Welcome to Hyperfixate! This is a weekly newsletter, a Wednesday girl, but she’s here on Thursday because I was too busy rewatching The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou yesterday. Sign up here. You can buy me a cuppa here too.
The language we use to talk about people in the public eye has both evolved and devolved at a rapid rate. Faster than I can come up with these silly little newsletters every week. It’s something I wish I jot down every time I noticed it. I long for the good old days of TigerBeat Magazines and talking in the Tumblr tags as if filing your thoughts there made it a secret.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot, given the nature of my newsletter. There is something ridiculously fun about engaging with celebrity culture, but there’s also something that hasn’t been sitting right with me. Sometimes it’s not fun, sometimes it feels weird. Sometimes it makes me feel like a freak! A whole freek! On the other hand, I am a freak regardless of what I say about Jon Bernthal on here.
But every once in a while, the internet takes a break from being a drag and gives us—and by extension, me—something utterly ingenious.
Let me preface this by saying that I have a very casual relationship with K-Pop. At best, it’s a wholesome one. I love wholesome. K-Pop is the bridge I have reconnected with my cousins or my high school friends after long periods of lost contact. All the songs I know are all of their favourite songs at karaoke. What does any of this have to do with K-Pop, you ask? What are you ramping up to, exactly, Ari?
I’m talking about this:
The brief, fleeting, ingenious trend of tweeting about non-K-Pop artists as if they were K-Pop artists.
It’s my new favourite thing in the whole world. A crossover for the ages, an experiment in semiotics and linguistics for dummies like me that spend too much time on websites with blue colour palettes.
Four different people sent me this gem, and it was the beginning of this brief little fixation. Robert does look like he’s promoting his 1st Mini-Album! It’s the red lights, the car, the gaze!
Earlier this year, literally New Year’s Day, my love for K-Pop—really, my nostalgia for it—reignited watching SMTOWN Live 2022 with my cousins. My best friend facedtimed me because she was surprised I was watching the livestream. I had an absolute ball! And GOT the Beat’s Step Back is third in Spotify’s On Repeat playlist! Pick Me ass lyrics but it’s such a bop, leave me be! Just today, she led me down the rabbit hole of 2nd Generation variety shows, arguably the highlight of noughties variety shows, where 2PM and SHINee very quickly became very very into each other. And I’m obsessed.Anyway, back to Robert Pattinson.
I can’t stop thinking about this video Robert oppa did promoting Twilight in Korean. I’m obsessed. If I could turn every frame of this video into a strappy dress, I would wear it to see The Batman this weekend. (Thank you, Deryn, for this gem):
Then there’s this one that a friend retweeted for my sake because she knew it would elicit a reaction out of me. I love when K-Pop and One Direction overlap because I’m convinced that you could conduct a quantitative study on how many One Direction fans are now into K-Pop:
My personal if not ultimate favourite has to be this one of CBS’ Shemar Moore. I have been watching a lot of Criminal Minds, I say this every week, you know this. I have half a mind to make a version of this about Gubler, but I won’t. The Shemar Experience is something to behold. The tweet just makes it funnier. Where are all my Baby Girl’s at?
I also want to make a note that Bbl is just an abbreviation for Bubble, an app that lets fans chat with their idols, and not BBL—the procedure Tobey Maguire could’ve gotten to prevent the fake Spider-Man butt allegations. I can’t stop thinking about Hunter Harris calling it a Tob-BBL. Although, I would not put it past Shemar to have post-BBL Baby Girl Sweatpants available to purchase for Baby Girls worldwide.
This has just been a silly, chronically online thing that has made me laugh. The commitment to the bit and reappropriating of language and conventions has been a delight to witness.
It’s interesting to observe how fans talk about the subjects of their adoration. Going back to that conversation on the death of sex and a bizarre, new puritanism, I feel like there are a lot of younger fans policing one another in what they should say and how they should say it, even creating a list of what would offend them at any given moment before a potential interaction. Taking out the friction that makes life random and fun seems to be the way the younger end of Gen Z is using the internet, presumably because of how the older end (my end) were using Tumblr in a similar way. Is that a reach? Am I being too libertarian about it? It’s as if the Oppression Olympics opened up new categories in defending your faves. You know what I mean. It’s why there’s a vacuum in media literacy right now. It’s why there will always be bad takes.
I’m not sure how to end this, other than I just wanted to let you know of this thing I thought was funny. Yeah, it’s funny. I wish the internet could be like that more often.
Love Of My Life, Apple Of My Eye
Aldis Hodge was at the premiere for The Batman in New York and he looks stunning. Guys, I’m so in love with him. Send help. I can’t believe he’s going to have his face under a cowl for most of Black Adam. I have won, but at what cost?
Judd Apatow’s Jurassic World: Dominion
Netflix released the highly-anticipated trailer for Cliff Beasts 6: The Battle for Everest (stylized as Cliff Bea6ts) starring Karen Gillan, former Hyperfixate champion Pedro Pascal, and David Duchovny. Duchovny is also coming out with a few books, I think. I don’t know if I should go check them out. Judd Apatow is doing the most right now, this is his Lexi Howard’s Oklahoma.
That’s all for this week! Catch you next week!
All my love,
Ari.
After Twilight (which he says he totally loaths) Pattinson (and actually, even Kristen Stewart) have had interesting careers, definitely NOT going to the normal movie star route.
Have you seen his more interesting movies, like Cosmopolis and Map to the Stars (with director David Crononberg, who I adore), The Lost City of Z (with director James Gray), Good Time (directed by The Safdie Brothers), High Life (directed by Claire Denis), and The Lighthouse (by Robert Eggers). They are low-key, small, independent films with incredibly talented directors I'm in awe with.
In that sense, I too, love and respect Pattinson, not because of his good looks, but because of his decision to go for these roles, lending his star power to allow these exotic, challenging movies to exist.