Okay, so yes, I'm a bit uncomfortable with the idea of 14 year olds in the K-Pop industry and would rather have more older idols debuting but that's not what this is supposed to be about, there are and were other discussions about that, and now this debut is happening like this. Anyway, despite not posting much on here and feeling a bit "distanced" from K-Pop lately NewJeans actually made me want to post something about them after watching their MVs again on this Sunday evening.
So on various K-Pop communities I've seen a lot of posts on how their concept is for teenagers and people in their 20s would prefer concepts like that of Lesserafim etc., but I actually feel like it's precisely being in my mid 20s made me appreciate this concept so much. First of all, obviously it reminds me of my childhood. Not going into full essays into how "Gen Z style" is basically the 90s now. But it's not just an average 2020s doing Y2K retro concept - it simultaneously feels SO much like the teen girl life out of a millenium kids' daydreams AND so fresh and contemporary that, in combination with that slight dreamlike, chill and ethereal feel of the releases so far, to me watching those videos, listening to these songs, feels like a wormhole to a place completely out of time opened up. Now it's 2022, my teen years are long gone and mostly sucked, my early 20s were fine but are also starting to feel distant, the world is collapsing even more as I'm starting adulthood, but when I put on the MVs for "Attention" or "Hype Boy" I'm transported out of reality to a place that feels straight out of the dreams I had as a 5 year-old girl 20 years ago, to a place that feels like a heavenly realm of eternal teenage dreams. And I just feel thankful for that and feel those releases are a breath of fresh air I needed. As for "How to stan a group when the members are minors and so much younger than you?", that question was never really that big for me anyway because I was never really a super-obsessed "stan" and especially haven't been for the past few years, but now I really feel I honestly don't need to watch or read anything else about them, though teenagers might be happy about more stan material, I should just appreciate this gate to a world outside of reality their MVs and music have given me, no need for anything to pull it closer to reality and maybe make it feel less dreamlike.
