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As we step into 2025 and look back at 2024, we can’t help but wonder, “What just happened?” The relentless buzz of political campaigns was nonstop, accompanied by trials and tribulations. Some might say, “Everyone is campaigning, and everything feels political these days.” They are not wrong.
https://time.com/6550920/world-elections-2024/
The year 2024 marked a monumental election year, with more than 60 countries and over 2 billion eligible voters participating — the largest in modern history. The United States, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan contribute the most voters, as some of the world’s most populous nations. The challenge of capturing the attention of such a vast electorate is a central concern for political candidates as they craft their campaigns. Political campaigns have evolved alongside media and technology, growing exponentially with the advent of the internet and digital platforms. Today, with social media dominating the landscape, the battleground has shifted to platforms like YouTube, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok, bringing political debates, campaigns, and banter directly into the palms of our hands.
Political conversations during campaigns have always revolved around battles of ideas and discourse, but social media has forever changed the approach to political campaigns. From banners and billboards plastered across urban landscapes to “Kamala Harris is a brat,” we are now in an era where campaigning is no longer about delivering explicit messages; instead, the ideas are open to interpretation. With the rise of Gen-Z voters and shorter attention spans, we now expect information to be more engaging with less substance.
To engage such a massive audience, many political campaigns have adopted new media and platforms to effectively target voters. In Indonesia, the fourth-largest country with over 200 million active voters — half of whom are Millennials and Gen Z — the election landscape is among the most vibrant, fierce, and dynamic in the world. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok have become essential tools for launching campaigns. One of the key element of this digital battleground is the use of “buzzers” — individuals or groups paid to influence public opinion by promoting candidates, discrediting opponents, and manipulating narratives. These guerrilla-style tactics have become notorious during political campaigns in Indonesia, shaping the country’s electoral discourse.
But this strategy is no longer as popular, as the new “it girl” of social media, TikTok, has emerged as the engine driving public attention. The effort to capture attention is no longer about clickbait titles, poorly edited photos, or provocative tweets. It’s shifted to skits, memes, and — wait for it — dance challenges.
Prabowo Subianto, one of the presidential candidates, is adopting this new campaign approach with full force. He is going all out without hesitation, changing his public persona from a stern ex military general to a chubby, cute grandpa, or what Indonesians call “Gemoy.” Not stopping there, this chubby, cute general has gone as far as dancing adorably at various occasions and even becoming a cat dad. Despite allegation over human rights violations in Papua and East Timor, his cuddly persona remains controversial.
Other candidates have adopted similar strategies, using entertainment to engage voters. Anies Baswedan introduced the “Anies Bubble,” inspired by the K-pop “bubble” concept — a subscription-based messaging service like Dear U Bubble, where idols share exclusive updates with fans in a curated, one-way format. Instead of a subscription model, his supporters created an X account filled with cute, edited photos and video snippets from his campaign, which has garnered over 200K followers. This approach is highly popular among K-pop enthusiasts. Whether it began as a deliberate campaign strategy or an organic movement, Anies saw a surge in popularity after K-pop fans became actively involved in his campaign.
During the campaign period, these candidates behaved like notorious influencers, relentlessly creating soft-selling content. However, instead of promoting products, they sold ideas in exchange for their votes. One standout example is from Anies, who effectively utilized TikTok’s Live feature to engage voters. With a fatherly persona, dad jokes, and playful experimentation with TikTok filters while answering questions from his audience, he connected with voters in a dynamic way.
This fresh approach enables a new form of interaction between voters and candidates. Communication is no longer one-sided, where candidates deliver speeches while the audience passively listens. Instead, the interaction has become more dynamic. With TikTok Live, voters can directly ask candidates about their programs, complex issues or even address controversies — all in real time — creating a more engaging and transparent dialogue.
Did Anies win the election? Unsurprisingly, he did not. Despite his catchy strategies — ranging from the “Anies Bubble” to TikTok Live sessions and even a videotron truck — he fell short, securing only 25% of the votes. In contrast, Prabowo won by a landslide with 58%, cementing his presidential term for 2024–2029. This raised a question: How did a transparent discourse lose to a dancing military general?
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This resonates with the neighboring country, the Philippines, where Bongbong Marcos launched his presidential campaign despite the shadow of the legacy of his father’s corruption, martial law, dictatorship, and political dynasty looms large. Yet, despite this controversy, Bongbong Marcos made a dramatic debut (or comeback), securing his place in history as the 17th president of the Philippines.
And we may still remember Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” The slogan was so powerful that it even became a stereotype, with most right-wing Americans being labeled as “MAGA voters.” This approach became the campaign blueprint which also replicated by Prabowo and Bongbong. This approach is nostalgia. It is designed to evoke a fondly remembering the past, motivating us to recapture past “triumphs” and cherish them once more.
Bongbong’s campaign focused on historical whitewashing during his father’s dictatorship, recalling the past successes under his father’s leadership and his positive legacy. Similar to Bongbong’s playbook, Prabowo’s campaign centered on glorifying the past triumphs of Suharto’s New Order (“Orde Baru”), of which Suharto was also his former father-in-law.
Recalling past memories has become a key vehicle for many marketing strategies. For instance, the comeback of Y2K style, with its baggy jeans and campy art styles, evokes a sense of childhood and nostalgia — a reminder of a time when we were more naive, comfortable, and sheltered from the harsh realities of the world. Even those who weren’t born during that era may feel a similar effect, much like myself — born in the ’90s but nostalgic for Louis Armstrong’s masterpiece “What a Wonderful World.”
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As political campaigns continue to evolve and digital media become more advance, the nostalgic approach remains a crucial tool for appealing to a wider audience. Simply leveraging social media platforms to communicate and engage is not enough to mobilize such a vast electorate. The campaigns of Trump, Bongbong, and Prabowo confirm the tendency of the general public to find past triumphs appealing, validating and reassuring them to cast their votes. At the end of the day, platforms like YouTube, TikTok, X and even AI are just tools — it’s the craftsmanship of storytelling that remains the cornerstone of campaign, even in political campaigns.
After all, who needs open discussions on complex issues when dance trends, nostalgia, and a cute grandpa playing with a cat can win a presidential election? Is it for the better or for worse? I guess we will soon find out.
____2024
I have learned the hard way that media is powerful, often annoying, and sometimes downright obnoxious, simply by being part of it. In 2016, I joined one of the hottest new digital media outlets, so to speak. But as it turns out, it was just the same mainstream media with a rebranding effort, trying to appeal to millennials by incorporating them into its identity. I’ve seen media claim to be the fastest, most accurate, most in-depth, and most neutral.
But there’s no such thing as true neutrality in media.
Media is supposed to tell you what actually happened, but that’s not always the case. It often becomes a pageant show, dressing up with branding, building up its characters, and parading what’s hyped to grab attention. You need to peel away the layers to understand the core information, to discern whether they’re telling the truth or if you’re just being catfished. It often costs a sensationalistic title, twisted words, and provocative images to get your attention.
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From the newspaper boy yelling “Extra! Extra! Read all about it” to clickbait headlines like “Cooking my own cum,” media has always been loud and provocative. Before digital media, or before the internet became something we carry in our pockets, there was traditional media: TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc. But how much has really changed?
As a newcomer to the media industry, without any background or experience in it, I was considered lucky to work at two big digital media companies. One was trying to appear young, fresh, and relevant while still catering to their old “normie” audience and plastering their websites with annoying ads. The other was a group of uber-cool kids who just wanted to show off how cool they were through a minimalist website. I was so naive, thinking there was a vast difference between media types, but it turns out they are all the same. All media has the same core: create and publish a product (whether it’s a story, article, video, or audio), build characters around that product, see who engages with it, build a strong brand, amplify it, and sell it again as a product. Media has never been a one-size-fits-all strategy. Sure, there are ethics in media and journalism, but every media outlet loves to push those boundaries. After all, who wants to read boring stories?
While technology is rapidly evolving, society is always playing catch-up. Everyone can access the media out there; everyone becomes an asset, a stakeholder, and a client all at once. Media has become oversaturated, for better or worse. The rise of digital media in the early 2010s shook the entire industry, and it seems we didn’t learn from the dot-com bubble, did we? Everyone wanted to be “The Media.” Everyone had a story to tell, and everyone could access it through the internet. It’s a giant marketplace, and everyone wants a piece of it.
Every media company tries to differentiate itself, with millions spent on branding and marketing to tell us, “We are different, and better.” In the early 2010s, millennials were the biggest demographic in the market. This age group experienced the tech and digital boom like no other, more laid-back than Gen X and obviously more tech-savvy than boomers, but more serious compared to the younger Gen Z. That’s when the “young and hip” media outlets emerged: Vox, BuzzFeed, and of course, Vice. Meanwhile, the old-school outlets like CNN, Fox, and even Al Jazeera tried to rebrand themselves to appeal to younger audiences by creating spin-offs like AJ+ and Great Big Story. We could clearly see the differences between these digital media brands, and sure enough, younger audiences (millennials) started gravitating toward these new outlets.
But everything that goes up must come down. The years 2010–2019 were the golden era of digital media, but things went downhill, especially when the pandemic hit in 2020. We can’t blame everything on the pandemic, but it certainly added salt to the wound. With oversaturation, people began to feel fed up. The immense amount of content (videos, podcasts, photos) turned out to be a Trojan horse for the media business; everything was different, yet everything was the same. This also pushed digital media workers to their limits, with low wages, long hours, and little recognition, leading to turmoil and a noticeable drop in content quality. This contrasts sharply with the stereotypical image of modern digital media: hipsters, flexible hours, creative freedom, and partying every weekend. The illusions that digital media companies offered—game rooms, PlayStations, ping pong tables, and free snacks—turned out to be just a façade. The glamour of working in media was not felt by the workers, perhaps only by the big bosses. While many industries are cruel, we can’t deny that media companies often have toxic environments.
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Take BuzzFeed, for instance. Many producers left BuzzFeed to start their own YouTube channels, finding it more rewarding than working long hours at BuzzFeed for minimal pay and chasing unrealistic view targets. Remember the flood of YouTube videos titled “Why I left BuzzFeed”? This phenomenon sparked a new era of “influencers,” “content creators,” and UGCs (user-generated content). Instagram became a microsite, TikTok a mini YouTube, and personal branding turned into professional branding. By the late 2010s, social media had become the new media.
Digital media giants started struggling: Vox laid off many of its staff, BuzzFeed lost its buzz, and Vice tried to grow up but ended up closing down. The end of the millennial digital media dream had arrived.
What have we learned so far? From the dot-com bubble to the downfall of digital media, and now with the hype around the metaverse? Does anyone even remember metaverse? But CNN, BBC, and Fox News still cling to their status as mainstream and conservative media. Does this mean that is the best practice for media to survive? Or should we go back to print media, yelling “Extra! Extra! What happens if you cook your cum?”
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What else does media have to offer? As I discuss this with my partner on our way home after hearing about Vice shutting down, we argue: Who wins in the end? The rapid growth of technology or society?
Architecture Motifs in ‘Parasite’
Director Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a tale of two households, one lower-class and the other upper-class. Bong Joon-ho uses the houses in the film like characters throughout the movie, with the architecture setting up character development, dichotomies, and moods in a long string of metaphors. Parasite’s set design and the way the movie uses visual language to construct the world adjacent to these sets are important aspects of the film’s themes. Understanding how architecture is used in this film will help us understand what the film is saying about class structure.
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After watching the film, I was surprised to learn that not only was the Park family’s upper-class home built for the film, but so was the Kim family’s semi-basement home and its entire surrounding block. But more than just looking and feeling realistic, the details of these sets and how they’re portrayed plays a key role in constructing the film’s themes. Each house features a prominent window. While one looks out a street level, the other looks over a manicured lawn. These windows are both slightly unusual in shape, similar to the shape of the film’s odd 2.39:1 aspect ratio.
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In a way our screen is also a window. We, the audience, get to view these two houses through our windows. And through careful cinematography, these two houses seem to face each other. The houses face each other from left to right, but they also both have clear vertical and horizontal relationships. To leave the poor Kim family’s house, they have to ascend stairs just to get to the street level. Meanwhile to enter the rich family’s house, they have to keep going up from the street level and climb upstairs to be screened at the entrance gate. This elevation difference is used continuously throughout the film, which literally illustrates on-screen the class separation between these families. In the Park’s house, you go up a staircase to their bedrooms; in the Kim’s, the toilet is even higher than their beds.
In scenes in the Kims’ neighbourhood, the streets at the edge of the screen often seem to slope upward, giving the impression that there’s always something above them. In the Parks’ neighbourhood, the roads either lead up towards the Park house or slope downward away from them. Two of the most stunning moments in the film uses these vertical descents to emphasise the distance between the classes. Earlier in the film, the distance between the two houses aren’t really illustrated. When the Kims walk, we don’t see their journey, and when Ki-jeong is driven home, we don’t really get a sense of the distance or the changes in elevation. But when the Kims’ plan went awry, the film emphasises this distance between the houses. We are made to join them in their descent. Every shot, as the family runs from the Park house to their own, moves us downward. The Kims’ place in the upper class home was just an illusion. During this scene, we truly see and feel the sheer amount of separation, vertically, between the two homes. The reveal of the bunker and the man secretly living underneath the house also uses descent. The long take while the camera careens down the stairs emphasises the descent as much as possible; the staircase feels almost impossibly long. This is a fairly simple and elegant use of visual language to communicate a concept. It’s something most viewers will catch on their first or second viewing.
The other visual motif is the line, which is used to introduce us to the lady in this shot.
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This line is created by the joinery between two panels of window glass, but in the movie it visually separates the common folks from the privileged ones. Kim Ki-woo and the housekeeper are at one side of our screen, while the rich lady is on the other side. This line continues for the next few shots, slicing the screen and separating the poor and the rich. Even when the rich lady is bringing Kim Ki-woo upstairs, many imaginary lines separate the characters.
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These visual motifs are crucial to understanding what Bong Joon-ho is actually saying about class in this film. I think Parasite cannot simply be condensed as either “these rich people are bad and parasitic” or “these poor people are bad and parasitic”. On the surface, we see the conflict as being between three families. But Mr. Kim’s aggression against the old housekeeper’s family, and even towards the rich Mr. Park, is still misplaced. When the Park family moves out of their opulent house, another rich family simply moves in to replace them. Still, the Kims remain in their semi-basement home. This shows that it’s not the individual families but instead the layouts, the structures, that cause the problem. But in the film, none of the characters seem to realise this.Kim Ki-woo’s plan to rescue his father at the end of the film was simply a plan to buy the house, which means advancing upward in the class structure, and essentially become the Park family.
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The structure effects us as the audience, too. We root for the Kims, not because they’re better people than the Parks – the Kims lie, cheat, and hurt similarly needy people to get their way. The Parks benefit from their underlings and helpers, and also look down on those below them, while the Kims judge the rich. The Parks prioritise their own family’s troubles over the troubles of others, and the Kims do the same thing. Still, we root for the Kims because they’re the underdogs. Their place in the movie’s structure is why we are moved to root for them. And by illustrating class difference with set design, something that feels more permanent to the audience, I think Bong Joon-ho is articulating something about that class structure. He’s not just illustrating the problems that caused it, but also the difficult and complex nature of solving those problems. In the end of the movie, Ki-woo’s plan of buying the house is just a fantasy, but even if he succeeds, that’s only one family that has managed to elevate themself into a decent livelihood. You might move the family from one side to the other side of the spectrum, but it’s much harder to remove the physical separation between the Kims’ house and the Parks’.
____2019
The night was hot and humid, but I put on my jacket before we left the restaurant. As a friend walked away, she said to me, “You’ll be drenched in sweat if I were you.” I adjusted my jacket and replied, “But I might catch a cold.” She stopped and said,
“An old soul in an old body.”
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I wasn’t offended by her comment. I’m in my late 20s, I can run more than 5K without a problem, I love my job, and I’m still enjoying life like “old people” do. But the “old soul” part struck me because she wasn’t the first person to say that. If I had a penny for every time someone called me that, I’d be a millionaire. Most people say it because I like to listen to old music: Aretha Franklin, Jackson 5, Bob Dylan, The Beatles. Even the latest artist I’ve been listening to is Tatsuro Yamashita, a Japanese pop musician from the 80s, whose music I play on a loop. It’s not just music—I’m also a big analog photography enthusiast. Some might say, “Nah, you’re just a hipster.” Maybe they’re right. It’s easy to adopt past trends in this era—make a retro playlist on Spotify, buy a disposable camera, or just download some vintage filters. It’s cheap and accessible. But instead, I spend my money on film, rusty cameras, and the hours it takes to develop photos in a darkroom. Investing in outdated things might seem niche and excessive. So why do I do it?
Nostalgia. I’ve let myself be trapped by it. Nostalgia is fascinating, especially since there’s a key time in our lives when we’re most affected by it. Our brains’ memory systems are at their most efficient during late adolescence. This is a key developmental period where we often experience many things for the first time and begin to form our identities. As we find our tribes and figure out who we are, we form attachments to music, fashion, ideas, and philosophies, and these attachments stay with us throughout our lives.
When we enter a new phase in life, our brains tend to romanticize the phases that came before. We hear, see, or smell something that reminds us of those times—like a song, a photo, or a faint smell of perfume—and suddenly find ourselves awash in emotion.
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Many of you probably enjoy watching Netflix’s Stranger Things. The show is relatively new, and most of its audience is from younger generations, yet they still feel nostalgic about it. I feel nostalgic when I watch it too. It’s vicarious nostalgia, if that’s even possible. The show is set in the 80s in rural America, but I’m not from the U.S. and have never been there. I wasn’t even born then. Yet, the show feels familiar. In my mind, there’s this vague concept of “before,” a time when everything seemed simpler and more familiar than today.
Nostalgia is such a powerful force that it can become the selling point for TV series, and it can even be co-opted for political or commercial gain. That’s why slogans like “Make America Great Again” are designed to evoke a fondly remembered past, motivating us to recapture past “triumphs” and cherish them once more. However, the best we can do is recreate similar circumstances; we can never truly bring back the past.
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Nostalgia is a vehicle that takes us somewhere and nowhere at the same time. It has evolved from a longing for a place to a longing for a time—a place we can never go. It labels us as people who “can’t move on,” a comforting lie we tell ourselves to adapt to an ever-changing world.
Some people love to immerse themselves in memories, whether good or bad, taking deep journeys into the realm of the past. Others avoid clinging to memories because it only makes them sad. Nostalgia is a wistful affection for a period in the past, rooted in memories. The problem with memories, however, is that they aren’t the same as reality; they are subjective constructions of events that are behind us, fantasies about a realm outside the present moment that are so beautifully engraved in our minds.
When the world feels harsh and overwhelming, the need to retreat into the shell of childhood innocence makes nostalgia a valuable escape. It allows us to long for comfort and familiarity, incubating us in a womb that shields us from the harshness of reality.
So, is nostalgia good or bad? It can heal when called upon to do so, but it can deceive when we place too much trust in its warm embrace.
____2025
Some Things Never Change: A Recipe Behind Political Campaign
As we step into 2025 and look back at 2024, we can’t help but wonder, “What just happened?” The relentless buzz of political campaigns was nonstop, accompanied by trials and tribulations. Some might say, “Everyone is campaigning, and everything feels political these days.” They are not wrong.
https://time.com/6550920/world-elections-2024/The year 2024 marked a monumental election year, with more than 60 countries and over 2 billion eligible voters participating — the largest in modern history. The United States, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan contribute the most voters, as some of the world’s most populous nations. The challenge of capturing the attention of such a vast electorate is a central concern for political candidates as they craft their campaigns. Political campaigns have evolved alongside media and technology, growing exponentially with the advent of the internet and digital platforms. Today, with social media dominating the landscape, the battleground has shifted to platforms like YouTube, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok, bringing political debates, campaigns, and banter directly into the palms of our hands.
Political conversations during campaigns have always revolved around battles of ideas and discourse, but social media has forever changed the approach to political campaigns. From banners and billboards plastered across urban landscapes to “Kamala Harris is a brat,” we are now in an era where campaigning is no longer about delivering explicit messages; instead, the ideas are open to interpretation. With the rise of Gen-Z voters and shorter attention spans, we now expect information to be more engaging with less substance.
To engage such a massive audience, many political campaigns have adopted new media and platforms to effectively target voters. In Indonesia, the fourth-largest country with over 200 million active voters — half of whom are Millennials and Gen Z — the election landscape is among the most vibrant, fierce, and dynamic in the world. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok have become essential tools for launching campaigns. One of the key element of this digital battleground is the use of “buzzers” — individuals or groups paid to influence public opinion by promoting candidates, discrediting opponents, and manipulating narratives. These guerrilla-style tactics have become notorious during political campaigns in Indonesia, shaping the country’s electoral discourse.
But this strategy is no longer as popular, as the new “it girl” of social media, TikTok, has emerged as the engine driving public attention. The effort to capture attention is no longer about clickbait titles, poorly edited photos, or provocative tweets. It’s shifted to skits, memes, and — wait for it — dance challenges.
Prabowo Subianto, one of the presidential candidates, is adopting this new campaign approach with full force. He is going all out without hesitation, changing his public persona from a stern ex military general to a chubby, cute grandpa, or what Indonesians call “Gemoy.” Not stopping there, this chubby, cute general has gone as far as dancing adorably at various occasions and even becoming a cat dad. Despite allegation over human rights violations in Papua and East Timor, his cuddly persona remains controversial.
Other candidates have adopted similar strategies, using entertainment to engage voters. Anies Baswedan introduced the “Anies Bubble,” inspired by the K-pop “bubble” concept — a subscription-based messaging service like Dear U Bubble, where idols share exclusive updates with fans in a curated, one-way format. Instead of a subscription model, his supporters created an X account filled with cute, edited photos and video snippets from his campaign, which has garnered over 200K followers. This approach is highly popular among K-pop enthusiasts. Whether it began as a deliberate campaign strategy or an organic movement, Anies saw a surge in popularity after K-pop fans became actively involved in his campaign.
During the campaign period, these candidates behaved like notorious influencers, relentlessly creating soft-selling content. However, instead of promoting products, they sold ideas in exchange for their votes. One standout example is from Anies, who effectively utilized TikTok’s Live feature to engage voters. With a fatherly persona, dad jokes, and playful experimentation with TikTok filters while answering questions from his audience, he connected with voters in a dynamic way.
This fresh approach enables a new form of interaction between voters and candidates. Communication is no longer one-sided, where candidates deliver speeches while the audience passively listens. Instead, the interaction has become more dynamic. With TikTok Live, voters can directly ask candidates about their programs, complex issues or even address controversies — all in real time — creating a more engaging and transparent dialogue.
Did Anies win the election? Unsurprisingly, he did not. Despite his catchy strategies — ranging from the “Anies Bubble” to TikTok Live sessions and even a videotron truck — he fell short, securing only 25% of the votes. In contrast, Prabowo won by a landslide with 58%, cementing his presidential term for 2024–2029. This raised a question: How did a transparent discourse lose to a dancing military general?
This resonates with the neighboring country, the Philippines, where Bongbong Marcos launched his presidential campaign despite the shadow of the legacy of his father’s corruption, martial law, dictatorship, and political dynasty looms large. Yet, despite this controversy, Bongbong Marcos made a dramatic debut (or comeback), securing his place in history as the 17th president of the Philippines.
And we may still remember Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” The slogan was so powerful that it even became a stereotype, with most right-wing Americans being labeled as “MAGA voters.” This approach became the campaign blueprint which also replicated by Prabowo and Bongbong. This approach is nostalgia. It is designed to evoke a fondly remembering the past, motivating us to recapture past “triumphs” and cherish them once more.
Bongbong’s campaign focused on historical whitewashing during his father’s dictatorship, recalling the past successes under his father’s leadership and his positive legacy. Similar to Bongbong’s playbook, Prabowo’s campaign centered on glorifying the past triumphs of Suharto’s New Order (“Orde Baru”), of which Suharto was also his former father-in-law.
Recalling past memories has become a key vehicle for many marketing strategies. For instance, the comeback of Y2K style, with its baggy jeans and campy art styles, evokes a sense of childhood and nostalgia — a reminder of a time when we were more naive, comfortable, and sheltered from the harsh realities of the world. Even those who weren’t born during that era may feel a similar effect, much like myself — born in the ’90s but nostalgic for Louis Armstrong’s masterpiece “What a Wonderful World.”
As political campaigns continue to evolve and digital media become more advance, the nostalgic approach remains a crucial tool for appealing to a wider audience. Simply leveraging social media platforms to communicate and engage is not enough to mobilize such a vast electorate. The campaigns of Trump, Bongbong, and Prabowo confirm the tendency of the general public to find past triumphs appealing, validating and reassuring them to cast their votes. At the end of the day, platforms like YouTube, TikTok, X and even AI are just tools — it’s the craftsmanship of storytelling that remains the cornerstone of campaign, even in political campaigns.
After all, who needs open discussions on complex issues when dance trends, nostalgia, and a cute grandpa playing with a cat can win a presidential election? Is it for the better or for worse? I guess we will soon find out.
____2024
What’s Next for Media
I have learned the hard way that media is powerful, often annoying, and sometimes downright obnoxious, simply by being part of it. In 2016, I joined one of the hottest new digital media outlets, so to speak. But as it turns out, it was just the same mainstream media with a rebranding effort, trying to appeal to millennials by incorporating them into its identity. I’ve seen media claim to be the fastest, most accurate, most in-depth, and most neutral.But there’s no such thing as true neutrality in media.
Media is supposed to tell you what actually happened, but that’s not always the case. It often becomes a pageant show, dressing up with branding, building up its characters, and parading what’s hyped to grab attention. You need to peel away the layers to understand the core information, to discern whether they’re telling the truth or if you’re just being catfished. It often costs a sensationalistic title, twisted words, and provocative images to get your attention.
From the newspaper boy yelling “Extra! Extra! Read all about it” to clickbait headlines like “Cooking my own cum,” media has always been loud and provocative. Before digital media, or before the internet became something we carry in our pockets, there was traditional media: TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc. But how much has really changed?
As a newcomer to the media industry, without any background or experience in it, I was considered lucky to work at two big digital media companies. One was trying to appear young, fresh, and relevant while still catering to their old “normie” audience and plastering their websites with annoying ads. The other was a group of uber-cool kids who just wanted to show off how cool they were through a minimalist website. I was so naive, thinking there was a vast difference between media types, but it turns out they are all the same. All media has the same core: create and publish a product (whether it’s a story, article, video, or audio), build characters around that product, see who engages with it, build a strong brand, amplify it, and sell it again as a product. Media has never been a one-size-fits-all strategy. Sure, there are ethics in media and journalism, but every media outlet loves to push those boundaries. After all, who wants to read boring stories?
While technology is rapidly evolving, society is always playing catch-up. Everyone can access the media out there; everyone becomes an asset, a stakeholder, and a client all at once. Media has become oversaturated, for better or worse. The rise of digital media in the early 2010s shook the entire industry, and it seems we didn’t learn from the dot-com bubble, did we? Everyone wanted to be “The Media.” Everyone had a story to tell, and everyone could access it through the internet. It’s a giant marketplace, and everyone wants a piece of it.
Every media company tries to differentiate itself, with millions spent on branding and marketing to tell us, “We are different, and better.” In the early 2010s, millennials were the biggest demographic in the market. This age group experienced the tech and digital boom like no other, more laid-back than Gen X and obviously more tech-savvy than boomers, but more serious compared to the younger Gen Z. That’s when the “young and hip” media outlets emerged: Vox, BuzzFeed, and of course, Vice. Meanwhile, the old-school outlets like CNN, Fox, and even Al Jazeera tried to rebrand themselves to appeal to younger audiences by creating spin-offs like AJ+ and Great Big Story. We could clearly see the differences between these digital media brands, and sure enough, younger audiences (millennials) started gravitating toward these new outlets.
But everything that goes up must come down. The years 2010–2019 were the golden era of digital media, but things went downhill, especially when the pandemic hit in 2020. We can’t blame everything on the pandemic, but it certainly added salt to the wound. With oversaturation, people began to feel fed up. The immense amount of content (videos, podcasts, photos) turned out to be a Trojan horse for the media business; everything was different, yet everything was the same. This also pushed digital media workers to their limits, with low wages, long hours, and little recognition, leading to turmoil and a noticeable drop in content quality. This contrasts sharply with the stereotypical image of modern digital media: hipsters, flexible hours, creative freedom, and partying every weekend. The illusions that digital media companies offered—game rooms, PlayStations, ping pong tables, and free snacks—turned out to be just a façade. The glamour of working in media was not felt by the workers, perhaps only by the big bosses. While many industries are cruel, we can’t deny that media companies often have toxic environments.
Take BuzzFeed, for instance. Many producers left BuzzFeed to start their own YouTube channels, finding it more rewarding than working long hours at BuzzFeed for minimal pay and chasing unrealistic view targets. Remember the flood of YouTube videos titled “Why I left BuzzFeed”? This phenomenon sparked a new era of “influencers,” “content creators,” and UGCs (user-generated content). Instagram became a microsite, TikTok a mini YouTube, and personal branding turned into professional branding. By the late 2010s, social media had become the new media.
Digital media giants started struggling: Vox laid off many of its staff, BuzzFeed lost its buzz, and Vice tried to grow up but ended up closing down. The end of the millennial digital media dream had arrived.
What have we learned so far? From the dot-com bubble to the downfall of digital media, and now with the hype around the metaverse? Does anyone even remember metaverse? But CNN, BBC, and Fox News still cling to their status as mainstream and conservative media. Does this mean that is the best practice for media to survive? Or should we go back to print media, yelling “Extra! Extra! What happens if you cook your cum?”
What else does media have to offer? As I discuss this with my partner on our way home after hearing about Vice shutting down, we argue: Who wins in the end? The rapid growth of technology or society?
____2020
Architecture Motifs in ‘Parasite’
Director Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a tale of two households, one lower-class and the other upper-class. Bong Joon-ho uses the houses in the film like characters throughout the movie, with the architecture setting up character development, dichotomies, and moods in a long string of metaphors. Parasite’s set design and the way the movie uses visual language to construct the world adjacent to these sets are important aspects of the film’s themes. Understanding how architecture is used in this film will help us understand what the film is saying about class structure.
After watching the film, I was surprised to learn that not only was the Park family’s upper-class home built for the film, but so was the Kim family’s semi-basement home and its entire surrounding block. But more than just looking and feeling realistic, the details of these sets and how they’re portrayed plays a key role in constructing the film’s themes. Each house features a prominent window. While one looks out a street level, the other looks over a manicured lawn. These windows are both slightly unusual in shape, similar to the shape of the film’s odd 2.39:1 aspect ratio.
In a way our screen is also a window. We, the audience, get to view these two houses through our windows. And through careful cinematography, these two houses seem to face each other. The houses face each other from left to right, but they also both have clear vertical and horizontal relationships. To leave the poor Kim family’s house, they have to ascend stairs just to get to the street level. Meanwhile to enter the rich family’s house, they have to keep going up from the street level and climb upstairs to be screened at the entrance gate. This elevation difference is used continuously throughout the film, which literally illustrates on-screen the class separation between these families. In the Park’s house, you go up a staircase to their bedrooms; in the Kim’s, the toilet is even higher than their beds.
In scenes in the Kims’ neighbourhood, the streets at the edge of the screen often seem to slope upward, giving the impression that there’s always something above them. In the Parks’ neighbourhood, the roads either lead up towards the Park house or slope downward away from them. Two of the most stunning moments in the film uses these vertical descents to emphasise the distance between the classes. Earlier in the film, the distance between the two houses aren’t really illustrated. When the Kims walk, we don’t see their journey, and when Ki-jeong is driven home, we don’t really get a sense of the distance or the changes in elevation. But when the Kims’ plan went awry, the film emphasises this distance between the houses. We are made to join them in their descent. Every shot, as the family runs from the Park house to their own, moves us downward. The Kims’ place in the upper class home was just an illusion. During this scene, we truly see and feel the sheer amount of separation, vertically, between the two homes. The reveal of the bunker and the man secretly living underneath the house also uses descent. The long take while the camera careens down the stairs emphasises the descent as much as possible; the staircase feels almost impossibly long. This is a fairly simple and elegant use of visual language to communicate a concept. It’s something most viewers will catch on their first or second viewing.
The other visual motif is the line, which is used to introduce us to the lady in this shot.
This line is created by the joinery between two panels of window glass, but in the movie it visually separates the common folks from the privileged ones. Kim Ki-woo and the housekeeper are at one side of our screen, while the rich lady is on the other side. This line continues for the next few shots, slicing the screen and separating the poor and the rich. Even when the rich lady is bringing Kim Ki-woo upstairs, many imaginary lines separate the characters.
These visual motifs are crucial to understanding what Bong Joon-ho is actually saying about class in this film. I think Parasite cannot simply be condensed as either “these rich people are bad and parasitic” or “these poor people are bad and parasitic”. On the surface, we see the conflict as being between three families. But Mr. Kim’s aggression against the old housekeeper’s family, and even towards the rich Mr. Park, is still misplaced. When the Park family moves out of their opulent house, another rich family simply moves in to replace them. Still, the Kims remain in their semi-basement home. This shows that it’s not the individual families but instead the layouts, the structures, that cause the problem. But in the film, none of the characters seem to realise this.Kim Ki-woo’s plan to rescue his father at the end of the film was simply a plan to buy the house, which means advancing upward in the class structure, and essentially become the Park family.
The structure effects us as the audience, too. We root for the Kims, not because they’re better people than the Parks – the Kims lie, cheat, and hurt similarly needy people to get their way. The Parks benefit from their underlings and helpers, and also look down on those below them, while the Kims judge the rich. The Parks prioritise their own family’s troubles over the troubles of others, and the Kims do the same thing. Still, we root for the Kims because they’re the underdogs. Their place in the movie’s structure is why we are moved to root for them. And by illustrating class difference with set design, something that feels more permanent to the audience, I think Bong Joon-ho is articulating something about that class structure. He’s not just illustrating the problems that caused it, but also the difficult and complex nature of solving those problems. In the end of the movie, Ki-woo’s plan of buying the house is just a fantasy, but even if he succeeds, that’s only one family that has managed to elevate themself into a decent livelihood. You might move the family from one side to the other side of the spectrum, but it’s much harder to remove the physical separation between the Kims’ house and the Parks’.
____2019
On Defending Nostalgia
The night was hot and humid, but I put on my jacket before we left the restaurant. As a friend walked away, she said to me, “You’ll be drenched in sweat if I were you.” I adjusted my jacket and replied, “But I might catch a cold.” She stopped and said, “An old soul in an old body.”
I wasn’t offended by her comment. I’m in my late 20s, I can run more than 5K without a problem, I love my job, and I’m still enjoying life like “old people” do. But the “old soul” part struck me because she wasn’t the first person to say that. If I had a penny for every time someone called me that, I’d be a millionaire. Most people say it because I like to listen to old music: Aretha Franklin, Jackson 5, Bob Dylan, The Beatles. Even the latest artist I’ve been listening to is Tatsuro Yamashita, a Japanese pop musician from the 80s, whose music I play on a loop. It’s not just music—I’m also a big analog photography enthusiast. Some might say, “Nah, you’re just a hipster.” Maybe they’re right. It’s easy to adopt past trends in this era—make a retro playlist on Spotify, buy a disposable camera, or just download some vintage filters. It’s cheap and accessible. But instead, I spend my money on film, rusty cameras, and the hours it takes to develop photos in a darkroom. Investing in outdated things might seem niche and excessive. So why do I do it?
Nostalgia. I’ve let myself be trapped by it. Nostalgia is fascinating, especially since there’s a key time in our lives when we’re most affected by it. Our brains’ memory systems are at their most efficient during late adolescence. This is a key developmental period where we often experience many things for the first time and begin to form our identities. As we find our tribes and figure out who we are, we form attachments to music, fashion, ideas, and philosophies, and these attachments stay with us throughout our lives.
When we enter a new phase in life, our brains tend to romanticize the phases that came before. We hear, see, or smell something that reminds us of those times—like a song, a photo, or a faint smell of perfume—and suddenly find ourselves awash in emotion.
Many of you probably enjoy watching Netflix’s Stranger Things. The show is relatively new, and most of its audience is from younger generations, yet they still feel nostalgic about it. I feel nostalgic when I watch it too. It’s vicarious nostalgia, if that’s even possible. The show is set in the 80s in rural America, but I’m not from the U.S. and have never been there. I wasn’t even born then. Yet, the show feels familiar. In my mind, there’s this vague concept of “before,” a time when everything seemed simpler and more familiar than today.
Nostalgia is such a powerful force that it can become the selling point for TV series, and it can even be co-opted for political or commercial gain. That’s why slogans like “Make America Great Again” are designed to evoke a fondly remembered past, motivating us to recapture past “triumphs” and cherish them once more. However, the best we can do is recreate similar circumstances; we can never truly bring back the past.
Nostalgia is a vehicle that takes us somewhere and nowhere at the same time. It has evolved from a longing for a place to a longing for a time—a place we can never go. It labels us as people who “can’t move on,” a comforting lie we tell ourselves to adapt to an ever-changing world.
Some people love to immerse themselves in memories, whether good or bad, taking deep journeys into the realm of the past. Others avoid clinging to memories because it only makes them sad. Nostalgia is a wistful affection for a period in the past, rooted in memories. The problem with memories, however, is that they aren’t the same as reality; they are subjective constructions of events that are behind us, fantasies about a realm outside the present moment that are so beautifully engraved in our minds.
When the world feels harsh and overwhelming, the need to retreat into the shell of childhood innocence makes nostalgia a valuable escape. It allows us to long for comfort and familiarity, incubating us in a womb that shields us from the harshness of reality.
So, is nostalgia good or bad? It can heal when called upon to do so, but it can deceive when we place too much trust in its warm embrace.