Our Surreal World: K-Pop Threatens the Stability of South Korea's Economy.

[NNadir]

Sometimes I think I died and was reincarnated in some bizarre alternate universe:

From the NY Times:

BTS Ponders Its Future, and South Korea’s Economy Warily Takes Note

Subtitle:

The band’s label saw its stock price plunge, and the possibility that the K-pop group won’t tour as pandemic restrictions ease threatens to reverberate through South Korea’s economy.

The fallout from BTS’s announcement on Tuesday that the K-pop juggernaut will be taking a break as members explore solo careers was immediate and drastic.

In just a day, the stock price of the group’s management label, HYBE, plummeted 28 percent to 139,000 won — or $108 — its lowest price since the company went public nearly two years ago, shedding $1.7 billion in market value. The stock price has barely moved since.

The drastic plunge underscores how South Korea’s best-selling boy band has become not only a cultural sensation but also a powerful stakeholder in South Korea’s economy.

Since the group’s debut in 2013, BTS has raked in billions of dollars through album sales, concert tickets and social media. Its YouTube channel alone, which is the 20th largest in the world, can generate up to $2 million a month. By 2020, the group was contributing $3.5 billion annually to the nation’s economy, according to the Hyundai Research Institute...

[harumph]

1. My money goes on simulation theory -

where we're just simulations in a black box and the entity or entities that wrote the program
have either lost interest in us or they're dead. Not falsifiable so I'll never collect the bet.

1950s TV episode featured con man named "Trump" who wanted to build a wall

[NNadir]

3. Oh wow. That's totally mind blowing. n/t.

[JanMichael]

5. Holy crapola. Simulation? Maybe. When climate change upends everything

It will be when one of the creators of the black box comes back and shakes us up like a snow globe.

[Midnight Writer]

6. I think of us as one in a series of experiments. Some failed, some didn't.

The variable that leads to failure seems to be resistance to change, failure to adapt (conservatism). We see it in nature all the time.

[harumph]

2. Alternate versions of us are living in a world

where nuclear energy was taken as a serious alternative to fossil fuels and
there are functioning governments working with scientists and engineers to
safely handle and or re-process the waste stream. A world where
people like Trump are housed in institutions for the criminally insane and fed pudding.

[TheBlackAdder]

4. I think I remember when ABBA was Sweden's number one industry.