If you follow me on Twitter, you may know that I already watched the BTS film Burn the Stage on the day it opened. But I read a review that said, as a non-fan, it felt like a film made for existing fans instead of being a good introduction for newcomers, so this post is for my mom and sister who are going to go see it with me later this week. It will be my second viewing, but their first. I figured I’d write a few quick FAQs and then include some videos to watch so they can skim quickly to get up to speed.
Ladies, this post is your homework before the movie so you will hopefully enjoy it more!
I don’t want to re-write the whole BTS Wikipedia page, but from what I’ve gathered, the idea when they formed was to create a group that would be a “shield” for young people from the “bullets” (criticisms) of the older generation. They later said it also can mean “Beyond the Scene” in English, but most fans I know hate that anglicized name.
All things considered, they do a pretty good job of living up to the boyscouts image, at least publicly.
Q: Why are BTS fans called ARMY?
ARMY stands for Adorable Representative MC for Youth. The band’s leader has said to think of it as the ARMY of young people behind them. The most important thing to know is that the plural of ARMY is ARMYs (no apostrophe!), and it is (maybe?) the largest fandom in the world. Certainly the largest active fandom on social media, and truly global in scope.
Q: What is Burn the Stage about?
Burn the Stage is a documentary film of behind the scenes footage from their 2017 Wings global tour, interspersed with some clips and footage from various TV programs and award shows they’ve been on. 2017 was arguably the year they truly scaled to a global level, and they broke a lot of records, so the film gives you a look at what it was really like to be in that intense spotlight.
Q: Who are the Members?
There’s 7 of them, and they have stage names in addition to their Korean names, and that can be a little confusing at first. Also, don’t try to learn who they are by their hair color, because they change that every other day and twice on Sundays.
Why to Love BTS
The obvious answer is their music. I’ve listed some of their hit songs below so you can skim through those, but the maybe less obvious reason is because of their ethos. Â
As the members have matured, and their global influence has increased, they’ve taken on the role of being unofficial ambassadors for Korea, and official ambassadors for UNICEF’s campaign to #ENDVIOLENCE. They make charitable donations, they speak out about issues that are absolutely taboo in Korea like mental health, depression, LGBTQ issues, and more. They aren’t saints, and they’ve done dumb stuff in the past, but generally speaking, they are a bunch of young guys trying to learn how to live meaningful, good lives while making good music. What’s not to love?
And maybe more importantly to me, to be a member of ARMY means embracing BTS -AND- their global fandom. It’s the opposite of Trump’s horrible nationalism to engage in dialogue with fans from every continent and every language and every ethnicity about a shared love of “our boys”. It’s still hard to describe how awesome it is to be a part of a TRULY diverse audience of thousands of people and feel 100% welcomed.
The Music
BTS is a boy band from Korea, so I guess you could classify them with the generic K-pop label, but I think they defy genre labels because musically they are all over the map. They have a lot of hit songs that are 100% pure pop, but their more recent albums are full of non-pop sounding stuff.
You don’t have to listen to/watch all these videos, just skim through and listen to the ones that sound interesting.
I couldn’t figure out how else to do this other than to go chronologically through their biggest hits, but if you want to skip ahead, I have a section of my favorites, even if they aren’t as popular.
Also, most of their music is in Korean, with some English phrases, so I suggest that you turn on Closed Captions on YouTube and set to English for mostly reasonable translations. If it isn’t captioned in English, don’t bother with the auto-caption translation, it’s terrible.
Early Stuff
Their first few albums could be summed up as “school sucks” and “boy-loves-girl” type stuff, although to be fair, they were pretty young (15-22 yrs old I think). And the Korean school system is apparently WAY intense compared to American schools. I guess it’s common for parents to send their kids to cram schools after regular school, so kids might be in school until 8 or 9PM or something crazy like that. Here are a few representative songs.
NO is about the rigid educational system that makes kids like robots cramming information in their brains but having no joy and no dreams in their childhood.
War of Hormone makes me laugh, it could only be written by lusty teen-age boys. They’ve since apologized for not being more sensitive to women in some of their earlier songs. They’re in their mid- to late- 20s now, so they’ve grown up a lot since then, but I include it anyway as an example of an early work.
Dope came a couple years later, and talks about how they are busting their ass working in the studio and dance practice room while all their friends are out clubbing and having fun. This is the second BTS song I came across and Jimin’s dancing (the one with red hair in this video) is what made me Google them to find out who the heck they were. I love the choreography in this one.
The Songs that Started to Make Them Famous
They started to gain real traction in 2016-17. Blood, Sweat, & Tears is pure art, IMO. It’s full of visual literary references about temptation, overindulgence, and evil.
Spring Day is one of my favorites and I think one of their most beloved songs the world over, it’s about missing someone you love dearly and waiting for that spring day when you’ll be together again. I’ve read that it was written after the South Korean Sewol Ferry tragedy in 2014, where over 300 people died when the ferry sank, many of them students. It’s a sad story. 🙁
Save Me is the first BTS song I heard that hooked me. I listened to it on repeat for like a week or something.
The Big Radio Hits
Their biggest hits are mostly EDM (electronic dance music, madre), these are songs you might even hear on American radio stations.
First up is Mic Drop, inspired by President Obama’s famous mic drop. It’s a response to their “haters” who said they sucked and would never make it big.
Fire is straight up club music to jump up and down and dance to. I like it for house cleaning music.
Next up is DNA, a pure pop dance song about that trippy crazy magical phase of being in love. It’s from the Love Yourself: Her album, which is part of a three-part cycle of albums, sort of like a rock opera. Love Yourself: Her is part 1, the falling in love/being in love part of the story.
Fake Love is next, it’s from the second album in the cycle, Love Yourself: Tear, which is the falling out of love/breaking up/realizing love isn’t like the fairytale part of the story.
And last is Idol, from the third album in the cycle, Love Yourself: Answer, which has the theme of knowing yourself/you must learn to love yourself before you can love anyone else. The video is crazy, Mother probably won’t like it visually because it’s too meme-like, but musically it’s very interesting because it has a lot of traditional Korean elements and borrows some African rhythms too.
My Other Favorites
Baepsae is one of their more political songs (so of course I like it) criticizing the wealthy older generation who don’t appreciate how hard it is to make it as a young person these days. Baepsae translates to “crow tit” in English, a small bird. It’s a reference in Korean that’s sort of the opposite of being born with a silver spoon. So a baepsae might be someone born poor trying too hard to make it. Yeah, something like that.
So far I’ve only included official music videos, but I love this video of their dance practice, because the choreography is fun and they get a little silly at the end. 🙂
Lie is one of my favorite solos. This is a fan-made video showing a split screen of Jimin dancing to his solo song, on the left is a performance from a concert, and on the right is filming the short film for the song’s official release. The music, the singing, and the dancing are all just beautiful, and Jimin is my favorite.
It doesn’t have captions, but this is the translation of the chorus, for reference:
Caught in a lie
Find me when I was pure
I can’t be free from this lie
Give me back my smile
Caught in a lie
Pull me from this hell
I can’t be free from this pain
Save me, I am being punished
(Also at times the screen goes black, stay with it..)
I have a bunch more favorite songs, but I’ve run out of time to work on this post so I’m just gonna post it. No worries if you don’t have time to watch/read the whole thing, but hopefully it helps a little so you can enjoy the documentary more!
Looking forward to our movie night, thanks for going with me! xoxoxo
About to enter Citi Field stadium, at the front of the line chatting with some awesome fans.
I try to talk about my introvert nature at work a lot, especially with the students on my team, because if they are also struggling with it, I want them to know it isn’t a curse. I like to say that I’m an introvert who has learned to fake it because people sometimes don’t believe me, but it’s true. Some people are energized by social interactions, but for me, anything more than a one-on-one conversation can be draining, and the larger the group, the faster my battery runs out.  If I don’t get periods of solitude to recharge, it can be so exhausting that I get physically sick.
This basic fact about my personality has caused me so much angst and unhappiness. Especially because I also paradoxically feel the need to make useful contributions, whatever the conversation or interaction may be, so there is forever a battle going on with part of me wanting to conserve energy and stay on the side, and part of me wanting to be in the center of the room participating in what’s happening. It has taken a very long time to find a good balance.
I mention my introversion by way of introduction to this third and last post in my #BTSxCitifield series (read Part 1 and Part 2 here) for two reasons.
First and most obviously because the theme of BTS’s Love Yourself: World Tour is about learning to love yourself, and learning to love my introversion instead of hating it has been one of the hardest things for me to do. It was only after I stopped fighting it and gave myself permission to be that way that I learned how to balance my life’s social flow in a way that feels sustainable and good. Ten years ago, flying to New York City and attending a stadium-sized concert like #BTSxCitifield by myself would have been unthinkable. That I was able to not only go to the concert, but truly enjoy the experience – in part because of the huge crowd – is a personal triumph that seems worth celebrating.
Enjoying the show with 40,000 (!!) other fans.
And second, because I am such an introvert myself, I’ve often wondered how the artists, creators, and professionals I admire deal with the pressure of fame and the sometimes crazy emotional demands of their fans. Fame is such a double-edged sword. Attracting passionate fans is a source of success, but losing anonymity, especially today when everyone everywhere has a camera in their pocket, seems to mean losing the ability to just be in the world.
And when does being a passionate fan tip over into being a crazy fan?Â
Is it “crazy fan” territory to buy tickets this expensive?
It may be weird to worry about what it means to be a “good fan” but I think Stephen King’s novel Misery must have made a big impression on me when I was young because I’ve always thought the most respectful way to honor an artist is to support their work from afar. Pay for their work and share/evangelize their stuff to others, but don’t bug them. [1]. There is a natural desire to express appreciation and gratitude when someone’s work has made a positive and meaningful difference in your life, but that should never come at the expense of respecting the boundaries of the real person behind the fame.
I thought about that a lot when BTS released a series of provocative concept photos for their S version of the Love Yourself: Answer album.  It turns out there’s a Korean word specifically to describe obsessive, stalker fan behavior, 사ìƒíŒ¬ or saseang fan [2], and they have obviously experienced that.
What a beautiful but desperate representation of the flip side of fame. They all look so contorted to avoid the constant cameras, prying eyes, and clutching hands. Yikes. @BTS_twtpic.twitter.com/Yv21ZcK9CN
It makes you wonder how they are really doing. Not their stage personas, but the real 20-something year old guys behind the scene (see what I did there?). Is this insane hype-train of record breaking achievements actually good for them? Are they being exploited? How are they handling the intense glare of the spotlight, and is my participation in ARMY fan culture hurting or helping them? The introvert me would have withered and died from that kind of intense pressure in my 20s, as so many of my favorite childhood actors actually did die.
River Phoenix and Corey Haim, two of my earliest fan-crushes.
I want to hope that the real people in BTS are doing ok, that they have each other and their families, and that they are still young and resilient enough to enjoy the wild ride that they are on. I have to hope they, and the people who love them, will know when to get off the crazy train when (if?) the time comes.
In my last post, I described how my interest in BTS began and deepened enough to call myself an ARMYÂ and there was a moment, a series of moments, before I clicked the buttons that sucked a ridiculous amount of money out of my bank account, when I wondered if it was crazy-fan territory to sit for an hour in a virtual queue to buy expensive concert tickets, and an expensive plane ticket, and an expensive hotel reservation, just to see a bunch of 20-something boys from Korea for just a couple of hours.
Sitting in a ridiculous virtual line to buy tickets, only to be unceremoniously dumped out to this error message.
Ultimately, I decided that I enjoyed their music and appreciated their art so much that I wanted to be counted among their fans for their first stadium-sized concert and their last show in the US. It wasn’t just about attending the concert, although I was of course excited to see them perform live, but symbolically, I think every fan who came to Citi Field was there to show them and the world just how much their work inspires us. We wanted to give them another win, another trophy for their bag. That super-fun feeling of winning together, ARMY+BTS synergy, is what tipped the scales enough for me to actually purchase the tickets. [3]
The Night Before the Show
I flew out of Cincinnati on the Friday evening before the concert, with just enough time to land at LaGuardia and get settled into the hotel for a good night’s sleep before the show. Hilariously, the first ARMY I met in the wild once I got to New York was another person from Cincinnati! Queue that old joke about flying a thousand miles to meet your neighbor. Our hotels were in opposite directions so we split up shortly after meeting, but we followed each other on Twitter and re-connected after we got home – and now we’re set to watch Burn the Stage together when it comes out in a couple weeks!
That chance encounter with a friendly ARMY was the first of many happy meetings. I saw groups of ARMYs everywhere I went as BTS fans descended on New York from all over the US, and really all over the world. It’s hard to describe the feeling of meeting strangers who don’t quite feel like strangers because you already share a common interest, the instant smiles when we recognized each other, the excitement that everyone felt about arriving for the show.  I really didn’t know what to expect the next day, and after agonizing over what to stuff in my no-larger than 16 inches backpack to comply with the venue rules [4], I managed to sleep like a rock.
I had no idea what it would be like at the venue, so I didn’t really have a plan, but part of the reason I made the trip was to experience the ARMY fan culture, so I took a cab from the hotel around 6:30 AM and got dropped off right at the stadium.
The first picture I snapped after arriving at Citi Field, ~6:45 AM.
The first thing I noticed as I walked across the parking lot was the merch line (the line to buy official merchandise from the band like the t-shirts, bags, etc.), and it didn’t seem crazy long yet, so without even looking around at anything else, I headed for the back of the line.
That big group of people on the right side is the merch line, which hadn’t started moving yet, ~ 6:45 AM.
At that moment, as I approached the back of the merch line barriers, I felt .. nervous. I’d met a couple of fans at the airport and at the hotel, who were all super nice and friendly, but I wasn’t sure what it would be like in the REAL ARMY crowd. Would there be crazy sasaengs? Would it be weird that I was by myself? Was I even a big enough fan to deserve to be there when so many fans couldn’t get tickets? My introvert nature and all the anxiety that comes with it suddenly popped out and I felt.. shy.
I needn’t have worried. I got in line and spent the next couple hours chatting with the fans around me, gawking at all the hand-made signs, watching the merch line grow and grow and grow..
Can you tell how diverse the crowd is? Young, old, men, women, every ethnicity..Â
JOON FOR PRESIDENT!
It turned out that the whole day before the show was a series of waiting in one line or another, and universally, the crowd was friendly and cheerful and happy to chat about BTS endlessly. It was terrific!
The “Village” is what they called the cordoned off area where you could buy the “merch” and visit a bunch of different booths to pair your bluetooth-enabled light stick, take a picture with a hologram of your favorite BTS member, donate to their UNICEF LOVE YOURSELF campaign, etc.
Once the merch line started to move when they opened the Village, everyone ran in to.. get in yet another line for whichever specific area or booth you wanted to visit. I stuck with the merch line, and got handed an order form to fill out while waiting with a new group of ARMYs.
I can’t remember how long we stood in that line, but it seemed to move pretty quickly. I was super disappointed that the official concert t-shirts sold out within the first 15 minutes, since that was the main thing I wanted to get, but there were plenty of other (way overpriced!) things to buy to commemorate the experience.
An example of available merch and the crazy prices. There were like 6 or 7 pages of things you could buy.
I ended up with t-shirt version 1. No one around me wanted to buy version 2 because it said “Beyond the Scene”. The lady behind me reeeeealllly wanted a hoodie and was afraid they would sell out before she got to the counter. I think she was successful in her quest but I’m not sure, I lost track of her in the crowd.
With my merch in hand and my wallet further emptied, I wandered around for a bit trying to decide which booth to visit. Suddenly I remembered that I had won an express “skip the line” ticket from Big Hit to visit the “BTS Studio” booth where you could take a picture of yourself with a hologram of your favorite member, so I headed over in that direction.. and got in the express ticket line. (Which was only like 10 people long, but still, another line! lol)
While I was waiting to get my picture taken, I noticed an ARMY who had just come from the merch line struggling to juggle all of her purchases. Because the “shopping bag” merch item was the cheapest thing on the menu at $5, I bought 3 of them, which was the maximum allowed, so I stepped over and asked her if she wanted a bag to hold all of her stuff. I was glad to have an extra to share! We snapped a picture together once she got her stuff all sorted out.
Then suddenly it was my turn to enter the little BTS Studio tent! I have to say, the “hologram” technology they used to make it seem like your favorite BTS member is walking up and sitting down with you to take a picture was pretty freaking cool. I was so flustered trying to sort out my bags and all the stuff I was carrying that I didn’t get a video of that (that’s one time when I really wished I hadn’t come alone), but it was fun all the same and sort of made your heart beat a little faster even knowing it wasn’t real. I also had a little panic trying to pick which member because at this point, I really do love them all (OT7!), but my original favorite won in the end.
Quick, pick your favorite BTS member!
A picture snapped with my phone of the slightly blurry picture I got in the BTS Studio booth. Me and Jimin!
After that I wondered around the Village a lot taking pictures and videos and just enjoying the scene and the freedom of not being in a line for the first time since I arrived.
Fans dancing in the Village..
Another dancing fan… You can see the merch booths in the background.
Tour staff would watch your bags and take a picture of you with your phone at the various sign boards and photo backdrops..
Making a donation to the UNICEF #BTSLoveMyself campaign to end violence against children..
I’m not sure what time it was, but by that point, my feet were starting to hurt a little and I was ready to take a rest. See my note below about the awesomeness of the Trekology YIZI Go Portable Camping Chair – which I promptly pulled out and set up to rest my weary bones and have a drink and a snack.
Having a rest and filming people entering the Village area..
I thought it was pretty irresponsible of the lady yelling at people to run to the lightstick tent because they were selling out, they didn’t sell out the whole day as far as I know.
Lots of people started to sit down and eat things they had brought at that point.
There seemed to be no food or drink vendors anywhere, which I thought was nuts.
A short video I intended to send to my sister but for some reason it wouldn’t upload so I never sent it..
Finding my Gate and Observing the Front of the Hard Core “General Admissions” Line
Shortly after filming that clip, I left the Village area thinking I should at least figure out what gate I would be entering and where the line (surely there was another line!) would be for that. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it turned out that the private box seat ticket holders would be using a gate in the same vicinity as where they were letting the General Admissions line form up to actually enter the stadium.
Now keep in mind that some of the General Admissions folks had been camping out for over a week to get closest to the stage, so as I approached them, I had a feeling like the General Admissions line were the “real” ARMY and the rest of us were just baby ARMYs. We still had hours to go before the show started, so I set up my awesome little camping chair again and watched all the hoopla at the front of the GA line.
Periodically you would see fans who had stepped out of line to get merch or something come running up frantically worried that they had missed their spot, so I started posting short video clips and tweeting them out in the hopes that it would help keep things calm. There were definitely a couple of moments there where it seemed like the crowd might get shovey and pushy, but for the most part, it stayed orderly and calm. After watching them deal with one situation after another, I thought the security staff did a great job of being kind yet firm to keep everyone safe.
Somewhere in the midst of the GA line drama, I started to feel really hungry and decided to go off in search of food. I walked and walked and walked and finally came upon what may have been the only food cart out there, a Nathan’s Hot Dog cart. I hate hot dogs, but boy if you’re hungry enough, even a hot dog can taste delicious. In fact, I had two! The Twitter timestamp says I posted this at 3:04 PM, and the stadium opened at 4, so this was shortly before they let us go in to get our seats!
Phew, I feel like I’ve been writing this blog post for eons, and we’re just now getting into the stadium! Picking up from the last section, once they let all the GA folks through, they finally called for our gate and I managed to be like the 10th person in line for that. It was definitely a very buzzy excited feeling getting ready to go into the venue. After months and weeks of planning and then waiting in lines all day, everyone was ready to get inside.
Of course there was one more line to go after they opened the big fence – the security line. I apparently didn’t take any pictures during that period, but they had big K-9 dogs, and a seriously armed police presence at the concert. We saw groups of officers in full riot gear, and some with what looked like long range rifles. It was pretty intense, but given the death threats against members of the band and all the recent public shootings, everyone in line with me agreed that we’d rather have more security than less.
The security check was pretty intense, too. They really did search every single compartment of every single bag I had. I can’t remember if they physically patted us down, but I did have to remove my jacket and sweatshirt and fanny pack, and they definitely wanded us in addition to going through metal detectors. It felt as thorough as any airport screening I’ve been through recently.
And then suddenly we were inside! I must have gotten so excited to actually get to our seats that I forgot I had a camera for a while, because I have no photos of the super posh Porche suite at all.
GA folks getting in place around the stage, before the music videos started.
I did take a few snaps of the GA folks still streaming in around the stage though, and shortly after that they started playing BTS videos on the big screens. The screaming and cheering began in earnest at that point, and it didn’t stop until the show was over. It was sooo loud, you really can’t imagine it.
Somewhere around here, I started streaming live on Periscope, with the intention of streaming the whole show if I could. I know it’s against the rules, illegal, etc. etc. but.. well, there are a lot of people who really can’t afford the crazy expense of attending a live BTS concert. As concerts go, it is one of the most expensive shows on the planet. Seriously, Billboard says it was the most expensive tour of 2018, and that’s just for the tickets. That doesn’t event count the cost of travel, hotel, food, and the aforementioned expensive merchandise, which I guess isn’t a necessity, but who goes to a concert without buying the t-shirt to prove it?
In any case, I watched a lot of live concert streams in preparation for going to Citi Field, and I was always grateful to the people who risked their seat to stream for all the ARMYs around the world who couldn’t attend, so I intended to try my best to stream, too. Which I did, for a couple of hours. Until security came. :(  Having the security guy breathing down your neck and risking getting kicked out of a show you really want to see, waited forever to see, and paid a bazillion dollars to see.. Well, I put my phone away. When I looked at the stream playback much later, it said over 100,000 people had viewed it. *gulp* That’s a lot of people. I’m sorry ARMYs, I really tried.
Another great thing that happened around this point was the arrival of my most awesome seat buddy, Chris. Like I said before, for the most part, I was fine to attend the concert by myself and I really enjoyed everything solo all day long. But when Chris showed up, a guy around my age, also by himself, and just super friendly and fun to chat with.. it really made the concert just that much more awesome. We chatted through the whole show and he even helped shield my phone from the security dude for a bit when I was still trying to stream despite the stress of it all, bless his heart.
Chris, I hope you read this post! Super thanks for being such a fun seat buddy!! If you’re ever in Cincinnati, definitely ping me and I would go to another show with you anytime, anywhere! 🙂
I don’t have many other pictures of the pre-show since by this time I was streaming, so now it’s on to the show itself!!! FINALLY!!!!!
And the Show Begins… Breathing the Same Air as BTS!!
I know, I’ve written a whole novel and half and haven’t even gotten to the actual live concert yet. What can I say, it was a long, fun-filled, busy day!
By the time the show actually started, the crowd was so amped up, with huge swelling screams and cheers and ARMY bombs blinking. The start of the show was LITERALLY explosive, like fire shot out of the stage! And it was so LOUD! And so high energy! And we’re seeing Idol performed live! Right in front of us!
I don’t have any pictures because I was still streaming when the show started. I hoped to have some of my video footage edited by now to include, but I think it will have to come later or I won’t get the post up this century.
I do have a few clips that I filmed after I gave up streaming and after the security dudes departed, but my crappy phone cam footage doesn’t even begin to do justice to what it really felt like. Singing along to your favorite songs with 40,000 other fans who love it as much as you is really something else. The energy was insane, I can still feel the vibrations in my chest if I close my eyes and think about it.
The twinkling ARMY bombs everywhere added so much to the atmosphere..
I didn’t get even one single great shot of the band. Even though the screens were huge and we could see clearly in person, the light noise and cables and whatnot made it impossible to get a great photo with a phone camera from where we were sitting. That’s ok though, the experience itself was the reason for being there, and the memories are more than enough.
Seesaw nation rise!
Serendipity!
Sparkly Jimin!
The Truth Untold!
The best pic I took of V! (That one’s for you Chris!) 🙂
I cried a couple of times. When Jimin cried, I bawled like a baby. Not my footage, but thanks to the ARMY that caught this on camera. *sniffle*
I cried again during Namjoon’s ending comments.. (JOON FOR PRESIDENT!)
If I’m in the right mood, hearing Magic Shop still makes me cry because I can hear the echo of 40,000 ARMYs singing back to them in one voice.. it was really beautiful. I sang, and screamed, and danced, and cheered, and enjoyed the hell out of those 2.5 hours.
By the end of the show, we all said our good byes, wished each other safe journeys home, and parted ways. It was really a magical experience.
End of the Show & Heading Home
I’d read about post-BTS-concert depression from other ARMYs, but what they don’t tell you is it starts the very second the show is over.
I felt like I was in a shell-shocked daze as we started herding out of the stadium, and by the time I got outside and back out to the parking lot, I think I stood there for I don’t know how long, just too overwhelmed to even move.
Believe it or not, I didn’t realize until right that moment that I’d planned every detail of my arrival TO the venue, but I had absolutely no idea how to get back to my hotel FROM the stadium. 40,000 people were all trying to leave at the same time, it wasn’t like I could call a cab. I was so disoriented, I didn’t even know which direction the hotel was in from where I was standing. As more and more people poured out of the stadium, I got swept up in the moving crowd, and just ended up going with flow with no destination in mind.
That was the only moment the whole day that I felt somewhat vulnerable and a little afraid to be alone. The crowd was still very friendly, but it was dark and chilly and I suddenly felt like I could get lost or disappear and no one would even notice.
Once we got to the outer edges of the parking lot near the street, I sort of came back to my senses and started looking on my phone for options. There were already huge lines forming for Uber and Lyft drivers, but then Google suggested a ride service I’d never heard of, Juno, so I downloaded and installed it and like MAGIC – even in that insane crowd – a driver in a big black SUV was there in less than 5 minutes to pick me up. It was fantastic.
I honestly don’t remember much after that. I know I made it back to my hotel, and I think I was too late for room service so I just crashed.
The next morning, I wandered downstairs to get coffee, where I met some young ARMYs with their dad getting ready to head home.
And a little later at check-out, I met one of the stagehands who had traveled with BTS for their whole North American tour.
I met one of the stagehands who traveled with BTS at all N American shows, I asked what it was like working with @BTS_twt staff and he said they were super perfectionist and super professional. He said all the crowds were great at every show. #BTS#BTSxCitiFieldpic.twitter.com/ipr30vxpyZ
I took one last selfie sitting outside the hotel waiting for a cab..
And then I headed for the airport and flew home..
Back in Cincinnati with the #CitiFieldFlu
As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, I got so sick within a day or two of coming home that I basically didn’t get out of bed for a week. I saw someone on Twitter call it the #CitiFieldFlu, I guess loads of people picked up whatever nasty bug was going around. By the time I recuperated from that enough to go back to work, I was too busy playing catch-up to write much, so that’s why it took almost a month to get this posted.
I sent a few messages to some of the folks I met at the concert once I’d recovered to thank them again and wish them well, and got back a bunch of nice replies. And I was super delighted when the Cincinnati ARMY I met at the airport DMd me on Twitter to ask if I wanted to go see Burn the Stage in a couple of weeks. She was so awesome, she even bought an extra ticket! Thank goodness, because they sold out while I was too sick to even notice anything. I’m really looking forward to meeting up with her to see the movie!
grat·i·tude /ˈɡradəˌt(y)oÍžod/: noun, the quality of being thankful. tfw a new friend has your back when you’re sick and you don’t even know it yet. Thanks @Chante_tmc2016 ! @BTS_twt fans really are the best.
At this point, even I’m tired of this post, so I’ll wrap it up quickly.
It’s hard to describe, even with all these words and pictures and videos, just how much I enjoyed the show. The fans, the concert, the music, the love, the whole experience.
At a time when the political climate in the US feels uglier than anything I can remember in my lifetime (the election is tomorrow as I write this, I am desperately hoping for positive outcome), it felt sooo good to be with sooo many people from soooo many different places and walks of life, all coming together to celebrate and enjoy good music. It felt soooo good to support a bunch of young guys from the other side of the world and send them our love and appreciation and admiration and all the best hopes for their future. It’s really a tribute to the boys of BTS, and to Big Hit, and the entire team of professionals who produce and support them that we could all come to New York City and enjoy the show like that.
It made me feel and remember that Obama-style hope, and I’ve really missed that.
Thanks to all the ARMYs I met on my journey for making the trip so special, and to BTS for a concert that I will never forget. I purple you.
[1] As a lifelong Constant Reader and huge fan of King’s work, it really wigged me out when he joined Twitter and I realized I could actually send a message to one of my favorite people on planet Earth. I never did, of course, because that would violate my “don’t bug them” principle, but I’ve been tempted a time or two.
@stephenking if you ever see this, I’ve loved your writing since I was 8 years old and got grounded for reading The Dead Zone. Thank you, sincerely super thank you, for a lifetime of awesome stories. <3
[2]Â I saw some crazy sasaeng behavior at Citi Field, but thankfully not too much.
[3] I actually purchased tickets THREE times. The first time, I bought tickets on Stub Hub after losing out in the virtual queue, but I didn’t realize the ticket I bought was for wheelchair users only. Stub Hub wasn’t very helpful when I contacted them, their only advice was to put the ticket back up for sale and buy another one, which is what I did. Then a week or so before the concert, Citi Field released a block of box-seat tickets, and even though it was much more expensive, I snagged one of those and then re-sold my second ticket. I didn’t want to be a scalper jerk, so I always set the ticket prices for what I myself paid, but I lost out on transaction fees and whatnot each time. I never did the math to total up how much I really paid in the end to see the show, I don’t want to know.
[4] I bought a couple of items for my trip which I’d like to recommend. It took hours of scouring Amazon to find a backpack that met Citi Field’s size requirements. I ended up with the Red Rock Outdoor Gear Drifter Hydration Pack and just left the hydration pack at home. It was a good purchase, for such a small backpack, I managed to cram a lot in it, and clip a lot on it. I also packed two Jackery Portable Charger Bars (6000mAh) and a Solar Charger RAVPower 24W Solar Panel which clipped to my backpack to keep me fully powered for the whole trip. My phone never ran out of battery even with constant use and lots of filming.
And last but definitely not least, my favorite purchase of all was something I almost left in the hotel room. Right before I walked out the door, I clipped the Trekology YIZI Go Portable Camping Chair to my backpack and I spent the rest of the day so grateful that I had it. Two thumbs up, it really saved my feet! I even had several offers to buy it from me throughout the day!
Remember when I said I wasn’t sure if I even remembered how to blog since it’s been so long? Well, I managed to misconfigure an IFTTT trigger and caused an endless loop of alerts about the new blog post being posted to Twitter, which posted a blog post on here that I had tweeted, which triggered a new tweet.. lol. Like a noob all over again! Thank goodness a RL friend texted me to let me know about the problem. Thanks Phil!
Wow, sorry about all that tweet spam. Misconfigured IFTTT trigger, doh. How embarrassing. 😊
So back to the story. Exactly how did a middle-aged (!) white lady living in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio get into a Korean boyband? In the last post, I talked about my unexpected reaction to the election of Trump and the #MeToo movement, and how my inability to cope with the endless cycle of upsetting news led to an American media/internet blackout. Shutting off the information flow opened space for new interests and hobbies at a time when I was in need of distraction, and that was the context in which I discovered BTS. [1]
I also mentioned that the first BTS songs to catch my ear were Save Me and Dope, but I’m trying to remember what it was exactly that prompted my deeper dive into BTS. In the beginning, it was hard to distinguish one boyband group from the next, EXO, Winner, GOT7.. The whole K-pop genre was a stretch for me musically, and I found the “super innocent yet super sexy schoolgirl” vibe of the girl groups especially disturbing.
K-Pop girl group AOA in what appears to be typical “sexy school girl” styling.
Even if they produce a catchy tune, I have a hard time supporting an industry that over-sexualizes young women like that. I suppose the boy bands are not so different, since sex sells the world over, but it feels somehow less in your face with the men than it does with the women. I’d say BTS in particular seems to dress fairly conservatively these days, though there are shirt-ripping and belly-showing dance moves from their earlier videos.
BTS in school uniform styling, not sure what year this is from though.
Digging around in my YouTube history (yikes, not recommended!), it looks like a fan-made video I stumbled upon about the BTS “alternate universe” story might have been an early hook. It’s basically a short film explaining the fictional universe that connects many of their albums and music (sort of like a rock-opera). It tells the story of 7 high-school friends who drift apart, facing their various painful childhoods and personal demons as they grow into adulthood. But one member, Jin, has the ability to time travel, and as he watches his friends meet one tragic fate after another, he rewinds time searching for what to change to bring them all happiness, failing over and over again in each alternate timeline.
The time-travel story arc crosses several album cycles and if you search for “BTS storyline” on YouTube, you’ll find a plethora of fan-made videos with theories about what all the clues mean.
As a newcomer to the BTS scene, I think it was the fans’ obsessive attention to detail and endless theorizing as much as the storyline itself that caught my interest. Over the next few months, I began to realize that it was a truly global phenomenon.  Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, North America, all around the world there were crazed passionate fans following these guys’ every move. It made me wonder how this baby-faced K-pop boyband had somehow developed a following that was so intense it crossed time zones, national boundaries, language barriers, cultural differences, age, sex, gender.
Korean fans (or fans who speak Korean) translate their work into English, and other fans translate it from English into other languages. On Twitter, which seemed to be the preferred social media channel, there were endless conversations, in every language you can imagine, at any time day or night, sharing, arguing, debating, writing fan fics, producing their own videos, explaining, theorizing, analyzing. (Look at the live, global BTS feed right now, how many languages do you see?) [2]
And the band was producing a near continuous stream of new content themselves, releasing their new album Love Yourself: Her in September 2017, with new videos, new theories, new tweets and posts. The synergy between the band and the fans was.. well, crazy. It sucked me in.
It was like watching a reality television show unfold in real time, except instead of seedy cat-fights and endless love triangles, you had these innocent, hardworking Korean guys from an underdog small-time record label trying to beat the odds, and fans from all over the world cheering them on, and over and over again, I had the thought that the international dialogue happening between BTS fans was so different from the hate-filled “us vs. them” rhetoric happening in the US. I’m not sure how to describe it, but it felt like… the exact opposite of the toxic brew of ugly Trumpist nationalism.
BTS performing “DNA” at the American Music Awards, November 2017.
By the time they came to the US and performed at the American Music Awards in November, I had passed the threshold from casual observer to proto-fan, and by May of 2018 when Love Yourself: Tear was released (which went on to break a zillion records including landing at #1 on the Billboard charts), I could have passed any “You’re an ARMY If..” quiz. I even had a handle on all this newfangled fandom jargon (wow it made me feel old) of stanning and biases and ships and K-Diamonds and I-Lovelies. It wasn’t just the band. It wasn’t just the music. It wasn’t just the fans.
The real catch is the thing that unites the fans and the band, an infectious hopeful optimism that crosses every language, cultural, or age barrier. Even though they are so young, their music tells the story of a group of boys growing up and trying to discover how to live a meaningful life in a world of such disparity. And even though I’m 42 years old, I’m still trying to figure out how to live a meaningful life in a world of such disparity, too. Their solo albums and side projects delve into how hard it is to overcome anxiety, perfectionism, and depression, and through their music and countless interviews, it’s clear they’re figuring out that fame and fortune don’t buy happiness if you don’t like yourself. And here it took me 30-some years to discover that. How wonderful would it have been if I had realized it in my 20s?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m as cynical and jaded as the next gal. Yes sometimes the lyrics are cheesy, and yes sometimes the music is pure pop syrup, and yes the K-pop machine has an ugly underbelly including sexual abuse, suicide, and contracts that aren’t far from indentured servitude, and yes the band is a commercial, capitalist enterprise making zillions of dollars with their $50+ t-shirts, and lightsticks, and this, that, and the other. BTS and BigHit Entertainment is a business, BIG business, and they are monetizing the passion of their fans to make a killing (Forbes reported in March 2018 that Big Hit Entertainment was valued at 783 billion KRW, or $687 million USD, I’m sure that’s only gone up since then). That’s all completely true.
BTS ‘Fake Love’ dance practice session. Even if you don’t like the music, you can’t tell me that isn’t art.
And.. somehow I don’t care. Somehow, I’m glad for them. Somehow I still find sincerity in their finger-hearts and silly smiles, earnestness in their practice videos and sweaty concert performances, optimism and a refreshing naivete in their lyrics and rap wordplay.
Why not a bunch of young guys from Korea who have still have the unbelievable youthful audacity to think they can change the world?Â
Ultimately, that’s what turned me into an ARMY. Adorable Representative MCs for Youth. At a time in my personal life when I felt despair, I happened upon a global thread of hope through BTS and their fans, a reminder that young people all around the world are struggling, thinking, hoping, trying to find a way to live and move forward, and that the way forward is as it has always been, one step at a time, to just plain not give up. To not let cynicism win. A reminder of the joy of music, the release you feel dancing to a good beat, and the inspiration that came from seeing the often smiling, sometimes tired, but still hopeful faces of 7 Korean boys who aren’t yet ground down by the machine, the world, life itself.
Could we, without relentlessly criticizing, let people have their pumpkin spice, and avacado toast, and their fandoms, and their D&D, and their too-early-Halloween-decorations, and whatever little harmless things in which they’ve manage to find a tiny shriveled flower of joy?
As the last album of the Love Yourself cycle came out in August 2018, Love Yourself: Answer (which also went on to break a bazillion records including #1 on the Billboard charts again), BTS and the Adorable Representative MCs for Youth became (part of) the antidote to my Trump depression. BTS and ARMY culture shows that there are other ways to to respond to the challenges the world faces other than tribalism and building walls, and that good music, good art makes us think, feel, reflect, absorb, change, and no joke, it can be healing.
Anyone who has watched a BTS video has seen the Big Hit Entertainment intro: “Music & Artist for Healing”.  Indeed.
So after all that, I did what every other self-respecting ARMY (who could afford it) did, and started planning a trip to see them live when they came the States for their globally sold-out Love Yourself World Tour.
[1] My rekindled interest in Korean culture was not my only new diversion. During an unusually long power outage in November, I dug through the closet and found my guitar, and have been faithfully teaching myself to play (again, but kind of for the first time). I took piano lessons as a kid, and played clarinet very badly in grade school, but this is the first time that I’ve passed the threshold of playing an instrument well enough to really enjoy it. And practicing requires a level of obsessive repetition that feels almost meditative, it’s given me an enormous amount of solace.
Don’t make fun, I know I’m not very good at singing OR playing, but that’s the first song I learned after picking a guitar up again for the first time in 20 years. (I’ll say it again, Music for Healing!)
This is Part 1 of a three part series, see Part 2, and Part 3 here.
It has truly been an age since I’ve written an actual blog post. [1] I may even have forgotten how to do it, I guess we’ll see.  It’s not so much that I haven’t felt the urge to write from time to time, but once you get out of the habit of blogging, it feels insurmountable to start back up again. And yet here I am, trying to remember my website password on a Saturday morning.
The impetus for this blog reset was that I wanted to write about the experience of going to see BTS at Citi Field in New York a couple weeks ago. (If you need a primer, here are a few from the Guardian, Rolling Stone, NYT, and Vulture). Like many, I picked up the #CitiFieldFlu while I was there, so I’ve basically been bedridden or trying to catch up ever since I got back into town, but I hope I can remember everything because I think it might be one of the best trips of my life. It was not only a great show, the whole trip was the kind of awesome, life-affirming experience that makes you see the world differently when you come back home, and not many concerts can do that.
PART 1:Â THE BACK STORY
But to back up a bit, I feel like I have to explain how I got into this Korean boyband in the first place…
It actually starts with the election of Donald Trump, the #MeToo movement, and the absolutely paralyzing trauma I felt near the end of last year.
By mid-2017, as the daily insult and injury of the Trump Administration took my breath away, and every American media outlet, news program, channel, and pop-culture reference everywhere became All Trump All the Time, I began to experience a kind of cognitive overload and emotional upset that I’d never felt before. Then in the fall of 2017, the #MeToo movement broke open with one horrific story of abuse after another.  Coupled with the shock and complex emotions that came with each days’ news cycle, I also began to feel a sense of shame that I was having so much trouble even coping with the news. I’d be heading into work listening to NPR, and suddenly find myself bursting into tears of anger, sadness, fear, horror, and sooooo much disappointment, it’s still hard to comprehend. Until one day, I just couldn’t cope with it anymore.
I turned the radio off. I turned the TV off. I canceled my subscriptions to the New York Times and the Washington Post. I un-followed hundreds of accounts on Twitter. For many months, I was pretty much offline but for what I absolutely had to do for work and I told everyone in my personal life that I was on a complete news blackout and that I did not want to know what happening. No, that’s not quite right – it wasn’t just that I didn’t WANT to know, it was even worse than that. I couldn’t even force myself to look at what was happening. [2]
My family and friends were shocked and confused, I think, and concerned. For anyone who knows me at all, tuning out and ignoring things is an extremely uncharacteristic response. And since the day I first discovered the internets back in 1994, most of my personal hobbies and interests, not to mention my whole career and professional life, has revolved around the internet, activism, and using technology to improve the human condition. And yet suddenly I found myself unable to engage with any of it. All of it. I felt compelled to shut the internet off. [3]
That was about a year ago, in November of 2017.
So what does a person DO when the thing that occupied all of their waking life for all of their adult life suddenly becomes toxic?
A SLOW-SIMMERING INTEREST IN KOREAN HISTORY/CULTURE TURNS INTO A REFRESHINGLY DIVERTING MINI-OBSESSION
How do any of our obsessions begin? Some tiny niggling seed that takes root and grows into something strange and unexpected.
My grandpa is in the center kneeling, with Korean children wearing UN hats. Not sure of the year, 1953 or 1954.
My most recent one has deep roots, if I think about it. My grandfather on my mother’s side, who I called Dad, served in Korea when he was in the Army, and it’s one of those episodes in the family lore that holds myriad meanings and significances. Family rumor has it that Mom and Dad got married because she got pregnant after (before?) Dad went to Korea. Not sure about the timeline there, maybe my mom will correct me. The cherry lacquer wooden bowls that Dad sent back from Korea were a source of bitterness for my aunt Mary when Mom and Dad passed away and we couldn’t find them. My uncle Frank probably still hasn’t forgiven me that I wouldn’t give up the photographs of Dad in Korea. (In my defense, I kept them to scan them in so everyone could have them. :P)
After Dad died, I spent many hours scanning in photos and tracing through his life story, and I never could determine exactly where he was stationed in Korea, but I had the thought that I’d like to go there some day. He didn’t talk about his military experience much, but it obviously helped shape who he was, and if the family rumors were true, I was indirectly a product of his Korean adventure.
With Dr. Youngkyun Baek and Korean National University of Education graduate students at the University of Cincinnati, 2007.
Another root of my new obsession was a wonderful experience many years ago meeting Dr. Youngkyun Baek, who at the time was an Asst. Professor at Korea National University of Education. In 2007, he joined the University of Cincinnati with a Visiting Professor appointment and arranged for me to lead a week-long seminar with a group of his graduate students from Korea to discuss the use of Virtual Worlds and Second Life in higher education. That was my first sense that Korean society is far more accepting of and quicker to adopt technology than the US.
Having a traditional Korean meal with so many side dishes it blew my mind!
It was fascinating and so much fun to spend time with them. The language barrier was only a mild impediment to a fun-filled week of exploring virtual worlds during the day, and exploring Cincinnati and Korean culture after class.
Canoeing the Whitewater River with my new friends.
I’d say it is one of the great regrets of my career that I didn’t stay in better touch with them all. Maybe I’ll try to reconnect now that I’m less ignorant of Korean culture than I was back then (I feel embarrassed now to think of how much I didn’t know). If any of them happens to find this blog post, I hope they’ll say hello!
In any case, a few months before my Great Media Blackout of 2017 began, one of the news headlines that contributed to my sense of panic also re-ignited my interest in Korea. You may recall in August 2017 when headlines like Trump Threatens ‘Fire and Fury’ Against North Korea if It Endangers U.S. began to appear. For a split second, I was afraid Trump might get us into a nuclear war, and thinking of my conversations with Dr. Baek’s students way back when, I wondered what it must be like to live in South Korea and have that worry constantly.
One thing led to another, and I began reading about the Korean War and South Korea’s military enlistment policy, and then an online friend suggested that I watch a Korean drama on Netflix called Descendants of the Sun if I was interested in how the military experience and North/South relations are portrayed in Korean popular culture. After that completely addicting experience, I discovered I could add Rakuten Viki and Dramafever apps to my Amazon Prime/Amazon Firestick, and well, let me tell you, once I fell down the K-Drama rabbit hole, there was no turning back.
Next thing I knew, I was ordering books from Talk to Me in Korean (highly recommended!) and getting monthly deliveries of Korea Box (also highly recommended!) and scouring the Cincinnati area for soju. (I never found it in Cincinnati, you have to go over the river into Kentucky at Party Source.)
It was all a marvelous distraction from the Trump/#MeToo madness, and though I have a lot of critical thoughts about the conservative, patriarchal parts of South Korean culture, it was still a welcome respite to leave the American mediascape behind and learn about a faraway land with their own history and myths and fabulous cuisine. As you can imagine, once I entered the world of K-Drama, then the music of K-Pop wasn’t far behind.
My musical tastes are as weird and varied as everyone else’s. I cut my teeth on a combination of bluegrass gospel from my biological father’s Kentuckian side of the family, and 50’s/60’s bubblegum pop, the Beatles, and “classic rock” from my mom and step-dad. The Eagles (who I just saw in Cleveland this past weekend!), CSN(Y), and Jackson Browne are in my childhood DNA, and then as an adult, well, it’s too varied to categorize, but I can say in the last decade or so, pop music and hip-hop were not really in the mix. I remember a couple years ago having the realization that I was Officially Old because I didn’t recognize even one single artist who won a Grammy that year.
So K-Pop was really a field afar for me, and I think I started with some generic “Top K-Pop Hits” playlist on YouTube, as one does these days. It all sounded kind of the same at first, and then one of the songs starts to grow on you, and then another one, and then you realize, hey, those two songs are by the same group, and then.. and then..
[2] In the interest of full disclosure, I want to say publicly that I am also a survivor and a victim (even though I hate both terms) of sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. #MeToo. Part of my shutdown was undoubtedly related to those past traumas that I thought I had overcome. Obviously not. It’s clear to me now that the way that the Trump election and #MeToo became entwined in my emotional response has as much to do with my personal history as it does with my political identity.
I also want to say that if any other person out there also had a total shutdown response to Trump and/or #MeToo, just know that you are not alone. I think we’re human and there are limits to how much trauma a person can process. We all have our own roads of recovery. I remain truly really grateful for the men and women who had the strength to speak up when I myself did not.
[3] Relatively speaking, of course, I really couldn’t maintain a 100% blackout even with great effort. In this modern day and age, there really is no total escape no matter how hard you try.
[4] Dramafever was just shut down last week after Time Warner/AT&T bought them, and there was a great wailing heard round the world by K-Drama fans everywhere. =(
I had occasion this evening to revisit Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk from 2010, and it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes:
Okay, so these are four superpowers that add up to one thing:Gamers are super-empowered hopeful individuals.These are people who believe that they are individually capableof changing the world.And the only problem is,they believe that they are capable of changing virtual worldsand not the real world.That’s the problem that I’m trying to solve.
– Jane McGonigal
Profile Cohabitation
I and the gatos live in a small farm house on the outskirts of town. We don’t need much space, but have a large garden and work to contribute our share to the local food economy.
Profile Communities
I founded the Chilbo Community in 2006 and remain a life-long member, in addition to my local community in terra. I’m also a member of the Screaming 3D Bootstrappers Superstruct, the SLED Community, the Velks, and many other professional associations related to higher education and the grid.
Profile Skills
Human network resource management, education and community building in the metaverse, connectivism, and I grow a mean tomato.
Profile Profession
I am the founder of Chilbo and work most days either in the Chilbo Town Hall or elsewhere in the Metaverse. I have offices and projects scattered all over the grid and pop in to wherever I’m needed when I’m needed. I also serve on the Board of Trustees for GlobalGrid University, one of the original virtual-land-grant research universities created by the United Nations in 2012. GGU serves an international learning network of over 200 million learners through GGU Nodes of Excellence on the grid.
Profile Location
The Chilbo Community is a global village in the Metaverse, made up of artists, musicians, writers, teachers, students, creative thinkers, entrepreneurs, and those who are interested in contributing to the public good.
Profile Experience
As the Chilbo Community reached its second anniversary in 2008, and I spent more time traveling and learning in terra and on the grid, I began to better understand the rapid speed with which the Metaverse was developing. I was fortunate to stumble into an emergent network of highly motivated and brilliant nodes all over the globe and it quite literally transformed my life. In the ensuing decade, our network has grown tremendously, as has our capacity to collaborate and locate the resources we need as we need them. We continue to work to teach others these important skills even as we make our own contributions to projects and endeavors that inspire us.
Profiles Ideals
Increasing access to education, research, knowledge, and learning throughout the grid and finding ecologically sound and sustainable ways to live.
Blogging became too time-consuming. Â Formatting, linking, embedding, bad copy pasta that has to be fixed. Â But I’ll try again, because my network continues to inspire me so much, I feel I should make the effort as they do. Â Bless their hearts, what would I read in the morning if they got lazy like me?
And, I remain forever amazed at how wonderful tripping, linking, chasing, stumbling through others’ thoughts on the internets can be, and how sharing our thoughts can further other people’s trips in (hopefully) meaningful ways.
Here’s my latest trip to go with your morning coffee.
Badges and evidence, the “reputation economy”, and data used to make decisions
Scanning past Stephen’s blurb about the VWBPE keynote, somehow I came across Alan Levine’s (@cogdog) recent post “Seeking Evidence of Badge Evidence“, wherein he explores the usefulness of gamified badging systems if they don’t link to actual evidence that the badge was earned.  Metadata about the evidence isn’t the same as linking to the evidence itself, right?  Right.
This sparked a memory of an older post of mine, Twitter and the Reputation Economy in 2014, wherein I mused about how to measure “reputation” and suggested that Twitter Lists provide a non-obvious measure of something.  Alan subsequently pointed out that a Twitter list wordcloud may be an indicator, but it is not a measure.  Good point.
My tweet about Alan’s post sparked D’Arcy Norman (@dlnorman) to point to Cory Doctorow’s (@doctorow) recent post about what a terrible currency reputation would be.
My tweet also sparked Alan to go down a deep, technically complicated but fascinating rabbit-hole of what my Twitter list wordcloud means, whether it’s useful, and how to generate one using docker, which I still don’t really understand.
At the end of all that chain, I summed up my current take-aways about data used for decision-making on a comment to his post:
1) measurements and indicators are not the same thing, important point.
2) reliability is key, whether of a measure or indicator.
3) the use-case (type of decision you’re making) should drive the type of data used to make your measurement or indicator.
4) a measurement or indicator created for one use case may not transfer to a different use case.
Metaverse Vocabulary Words – Metaxis, Liminality, Stygmergy
Somewhere in checking out that tweet stream, I also came across Mark Childs’ (@markchilds) recent post exploring words that describe transitions, edges, limits, and perceptions of spaces, or places, or feelings of being present in a space or multiple spaces even. Â
These concepts seem important for not just educators to understand, but also those of us working to create the Metaverse and places in virtual worlds.
My tweet about Mark’s post then sparked Leon Cych (@eyebeams) to share that they had local drama students acting out roles in Minecraft:
..the video of which relates to Midas’ golden touch played out in Minecraft, and that perfectly captures and visualizes the idea of stygmergy, a word I came to know and love through Sarah Robbins (@intellagirl) years ago when she was exploing using virtual worlds for teaching.  See her “Using a Faceted Classification Scheme to Predict the Future of Virtual Worlds”.  (I should link to her dissertation, but I can’t find a good link.)
After clicking through all that, I went back to Leon’s Twitter page to make sure I was following him (I am), and saw that he referenced the above tweet and forwarded Mark Child’s post on to Martin Robinson (@surrealanarchy), who apparently has changed his main Twitter account to @trivium21c (I followed that account, too).
There are several books mentioned in there that I surely must read, now. Â I might come back and list them, but I might not, so read the article and see for yourself which books you also need to read.
David Foster Wallace, which never gets old.
And in that AI & SF article, there was a link to a David Foster Wallace quote, which takes you to his “This is Water” commencement speech, posted, of all places, in the Wall Street Journal.
The perfect, beautiful hilarity of reading that speech on the WSJ website was so awesome, I thought, this is where I end my trip today.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted some thoughts about clemency for Edward Snowden and whether I thought he was a hero. Â My main point was that I was grateful to know the information he gave the world, but I felt that fleeing the US was an immoral choice, that whistleblowers who make the decision to “go public” have a responsibility to stand by their decision whatever the consequences. Â I said that even if I could understand the choice to run, that that didn’t meet my standard of “hero”.
The post generated a lot of comments, and I’ve been thinking about some of those responses.
First, I have to acknowledge the insensitivity of referring to Chelsea Manning as “he” and by a prior name. Â I fully 100% support everyone’s right to define their own identity, and it was thoughtless of me to do otherwise. Â I suppose that the name “Bradley Manning” had become somewhat iconic in my own mind and though I was aware of her choice to become known as Chelsea, it was almost as if the whistleblowing icon and the actual person had become separate entities in my brain.
But of course they aren’t separate at all, Chelsea Manning is an actual person, and its exactly these kinds of careless and unthinking errors that expose cisgender privilege and, however unintentionally, perpetuate prejudice and discrimination. Â Many thanks to those who pointed this out and I will be more conscious and thoughtful in the future.
Regarding the discussion about whether or not Snowden is a hero, everyone who commented here or on G+ or other places universally disagreed with my position. I have a lot of respect for the people in my network and when my perspective is completely out of step with the majority view, it definitely gives me pause. Â Even more so when virtually everyone thinks I’m wrong. Â 😉
I think it speaks very highly of the folks who read my blog that though they disagreed with me, passionately even, no one was disrespectful or rude, and I appreciate that. For me, blogging is a form of processing, of trying to think through issues and problems, and I’m always ready to acknowledge that I may be wrong. Â The whole point of posting publicly is to get feedback and to have good dialogue with people who are also passionate about the issues I care about, and I’m happiest when we’re really digging into an issue but doing it kindly and civilly with each other. Â So thanks to everyone for keeping it cool.
I can’t say that I’ve been completely swayed from my position by the arguments everyone made, but it has made me think more about the complexity of Snowden’s particular situation. Â My mother and many others asked if I thought Snowden should have paid with his life for his actions, and the answer is no, I don’t think he deserves to die or spend life in prison for trying to expose the wrongdoing of the NSA. Â I also agree that both of those scenarios were plausible outcomes if he had chosen to stay instead of leaving the US, and by that logic, then he would be justified in trying to protect himself from that fate.
Despite that, I still feel resistance to the idea that it is a moral choice to blow the whistle and run.
I may be persuaded that Edward Snowden’s, or to some extent, even Chelsea Manning’s, specific circumstances were extraordinary. Â That they were not exposing your run-of-the-mill malfeasance or wrong-doing, but rather they were exposing wrongdoing of such a horrific scale and magnitude, and perpetrated not by some low level official or small corporate concern, but by our own government across many branches and departments, and therefore that deserves some leeway. Â I think that’s a fair argument and it’s forced me to reconsider my position.
I would still argue, though, that universalizing Snowden’s decision to flee is ultimately NOT the best outcome – for whistleblowers OR for the society a whistleblower is trying to protect. Â In the best of worlds, what should happen is that the whistleblower should be safe, should be protected, should be given safe harbor until the disclosures can be digested and the situation investigated. Â Edward Snowden shouldn’t have to flee his own country, rather our government and our society should have better measures in place and better systems to protect those who make the brave choice to expose wrongdoing. Â We should be demanding better protections for the Mannings and Snowdens (and Swartzs) of the world.
And I guess that’s where it shakes out for me. Â If we universalize Snowden’s decision to blow the whistle and flee, and say that’s ok, then we run a two-fold risk:
1) We open the door for anyone claiming whistleblower status to get a pass whether it’s deserved or not. Â I maintain that making a public accusation of wrongdoing carries with it a responsibility to stand behind the claim. We all must have the right to face our accusers, and whistleblowers are not and cannot be exempt from that. Â Due process matters, it protects us from unfounded accusations and (in an ideal world) acts as a safeguard against vigilante justice, by the state OR other people.
2) We let ourselves off the hook for failing to provide the protections that legitimate whistleblowers deserve. Â While I’ll admit that Snowden likely had little rational choice but to leave, don’t we all agree that he shouldn’t have had to? Â I think in some way, blessing Snowden’s decision to flee is a form of ignoring our own complicity in a system that we know is terribly unjust. Â Instead of arguing about whether or not he was justified in running, we really should be expending that energy on making it so he doesn’t have to – not just for Snowden, but for all the legitimate whistleblowers out there who don’t have international visibility and media scrutiny to protect them.
That’s where my reasoning is at the moment, but I’m sure I’ll keep thinking on this for some time to come. Â Thanks again to everyone who commented, and as always, feel free to disagree! Â 🙂
Back in 2009 when Twitter Lists first came out, I had a little epiphany about the reputation economy. Â It isn’t just what you say about yourself online, but what others say and post about you in the aggregate, and all the associated metadata of your online life, that can define “who you are” in the Metaverse. Â That only seems to be more true as time has gone on, and despite the over-hype of the “reputation economy” buzzword, I still find it interesting and potentially meaningful, but only if the measures of reputation are accurate. Â We’re definitely not there yet, and I’m not sure we’re really any further than we were in 2009, either.
It’s hard to do an analysis of accuracy for anyone but myself, but if I had to say which system seems to currently have the best measure of “who I am” based on what others say about me, I’d have to say it’s not Klout, or LinkedIn Endorsements or any of those obvious attempts to measure reputation. Â The best measure as far as I can tell is actually Twitter. Â What Twitter Lists people have placed me in, which isn’t obvious at all, and isn’t even something Twitter seems to explicitly leverage as a measure of reputation, is actually a pretty good measure!
[A brief aside, I’m sad that Twitter seems to have buried Lists and made them almost non-obvious, since as far as I’m concerned, Lists are a crucial component of making Twitter useful at all. Â Many folks who joined Twitter after Lists came out don’t even seem to know they exist! Â If you happen to be one of those unfortunate souls, get thee to your Twitter page > Me > Lists > Create List and start categorizing people. Â Or click “Member of” to see what lists others have added to you to. Â I bet you’ll find some of them very surprising, hopefully in a good way. Â And after you’ve made some lists, tools like TweetDeck will suddenly make a LOT more sense to you, and your Twitter stream will become much more meaningful, relevant and less.. ephemeral.]
But back to the topic. Â So what does my Twitter network say about me? Â Some pretty good stuff, actually:
When I boiled the List Names down, I got 191 unique terms and, though I modified the frequency to make the word cloud readable (if I hadn’t, all you would see is: Second Life, Virtual Worlds, Education, Immersive, Cincinnati, which were the top 5 list names), I’d say that’s a really accurate representation of my online life. Â It accurately reflects my professional and geeky interests, and if you dig in there a bit, it tells you my gender, where I live, what I do for a living, some of the books I’ve read, games I’ve played, conferences I’ve attended, that I’m old enough to be on someone’s BBS list, and if I can say it humbly, that overall people have a pretty positive opinion of me. Â Â
I am of course quite biased, but I think I have a pretty awesome network of super intelligent people who love digging into the future of technology and education, and who like to think about what all this emerging tech will mean for the future of society, so it’s all the more interesting to see what kinds of categories they create for themselves and where they place me within that context. Â (I confess to having some warm fuzzies after seeing how the word cloud came out, so thanks Twitter peeps!)
LinkedIn’s Endorsements are another interesting measure, though of a slightly different sort.  I’d say it’s also fairly accurate, but it pretty much captures only my professional interests and misses all the personal, quirky, or other interests I have.
Some folks I know have also complained that they get endorsements for skills from people who aren’t even in a position to know whether or not they have any expertise in that topic, and that happens to me, too.  But in general, I’d say LinkedIn Endorsements are less a measure of what you are actually skilled at doing and more a measure of what people think you are skilled at doing.  They aren’t the same thing, but both are interesting and useful measures.
By comparison, I would say Klout is the least representative of the various “reputation economy” or influence measures about me.  I don’t know how they weight stuff, but it looks like the Klout list was probably fairly accurate about 5 years ago, but as my focus, interests, and activities have changed, Klout hasn’t seemed to have kept up.  It captures the same top 5 categories as Twitter Lists, but that’s about it.  None of the nuance, history, and none of the topics I’ve become interested in since.. what, their initial calculations?  I’m not sure.
I should also admit some bias here, I became very aggravated with Klout when they sent me what seemed like an email every few days to tell me my Klout score was going down, when at the time I was helping take care of my grandpa who was dying of cancer. Â The insensitivity of it really struck a nerve, like I should really give a hoot about my Klout score at a time like that? Â And how meaningful a measure could it possibly be if I’m less influential because I’m offline doing something important?
No matter what Klout says, I know my network values human life and knows what is and isn’t truly important.  In fact, my guess is that my network would probably rank my reputation higher for having been a dedicated caregiver, not lower.
And of course that’s the big problem with all of these reputation or influence measures – the algorithms can’t yet measure what’s REALLY important: trustworthiness, competence, honesty, reliability, compassion, dedication, clarity, ability to synthesize and make meaning from complexity. Â These are the measures I really want to know about someone, and as far as I can tell, there’s nothing out there like that yet.
The Twitter List names that people create for themselves, some of which touch on values not just buzzwords, are the closest I’ve seen to anything like those kinds of measures, which for me makes Twitter a potentially overlooked but pretty important tool in the reputation and influence measure toolkit in 2014.
A few weeks ago, I took the plunge to change to Google’s 2-Factor authentication for increased security and after reading a horrifying article in The Atlantic about a user’s Gmail getting hacked and all of their email deleted, I’m glad that I did. Â From the article in The Atlantic:
At Google I asked Byrant Gehring, of Gmail’s consumer-operations team, how often attacks occur. “Probably in the low thousands,†he said. “Per month?,†I asked. “No, per day,†followed by the reassurance that most were short-lived “hijackings,†used to send spam and phishing messages, and caused little or no damage, unlike our full-out attack. My wife and I, having heard from half a dozen friends who’d recently had similar problems, had innocently imagined that we all were part of some general upsurge in Gmail attacks. In our grandiosity, we thought it was perhaps even aimed at journalists. But according to the experts, while there are more e‑mail attacks worldwide than a year ago, it was mere coincidence that people we knew had been hit around the same time. On average, half a dozen accounts are taken over every two or three minutes, round the clock, including now.
I often say that Google owns my online soul because it’s true. Â I switched to using Gmail years ago and since that time I’ve eventually adopted a huge number of Google services to manage my online life – Google Docs, Google Checkout, Google has my calendar, Google Analytics for checking my website traffic.. Â My Google account contains tons of crucial data. Â And while I’ve gotten much better about performing automatic backups of my local data, I’ve not been nearly as good about keeping track of my data in the cloud, and despite knowing better, I’ve been somewhat lazy about my passwords, too.
I haven’t had any catastrophic hacks or data loss events recently, but in general, 2011 has been a year of re-thinking my use of the cloud and third party services, and as part of that I’m also trying to improve my overall “data hygeine” by making backups of cloud based services and improving my password security around the web.  It’s a tedious job and I can’t say it’s been easy.  Some friends have suggested password manager sites like KeePass but I’m still wary and haven’t made that jump yet.  Instead I’ve just tried to do some simple but smarter things like not re-using the same password everywhere and making the passwords I do use longer and more complex – with special characters and not just numbers, spaces if a site allows it.
All of these things are helping me feel a little less vulnerable over-all, and I definitely feel that the switch to Google 2-Factor authentication was a good move even if it’s been slightly inconvenient a time or two. Â When I think about how much data is tied to my Google account and how reliant I am on that access to do my day-to-day work, a little inconvenience is a small price to pay for the additional security.
If you don’t know what 2-Factor authentication is, check out Google’s explanation and overview, but basically, I can’t log into my Google account from a new computer unless I can enter the verification code they send to my cell phone. Â I have some backup phone numbers available in case I’m somewhere without cell phone service, and a list of backup codes written old skool style on paper in case I don’t even have that. Â But generally speaking, this means some random dude from Nigeria cannot log into my account unless he’s also got my cell phone.
If you use Gmail or other Google services, you should switch to the 2-Step Authentication asap.
WHAT ABOUT THE rest of us, who are not security professionals? I asked that of every person I interviewed. Many of their recommendations boiled down to the hope that people would think more about their life online. “We’d like people to view their information life the way they view other parts of their life,†Andrew Kovacs of Google said. “It’s a good practice to review your financial situation every so often, and it’s a good practice to review your passwords and online-account information too.†Another official compared “cloud hygiene†to personal hygiene: you feel bad if you don’t brush your teeth or take a shower, and you should learn to feel bad if you’re taking risks online.
I’ve been feeling bad about the risks I’ve taken online and every step I take to get a little more security helps. Â Hope you take those steps too because none of us wants to be the woman in that story.
In the past week or so, two of my favorite thinkers about Second Life have written about governance – Gwyneth Llewelyn’s post Humble Governance is typically lengthy but worth reading, and Prokofy Neva responded on How to Improve Governance in Second Life.
This has long been a topic of interest, I was a polisci undergrad after all, and I’ve been trying my own hand at governance with varying degrees of engagement, success, and failure with the Chilbo Community on the mainland.  In fact, I presented about Chilbo’s model at the Governance in Virtual Worlds conference back in March 2010, and I’ll never forget the upbraiding I received from a fellow panelist who simply could not believe that governance could exist without constant disagreement and strife, or that any system that didn’t include a parliament or direct democracy could be feasible or representative.  I begged to differ then and now.
I’ve never claimed that the Chilbo model of participatory consensus was scalable or feasible for all communities in Second Life – I think our system developed to suit our specific community, our specific geography on mainland rather than private sims, and to suit the personalities of our specific members – but I certainly think it has been a viable model that others might learn from as one example of a long lasting, self-governing community. Â We’re coming up on our 5th anniversary, which in Second Life terms is a pretty long time! Â But I remain a big believer in the old adage “those who show up make the decisions, those who are willing and actually do the work get to decide how its done” and so long as that is tempered by a fair, open, and transparent input process where those who don’t have the time to show up or do the work get to put their two cents in, we’ve found in Chilbo that it mostly works pretty well.
And even though in the past year or so I’ve been much less active myself, and some of the more administratively heavy processes we had in place have been eliminated or downsized to accommodate people’s changing schedules and time availability, the fact that we continue to iterate, flex, and experiment without carving immutable laws into virtual stone is one of the very reasons I think Chilbo has lasted as long as it has.  From my perspective, the biggest issue with our “real life” political institutions right now is their inability to cope with the rapid pace of change in today’s crazily quickly changing world.  Being flexible and nimble is crucial to ensuring that governance is responsive to actual reality and actual problems rather than continuing to run on auto-pilot addressing problems from previous decades or, at this point, a previous century.  I have come to hate the buzzword “agile” because it’s so overused in the IT industry, but governments need to have the capacity for agility when necessary and neither the real world nor most Second Life government systems I’ve seen in practice have demonstrated that capacity.
In any case, there were several points in Prokofy’s post that absolutely resonated with my experience as a Second Life Resident and community organizer. Â My favorite quote was the following:
Governance in SL will do better when it’s a verb, not a noun.
I couldn’t agree more! Â Further, Prokofy goes on to say:
What is needed isn’t a parliament, a resident body that the Lindens fete somehow, or self-appointed busy-bodies who want to run *your* land. What’s needed is functionality — the ability to minimize grief in groups and get better traction on mainland complaints revolving around neighbours’ and Governor Linden land.
This is something I’ve been saying for years.  Back in August 2008, I wrote an open letter to Jack Linden when they first proposed changes to the Mainland to deal with litter, griefer objects, ad farms, and the all-too-common abandoned first land plots.  In that letter, I wrote:
Linden Lab has for years claimed that they eventually wanted to put more governance in the hands of residents since they do not have the staff or the time to resolve all disputes. So do it. Where organized communities exist, empower long-term residents with established records of good payment, good stewardship, and good relations to manage the sims instead of Linden Lab. Enforce our community-generated standards or allow us to enforce them. Whether through appointment or elections or petitions or through some other means, give community managers the ability to remove offensive ads, griefer objects, and banlines. Put your money where your mouth has been for the last 5 years.
I absolutely agree with Prokofy that the biggest issue is the need for group and land management tools to better allow us to govern our OWN communities.  I don’t need that argumentative fellow from the Confederation of Democratic Simulators to come and inject his contentious brand of politics into our easy going consensus-based community, what we’ve long needed in Chilbo is better mechanisms to enforce our own community standards – better data, better management tools, better and more flexible group permissions and management – those are the things that would genuinely help our community.
Having said that, I’m not sure I agree with Prokofy that there’s no need for larger governance structures. Â While I very much like the concept that participation should be tied to some kind of stake in the grid – if not direct land ownership, then some kind of representation on behalf of those who rent or play on group owned land or systems like Chilbo’s – the fact that we are all at the mercy of a privately held company and have done little to effectively organize ourselves in ways that can leverage our power as customers of Linden Lab has been to our detriment. Â As Gwyn rightly pointed out, the forums become a cacophany and the JIRA was never intended to be a voting mechanism, and so we’ve been left to individually or in small groups try to fight for the changes we hope to see with the platform, the interface, or the policies that Linden Lab adopts.
Gwyn wrote:
I think that there was always a need for mechanisms to represent residents’ opinions in a systematic and inclusive way, and that the “fear of corruption and drama†has been just a convenient excuse to avoid a democratic forum. The consequence of this way of thinking is that it’s far easier to blame the Lindens for making the wrong decisions instead of organising a grid-wide method of aiding their decision process.
I think that’s pretty spot-on. Â And applicable to more than just Linden Lab and Second Life, in fact, since increasingly more and more of our interactions and civic life is conducted online in virtual spaces that are owned by, “governed” by, and controlled by third party private or publicly owned corporations who are not accountable in a democratic sense to their constituents, er customers, er.. whatever label you call us. Â For another example, see the Nymwars with Google.
This is a 21st century problem that we must solve, and it will require 21st century solutions and institutions to do it. Â Many of us have long said that Second Life is merely a precursor of the things to come, that in many ways it portends the future of our physical world and other online spaces, and I find myself agreeing with Gwyn that it is time we tackle these issues and stop passing the buck. Â If we can find workable solutions for dealing with governance in Second Life, perhaps we’ll find structures and systems that will be useful in dealing with other service providers who forget who they’re serving, too.
A few weeks ago, I took the plunge to change to