{"id":2590,"date":"2018-10-22T20:21:45","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T00:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/?p=2590"},"modified":"2018-12-09T17:05:07","modified_gmt":"2018-12-09T22:05:07","slug":"btsxcitifield-part-1-the-backstory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fleeptuque.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/btsxcitifield-part-1-the-backstory\/","title":{"rendered":"#BTSxCitifield Part 1 – The Backstory: How Trump and #MeToo led to finding #BTS and joining the ARMY"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is Part 1 of a three part series, see Part 2<\/a>, and Part 3<\/a> here.<\/p>\n

It has truly been an age since I’ve written an actual blog post. [1]\u00c2\u00a0 I may even have forgotten how to do it, I guess we’ll see.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It’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.\u00c2\u00a0 And yet here I am, trying to remember my website password on a Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

\"20181006_210206\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The impetus for this blog reset was that I wanted to write about the experience of going to see BTS<\/a> at Citi Field in New York a couple weeks ago. (If you need a primer, here are a few from the Guardian<\/a>, Rolling Stone<\/a>, NYT<\/a>, and Vulture<\/a>).\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

PART 1:\u00c2\u00a0 THE BACK STORY<\/strong><\/p>\n

But to back up a bit, I feel like I have to explain how I got into this Korean boyband in the first place…<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Then in the fall of 2017, the #MeToo movement broke open with one horrific story of abuse after another.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Coupled 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.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d be heading into work listening to NPR, and suddenly find myself bursting into tears of\u00c2\u00a0anger, sadness, fear, horror, and sooooo much disappointment, it’s still hard to comprehend.\u00c2\u00a0 Until one day, I just couldn’t cope with it anymore.<\/p>\n

\"Magazine<\/p>\n

I turned the radio off.\u00c2\u00a0 I turned the TV off.\u00c2\u00a0 I canceled my subscriptions to the New York Times and the Washington Post.\u00c2\u00a0 I un-followed hundreds of accounts on Twitter.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 No, that’s not quite right – it wasn’t just that I didn’t WANT to know, it was even worse than that.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t even force myself to look at what was happening.\u00c2\u00a0 [2]<\/p>\n

My family and friends were shocked and confused, I think, and concerned.\u00c2\u00a0 For anyone who knows me at all, tuning out and ignoring things is an extremely uncharacteristic response.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 And yet suddenly I found myself unable to engage with any of it.\u00c2\u00a0 All of it. I felt compelled to shut the internet off.\u00c2\u00a0 [3]<\/p>\n

That was about a year ago, in November of 2017.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

A SLOW-SIMMERING INTEREST IN KOREAN HISTORY\/CULTURE TURNS INTO A REFRESHINGLY DIVERTING MINI-OBSESSION<\/strong><\/p>\n

How do any of our obsessions begin?\u00c2\u00a0 Some tiny niggling seed that takes root and grows into something strange and unexpected.<\/p>\n

\"marypix_composite_005_william-james_in-korea_1950s\"<\/a>