TEXT 1

What is kawaii – and why did the world fall for the ‘cult of cute’?

This is a true story. One Saturday night, I was sitting with a friend in a trendy downtown
bar, when two grown women casually strolled past in ruffled dresses, bonnets and
parasols, wheeling matching baby carriages. Out of these peeked little poodles wearing
complementary pastel baby clothes. We were of course in Japan, but still, what on earth
was going on?

Yes, I had once again been confronted by the strange, fascinating world of “kawaii”, or
cute culture. Visits to Japanese cities reverberating with squeals of “Kawaaaiiiiiii!!!” may
make this fad easy to dismiss as just another exoticism of the East. Yet the presence of
costumed adults lining up for London’s own Comic-Con, a Swarovski-encrusted Hello
Kitty worth thousands of pounds, and the profiling of Lolita fashion in magazine
articles and V&A exhibits, show that cute culture is not just spreading beyond Asia, but
it’s here to stay. And it means business.
So, what is kawaii and why here and why now? As the Japanese word for
cute, kawaii has connotations of shyness, embarrassment, vulnerability, darlingness and
lovability. Think babies and small fluffy creatures. In many cases, it is a signifier for
innocence, youth, charm, openness and naturalness, while its darker aspects have led
it to be rather brutally applied to frailty and even physical handicap as a marker of
adorability. You may not have noticed, but look carefully and Hello Kitty has no mouth.

Hello Kitty: mouthless, voiceless. Shutterstock

As kawaii suggests, cute culture first originated in Japan, emerging out of the student
protests of the late-1960s. Rebelling against authority, Japanese university students
refused to go to lectures, reading children’s comics (manga) in protest against prescribed
academic knowledge.
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As the economy progressed through the 1970s and 1980s, so did consumer subcultures
– and cute as a style began to be expressed through childish handwriting, speech, dress,
products, shops, cafes and food. Meanwhile, as Japanese women became more visible
at work, so the “burikko” or childlike woman emerged, portraying an innocence and
adorability that alleviated the threat of female emancipation, increasing her appeal as a
potential marriage partner.
The Lost Decade
By the 1990s, Japan’s period of economic crisis was well underway, and many Japanese
subcultures fled into the international market. Banks and commercial airlines began to
explore cute as a strategy to increase their appeal, and cultural forms followed in the
footsteps of the once invincible Japanese corporate machine, spreading the soft power
of Japanese modernity.

Where Nissan, Mitsubishi, Sony and Nintendo had carved a path, so trod Japanese
anime, film and music. The 1990s also saw the refreshing of the ultimate kawaii brand,
Hello Kitty, expanded to include products aimed at teens and adults rather than pre-
adolescent girls.

Eva Air: taking to the skies with Hello Kitty. Masakatsu Ukon via Flickr, CC BY-SA
As part of the 1990s wider spread of Japanese culture, kawaii is undoubtedly indebted.
However, its persistence well into the 21st century shows that something else is now
afoot. Cute culture is everywhere and claimed by everyone, regardless of age, gender
and nationality. More than the fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror, it is the
collectable branded official merchandise of cartoons and comics, the endless animations
and superhero films, the doll-like dresses of “Lolita” fashion and the phone-clutching
clusters of Pokemon Go players.
Importantly, it does not seem to rely on Japan, but has become homegrown in multiple
locations, with global participants consuming and contributing in equal measure. At first
glance, it appears these childlike adults, like the proverbial Peter Pan, don’t want to grow
up – but how convenient for business that they can whip consumers into a frenzy,
reducing grown men and women into childish, irrational desire. Cute culture is capitalism
disguised, repackaged and covered in glitter.
 Pokemon Go, on the road. Shutterstock
A force for good?
Looking at the adult landscape, with its pressures of debt, competition and responsibility,
it is no wonder that people want to escape into the infinite time, space and promise of
childhood. Cute becomes a way of resisting the adult world. It’s not just a means of
escape and denial, but also a way to fight back against the curtailment of possibility.
Japanese women used cute culture as a denial of female sexuality and all the
subjugation it implied. Meanwhile in the West, cute becomes a foil for millennials against
the diminishing of privileges that mark the end of the late-20th century as a Golden Age.

So, is cute culture good or bad? Perhaps both and neither. A legitimate subcultural form
and a soporific soother, it is a form of resistance and a capitalist pacification. Symptom
and cure, it is ultimate allowance and refusal. Childhood means the luxury of not growing
up, but also denial of adulthood and the refusal of responsibility. But while kawaii may
seem like a closing of one door, held in its small furled fist is a key that opens another.
To be simultaneously adult and child means to straddle both worlds, a symbol of
resistance and boundless possibility.

What is kawaii – and why did the world fall for the ‘cult of cute’?
Published: November 23, 2016 3.14am EST
https://theconversation.com/what-is-kawaii-and-why-did-the-world-fall-for-the-cult-of-cute-67187

Author

1. Hui-Ying Kerr
Senior Lecturer in Product Design, Nottingham Trent University
TEXT 2
With skateboarding’s inclusion in Tokyo 2020, a once-
marginalized subculture enters the spotlight

On Aug. 6, skateboarding was added to the list of new sports for the 2020 Tokyo
Olympics.

Now, six million skateboarders in the United States – plus millions abroad – will have a
global platform to promote skateboarding as a cross-cultural community that possesses
a set of shared values.

Though skateboarding culture has often been thought of as the home of unruly, unlawful,
anti-establishment youth, the sport may actually communicate the Olympic ideal to
millions of millennials who haven’t been tuning into the Olympic Games.

As someone with 20 years of experience in the skateboarding industry – and as the

teacher of a course on skateboarding culture at the University of Southern California –
I’ve seen how the sport can promote diversity, identity, youth empowerment and global
citizenship.

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Diversity in its DNA
In the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) own words, “The mission of the IOC is to
not only ensure the celebration of the Olympic Games, but to also encourage the regular
practice of sport by all people in society, regardless of sex, age, social background or
economic status.”

Since its earliest days, skateboarding has advanced these ideals in myriad ways, and a
range of ethnicities and experiences make up the DNA of skateboarding culture.

In the 1970s, a group of surfers dedicated to the Zeypher surf-shop in Santa Monica,
California – who came to be known as the Z-boys family – developed an aggressive style
that was necessary to surf the dilapidated, defunct Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica.

In between waves, the group would explore and experiment with their skateboards.
Soon, the motley crew completely transformed skateboarding from a toy plank with
wheels to a vehicle of athletic and artistic expression.

During the drought-plagued summers of 1970s California, many swimming pools – a

symbol of both commercial success and excess – were drained to save water. Where
some might see blight and abandonment, the Z-boys and their peers saw opportunity:
The emptied swimming pool became the first unofficial skate park, a concrete canvas to
hone one’s skills and experiment with daring new tricks.
Emptied, abandoned pools became the domain of skaters. mallix/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND
The Z-boys crew also represented the changing ethnic makeup of young Americans.

Early pioneers included Tony Alva, a skater and surfer of Mexican and Dutch descent,
and Japanese-American female skater Peggy Oki. (Both have been inducted into the
Skateboarding Hall of Fame.)

During the 1980s, legendary Z-boys skater Stacy Peralta promoted the careers of
skateboarding luminaries Steve Caballero, who was Japanese and Mexican-
American, Tommy Guererro (Filipino-Chilean and Portuguese-American), Salman
Agah (of Azerbaijani and Iranian descent) and African-American Ray Barbee. According
to Transworld Skateboarding Magazine, all are among the most influential skaters of all
time.

Meanwhile, Stacy Peralta’s most well-known prodigy, Tony Hawk, continues this model
of inclusion in his wildly popular video game franchise Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, which
has reached over US$1 billion in sales. The game has featured female star Elissa
Steamer and African-American pro skater and owner of Axion sneakers Kareem
Campbell as playable characters.

Learning to make do
Importantly, skateboarding remains affordable and accessible. A skateboard generally
costs between $65 and $125, and within the community there’s an ethos of conserving
equipment. For example, the skateboarding company Element’s “No Board Left
Behind” project is a green initiative that repurposes used skateboards for kids in need.

There’s a similar commitment to repurposing urban spaces. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, Praca
das Aguas was a public park that was rarely used. But in 2010, local skater Tulio de la
Oliviera took the initiative to build the first skateable structures in the park.

Over time, the entire Sao Paulo skate community contributed cement for ramps and
ledges without the help of the government or a nongovernmental organization (NGO).
Today, Pracas das Aquas remains a free public space for everyone. It’s also fertile
ground for training the next generation of Brazilian skateboarding Olympians.

Contrast this with traditional sports, like swimming and tennis, which require expensive
equipment, lessons and training facilities. Skateboarding also doesn’t require a formal
coach, falling perfectly within the IOC’s desire to be inclusive, regardless of class or
economic status.

Bridging cultures
Today, there are a number of skateboarding NGOs that seek to use skateboarding as a
way to empower youth or promote gender equity.

The NGO Skatistan has brought skateboarding to war-torn Afghanistan, where the sport
is used as a vehicle to educate and empower male and female youth. Meanwhile, pro
skater Amelia Brodka’s annual skateboarding event “Exposure” seeks to bring together
females skaters from around the world.

In my own research, I’ve documented thriving skateboarding communities in Brazil,

Cuba, Switzerland and South Africa. Some of this work was on display during the John
F. Kennedy Center’s celebration of skateboarding culture, “Finding A Line,” in May of
2015.

Most recently, via the U.S. State Department’s SportsUnited program, I became the first
skateboarding U.S. Sports Envoy to the Netherlands. There I worked with Syrian refugee
youths who had been granted asylum in the Netherlands and the Dutch and foreign
children of the International School. Using skateboarding, we created shared experience
between the two communities.

Why it took so long

Skateboarding’s unique culture isn’t based solely on competition. It’s also about the
individual skater’s identity and his or her contributions to the skateboarding community.

Similar to jazz, skateboarders may play within an “ensemble” (i.e., their local crew). But
they’re judged on the spirit and style in which they’ve inspired others to express
themselves and become better skaters. In this, skateboarding represents the idealized
dream of sport: to create a global community with a shared identity.

But skateboarding’s Olympic arrival has been slow, and there are two main reasons:
initial apathy among the skateboarding community and the IOC requirement that the
sport establishes formal governance.

In fact, there’s a contingent that doesn’t believe skateboarding should ever enter the
Olympics: over 5,000 skateboarders signed an online petition denouncing the move.

Because skateboarders see their sport as an opportunity for individual expression, they
believe governing bodies and rigid guidelines betray the ethos of the culture. As
the petition states, “Olympic recognition will not do justice to the purity, individuality and
uniqueness of skateboarding culture … [and] viewers of the Olympic games will not be
interested in skateboarding.”

There’s real anxiety over the idea that, by joining the Olympics, a subculture that has
long been a conduit for self-expression could be “going mainstream” and, in the process,
lose its authenticity. When snowboarding was first rolled out as an Olympic sport in 1998,
it was bungled on a number of fronts. Some snowboarders boycotted. Others became
roiled in controversy after testing positive for marijuana. For these reasons, many
skateboarders are wary of being brought into the Olympic fold.

For the IOC’s part, the decision could be strategic. Olympic TV viewers have become
older and older (the median age for London 2012 was 48; for Sochi 2014 it was 55), and
the decision to include skateboarding was probably influenced by a desire to attract
younger demographics.
 When announcing the new sports for Tokyo 2020, which also include softball and
karate, IOC President Thomas Bach said in a statement, “We want to take sport to the
youth. With the many options that young people have, we cannot expect any more that
they will come automatically to us. We have to go to them.”

He added that skateboarding and the other sports are “an innovative combination of
established and emerging, youth-focused events that … will add to the legacy of the
Tokyo Games.”

Anxieties aside, as someone who has seen what skateboarding can mean to the children
of Cuba, Brazil, South Africa, Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands, I believe
skateboarding can exist within the Olympic structure. The key, of course, is that any sort
of governing bodies or guidelines doesn’t homogenize the community or the sport, and
that revenue-sharing from the Olympics is directed back into skateboarding
communities, so this healthy, supportive culture can thrive.

If all goes well, skateboarding culture will continue to flourish under the Olympics banner,
helping the Olympic Games become more diverse, inclusive and accessible.

Published: August 21, 2016 8.20pm EDT

Author

1. Neftalie Williams
Lecturer, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Research Director Annenberg
Institute of Sports, Media and Society, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

https://theconversation.com/with-skateboardings-inclusion-in-tokyo-2020-a-once-marginalized-subculture-enters-
the-spotlight-63566
TEXT 3
How Facebook – the Wal-Mart of the internet – dismantled
online subcultures

In the mid-1990s, body modification enthusiasts – a long-ostracized subculture – created an online community that
incorporated blogs, dating and wikis. philippe leroyer/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND
Before the internet, people interested in body modification – not just tattoo and piercing
enthusiasts, but those drawn to more unusual practices like ear pointing, tongue
splitting, suspension, scarification and the voluntary amputation of limbs and organs –
had a difficult time meeting others who shared their interests.

The internet, of course, changed everything: You can chat and connect with anyone from
your computer. And in 1994 – more than a decade before Facebook launched – body
modification enthusiasts started their own social media platform: the Body Modification
E-zine, or BME.

First operating as a bulletin board service (an early form of online message boards),
BME eventually added features and functions that were forerunners before now-familiar
online tools: blogging, wikis, online dating and podcasts.

But as sites like Facebook and Myspace emerged, BME found itself competing for
attention with these new “global communities.” The story of the website shows how
online communities can form and fall apart – and how Facebook’s monolithic presence
makes enduring internet communities for people on the margins of society that much
more precarious.

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A commitment to authenticity
BME, along with the longstanding punk scene in New Brunswick, New Jersey and
Brooklyn’s booming drag culture, are the three communities I studied in my 2017 book
“Digital Countercultures and the Struggle for Community.”

All three constitute what I call “countercultural communities” – groups that define
themselves as being, in some way, opposed to the mainstream. As someone who
studies digital culture, I’ve been able to see how outsiders can help us understand
the biases that are built into everyday tools and devices, which are (usually) designed
by straight, white men.

So what can we learn from a site like BME?

First, it’s important to note some key factors shaping how BME managed membership
and participation. In contrast to sites that require people to use their “authentic” names to
create a profile, BME allowed users to pick a pseudonym. The only requirement was an
authentic interest in body modification. As a condition of membership, users had to
submit photos or firsthand accounts of their modifications. These images and accounts
were then vetted by BME members.

While tattoos and piercings might seem fairly common today, this was less true when
BME was getting its start in the mid-1990s. And it’s still common for people who have
undergone some of the more extreme body modification procedures, like tongue splitting
and subdermal implants, to be ostracized.

BME’s rules for participation were meant to protect those who felt stigmatized. It also
required members to take their role in the community seriously. Accounts could be
suspended if users didn’t post regularly, meaning that people couldn’t simply sign up and
lurk.

But a number of challenges arose. Body modification became increasingly common,

threatening BME’s outsider status. Then mainstream social network sites started to take
off, and immediately started competed for users with smaller, niche sites like BME.

Trying to keep pace

After Myspace and Facebook launched, BME struggled to retain members who were
attracted to the larger audiences and more sophisticated features of the newer, better-
funded sites.

In 2011, BME planned an overhaul: For the first time, they’d be utilizing designers from
outside the modified community. After a series of delays and budget issues, the new
version of the site launched. But there were bugs, and some users didn’t like the new
aesthetic, which seemed to mirror contemporary mainstream websites.

Meanwhile, content that was mundane on BME, like tongue-splitting and ear-pointing,
could be extremely provocative on mainstream sites. BME users that gravitated to these
new social media networks could rack up thousands, rather than dozens, of views. And
as opposed to the outdated, sometimes buggy software on BME, platforms like
Facebook offered slicker design and more sophisticated features, like photo tagging and
geo-tagging.

An aerial photo of Facebook’s campus in Menlo Park, California. Noah Berger/Reuters

Over time, these challenges to the BME community became increasingly problematic.
Members deleted accounts or stopped posting. By 2015, the main community forum –
which used to have hundreds of posts a day – went without a single comment for over
six months.

Having predicted many of the web’s functions and features, BME failed to anticipate its
own demise.

The Wal-Mart of the internet?

How does the story of BME help us understand our relationship to technology?

When I asked BME’s owner Rachel Larratt about mainstream social media sites, she
described them as generic and bland.

As a small business owner, Larratt recognizes that Facebook can help businesses like
hers thrive. She just disagrees with Facebook’s contention that it’s one big “global
community.”

“It’s all marketing,” she told me. “They are trying to foster that idea [of being a
community]. It’s just staged, really, like a big box store trying to pretend like they are a
local small business owner.”

In building a massive user base, the major social media sites resort to the lowest
common denominator for terms like “community” and “user guidelines.” Facebook’s user
guidelines apply to all of its users, even though its user base covers an incredibly diverse
group of people, perspectives and values.

These policies can be tweaked and updated with minimal notice to users, which is also
true of its design. Users have limited ability to communicate with Facebook’s
administrators when there’s a problem, as we’ve seen when drag queens demanded
changes to the “real name” policy, when nursing mothers rejected censorship of
breastfeeding photos and when LGBT activists insisted that photos of same-gender
couples kissing shouldn’t be blocked for being “obscene.” In all of these cases, Facebook
attempted to enforce a blanket set of policies on groups that have a very different set of
ethics and values.

I’ve found that the people who lose from this approach are those on the margins, whose
identities and experiences are least likely to be anticipated by designers without
significant experiences of marginalization.

A generic, rootless place

Online life can be thought of as a place, albeit one that’s more conceptual than physical.

Yet in Facebook – with its massive user base – Larratt sees a kind of placelessness,
much as the generic predictability of Wal-Mart contrasts with the authentic idiosyncrasies
of a locally owned grocery store. The blandness of Facebook’s interface and the lack of
options to customize or personalize its design contribute to this feeling.

Today, many think the internet is best accessed through a mobile device, which is
sometimes labeled as a “mobile first” approach to design. Mobile first assumes that
people will access the internet from a smartphone rather than a laptop, a design ethic
that emphasizes apps and instant, seamless access, in contrast to a model of stationary
and sustained attention. In other words, it’s designing for someone who wants to check
the news on a lunch break or scan through reddit threads on the commute home from
work.
 For those who value feeling as if going online is a physical meeting point, easy and
fleeting connectivity can be perceived as a bad thing, trading convenience for
commitment. BME’s community was built up through sustained and regular participation.
It’s the difference between grabbing a Dunkin Donuts coffee on the way to work and
being a regular at a neighborhood bar. Becoming part of a community involves hanging
out, messing around and committing to local rules for participation.

To be clear, I’m not making an anti-progress push against mobile devices. And I also
don’t want to suggest that countercultural communities are best served by outdated
technologies. But it’s worth considering whether mobility is always a good thing – and
what assumptions go into the push for uninterrupted access.

Technology, and more specifically digital technology, often takes the blame for fears
of social isolation. Hype about video game and internet addiction, along with stereotypes
linking an interest in technology to poor social skills, makes the internet an easy
scapegoat.

Yet researchers have found that internet access and social media use are linked to more
diverse social networks. My research shows that the internet can be a powerful tool of
connection and community support, especially for people who have nonmainstream
interests or identities.

BME was meant to provide common grounds for people with uncommon interests, and
for many years it did just that, becoming an online meeting spot as well as the
authoritative source for body modification information. But BME’s model lost out to
mainstream platforms that prioritized bigger online audiences and more sophisticated
design over niche interests and user-driven guidelines for membership and participation.

So as we continue to design platforms for an ever-growing population of users, it’s

important to consider who’s going to be on the other end of the keyboard. Otherwise only
a certain kind of community will flourish, while others will struggle to survive.

Published: March 27, 2017 10.39pm EDT

Author

1. Jessa Lingel
Assistant Professor of Communication, University of Pennsylvania

https://theconversation.com/how-facebook-the-wal-mart-of-the-internet-dismantled-online-
subcultures-71536