Late afternoon market in town
Zen 101: stay still listening to others’ stupidity
Dear friends,
The best external affirmation is the affirmation from a teenager.
I was wearing a funky cardigan with smiley baby head cartoons once belonging to my roommate when someone screamed “I LOVEEEEE YOUR CARDIGANNNN”.
As I turned around, a bunch of (supposedly) secondary school kids sitting in front of an East Village brownstone were giggling and giving me thumb-ups.
Their reaction pumped up my confidence, my feet felt lighter after a tiring day in the studio.
“Why is an affirmation from a teenager THAT important?,” one might ask.
Because it’s original.
At least from the observation of my twin cousins who are in grade 10, their opinions differ all the time and they seem like they can die protecting their takes.
Those takes can touch upon everything: hair styles, bias idols, TikTok trends, seniors – who are hotter, et cetera.
And even when a teenager is kind of interested in something, they does question and roast it over and over again aggressively.
Therefore, when a group of these picky audiences reach a collective approval, it must be a groundbreaking moment of humankind.
Understanding this might make the idea of a key opinion leader (aka KOL) in Vietnam, mostly in their 20s, vehemently laughable since what they do, mostly, is chewing the cud – repeating what has been said by others and making believe (the other segment is showing off their bougie “lifestyles” but all I can comment on that is: “Bad taste”).
As I was typing this, two accounts popped up in my mind (or should I admit that they have been living in my head rent free lately?) – Khánh Vy and Gia đình truyền hình (Television family).
If you are in the same demographic as mine which I suppose includes “college grad, 20-something, urban living”, your social media feed might be bombarded with an image of Khánh Vy in her black slip dress with a pull quote, bolded as the original: “As long as you always strive to improve your own internal strength, in any case, you always have a choice” (translation credit goes to Google Translate as this lengthy sentence is quite beyond my English capacity).
Although I fail to get what she tries to say, I do know it’s the core idea of countless self-help books that have flooded the local publishing scene since the early 2000s.
And because it’s second-handed, Khánh Vy seemed to not take her privileges into account.
I can easily assign what is called “internal strength” to a functional family, supportive parents, access to education, overseas trips, etc., at least from what she has shown on her Instagram account.
The tone deafness can also be seen from an Instagram Reel by a wedded couple of news anchors who work for the Vietnamese television (VTV) and Military television. In a parody of a breaking news reportage edited in CapCut-alike glitchy style, they share a screencap of Thông tin chính phủ (Governmental News Portal) Facebook post of “Male and female citizens are encouraged to get married early and should marry before 30”.
“Being Vietnamese citizens, we proactively responded to this campaign,” they said, sharing ultrasound images of their fetal ultrasound pictures. (My comment: lame!)
In another Youtube Short in which the wife TMI-s about her diet during pregnancy, it turns out that their parents all live in Hanoi and they can come home for home-cooked lunch. Not to mention, they live in a high-rise building, 10 minutes away from their offices a.k.a. right in the city center. They have a car which is a big thing in Hanoi since parking fees are throat-cutting. They do shopping at Lotte Center – a department store for luxurious goods. These snippets are humbly sneaked out in other day-in-our-lives vlogs that happened to appear on my Instagram feed too frequently to ignore.
When the discussion over women’s wombs is more intense than ever, the reason (and condition alike) to have a baby (two, in their case) should be disclosed transparently instead of stating “as Vietnamese citizens”. Talking from a standpoint of influencers with more than 151 thousand followers, it’s what we can expect as responsibility and integrity.
The recycling of ideas and poorness of individuality have turned these KOLs into decorative megaphones, blaring adorned yet no-brain propaganda.
This is by no means a personal attack, I have to state for the first time in my newsletter. We all need to understand that what these people offer are media products.
And by seeing them products, let us imagine coming to a wet market in the late afternoon. Do you see fly-packed, rotten pieces of meat that are left over on butcher tables? That’s how I view their discourses.
Till next time,
T.
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