancel a show or two so the fans don’t stone you to death… or more likely shoot you, as we are talking about American fans in this instance. I’m sure that’ll help the girls “learn history and culture”, “educate themselves” and “grow as individuals”, as the social media mob are so fond of saying. This is the last phase of the apology process because it involves taking a significant financial hit, so it’s only used as a last resort, beyond this is only the cold wasteland of disbandment and sitting-on-chairs ballads in a few years time. All of this is very fascinating just from an anthropological perspective, especially for me because apologising for anything at all really isn’t part of my culture, so I’m learning a lot about how cultures who actually apologise operate. This is my cultural education. I’m learning about history and growing as an individual. Or something.

REASON WHY I FEEL POSITIVE ABOUT KISS OF LIFE AND YOU SHOULD TOO #5

Kiss Of Life have the stupidest acronym ever and now I’ll have to see it a lot less which is great

Does anyone actually know why “Kiss Of Life” is abbreviated to “KIOF”? I mean okay, the answer is here which is basically some bullshit about more sensible abbreviations sounding too much like existing Korean words, but every video ever that I watched about the whole Kiss Of Life oopsy thing said that having that stupid cornrows-r-us birthday party was a BIG DEAL because the group relied so much on international fans, so I kind of don’t buy “we have to make it sound good in Korean” as a very good reason. But hey they’ll probably disband soon and then I’ll never have to see “KIOF” again except for in “whatever happened to” questions, so lucky me. Thanks Julie! (I’ll miss the horse though, I hope it redebuts.)

REASON WHY I FEEL POSITIVE ABOUT KISS OF LIFE AND YOU SHOULD TOO #6

Okay, Julie is really quite attractive isn’t she

She managed to get to #3 in the objectification survey ass votes last year, and those weren’t my votes, they were yours.

I guess I see your point. I should have been paying more attention all along. This is my cultural education. I’m learning about history and growing as an individual.

Wait… that is Julie, right? Don’t tell me it’s the horse…

That’s all for this post – Kpopalypse shall return!