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Intro to K-Pop Tech series: Combining my love for K-pop and technology

So I've been into K-pop lately.

Memories from TWICELIGHTS in Malaysia
Memories from TWICELIGHTS in Malaysia

I never thought I'll get dragged into the world of K-pop due to the cringy stereotypes going around about the K-pop community like talking like a Koreaboo and being too emotionally and financially invested to humans who don't even know you exist hah. Honestly, some of them are true but these things don't really happen only in the K-pop community. It's just similar to all other hobbies everywhere.

The amazing K-pop community

What I discovered after hanging around in the community for around 2 years now is that it's full of many very, very passionate people. These fans are ready to do everything for their idol. From buying albums in bulk to increase album sales, hosting streaming parties to increase Youtube views and Spotify streams, mass voting in polls, to creating dedicated fan accounts for specific contents such as posting short funny/touching short videos ("loop accounts" as they call it), uploading KR/JP to ENG translations and subs, leading the fandom by being one of the main fanbases, and update accounts to keep track on the artist/group milestones.

This is very interesting for me. I love being around passionate people because I learn a lot from them. This also opened my eyes that K-pop is not just fans screaming to their idols about how much they love them. There is a lot of areas in the community that you can focus on depending on your interest such as but not limited to:

  • If you're someone who likes sharing funny things, you can create a meme or loops account.
  • If you love writing stories, you can be a fanfiction/AU writer.
  • If you want to practice your Korean language skills, you can try being a translator.
  • If you like tracking data, you can become create a chart account.
  • If you love drawing, you can share your fan arts.
  • If you love making gifs and edits, you can be a gifs/video edit account
  • If you want to step up and become a fanbase, you can create tutorials for votings, handle logistics in setting up offline ads in Korea, set up Instagram/Facebook/Youtube ads, and be familiar with ad analytics
And as for me, although I'm interested in some of the things mentioned above, my focus in this blog series would be this area:
  • If you love programming or any related tech, you can create a bot to post updates or create a website such as forum websites for the fandom community or fan website for your idol

K-pop and Tech?

Sometimes, there are things that fan accounts do that I thought would take a lot of time when done manually. I think this especially applies to update and chart accounts. Imagine having to check all the time if your idol is in the Twitter trends, or to track how many Youtube views are gained within 24hrs.

I wonder if the fans who run these accounts still have time to enjoy the contents? What if they spend too much time on the logistics of running an account? In my work life, I like to make things simple. I prefer if something can be done by a tool faster and better, or a process can be done more efficiently. This is not just for my own sake, but for everyone else involved.

These interests and personal principles met suddenly collided with K-pop. It made me think, what if I can really create a solution for some of these concerns? 

My problem when trying to practice coding when not at work is that I feel like what I do is not real. it doesn't have a context or purpose. I learn this and that but only apply it to basic exercises.

And now here's K-pop unexpectedly giving me what I was looking for.

My other interests have started to combine with K-pop. I can apply the technical things I learned and at the same time, I enjoy the content I'm consuming. It will be a win-win situation.

I already have a few solutions in mind that I want to try turning into reality after this. There are things in a fandom that's still being done manually by fans that could've been done way faster with some coding. I want to look into some of them and try my solution would work.

Some of the things I think of using which will be featured in the future:

  1. Youtube API
  2. Twitter API
  3. Google Script
  4. Carrd
  5. Google Analytics

Welcome to my K-Pop Tech series!

P.S.

  • I haven't done coding in years now so I'm really rusty so sorry if my code doesn't seem optimized. I would appreciate any feedback if someone would even find this blog heh
  • I suck at committing so I might disappear in this blog again after this lol. But I will try to be active. Keyword: "try"



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