PSYch

It's official: Tuxedo shirts are in again!

As a general rule, I try to avoid viral videos much in the same way I try to avoid actual viruses. The logic here doesn’t come from some hipstery refusal to participate in something that everybody else on the Internet is participating in, but rather a form of self-defense against everybody else’s fandom. Bear with me, here.

Let’s say that you’re like me, and you spend most of your day bouncing around between Reddit, Facebook, The Huffington Post, and various other news/content sources instead of working. You see a post about some awesome new music video that’s starting to go viral, and you watch it and enjoy it heartily – not only is the video well executed, but the song is catchy as hell.

Over the coming weeks, though, the video’s popularity grows and you begin to see it more and more – first all of your friends post it on Facebook, and then their friends, and then your parents email it to you wondering if you’ve seen it yet. Then comes the inevitable onslaught of parody videos and flashmobs, and by the time it’s all over you’ve seen the damn video and heard the damn song so many times that any enjoyment you’d ever derived from it is gone, replaced by a cold, weary, all encompassing hatred.

Except none of that happens, because if you’re really like me, you see the post about some awesome new music video that’s starting to go viral and you skip it entirely, and instead go to WorldStarHipHop.com to watch videos of poor people beating the shit out of each other on buses. I generally avoid all contact with a viral video until months later, once its popularity begins to wane. At that point, I can enjoy it without the accompanying phenomena to make me sick of it.

To that end, have you guys heard of that Gangnam Style video!? I just watched it last week, and it’s awesome! He dances like a horse!

I have a lot of respect for natural showmen (and showwomen – fuck it, showpeople), because that ability to get up and act outlandish in front of a huge crowd is something I could never do. So naturally, I became an immediate fan of PSY, the Korean popstar responsible for Gangnam Style.

Forget the fact that he seems to be a really friendly, humble, unassuming dude despite being an international superstar - after thousands of years of human civilization, the guy up and invents a dance move that nobody has ever done before. I mean, come on – how could you not love the guy?

As it turns out, it’s actually quite easy to not love PSY. In fact, a huge chunk of the conservative echo chamber outright hates him. And no, it’s not just because he engaged in friendly interactions with President Obama at a recent holiday concert in Washington DC – it’s because PSY apparently sang a couple of anti-American songs at a concert in South Korea back in 2004.

It’s just typical conservative bullshit as always – they’re probably just taking a couple of PSY’s edgier old lyrics out of context and blowing them way out of proportion so they can slam Obama for associating with him. I mean, apparently PSY didn’t even write the controversial lyrics he sang – he was just doing a cover of another band’s song! And he even apologized! Look:

“While I'm grateful for the freedom to express one's self, I've learned there are limits to what language is appropriate and I'm deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted. I will forever be sorry for any pain I have caused by those words.

While it's important that we express our opinions, I deeply regret the inflammatory and inappropriate language I used to do so."

God, classic PSY – full of subdued, classy eloquence. Aw, shucks – since we know he’s sorry anyway, let’s take a look at those controversial lyrics, just to see how lame this whole hullaballoo is!

‘Dear American’, by N.EX.T.

All those fucking Yankees been torturing Iraqi captives and
All those fucking Yankees who ordered them to torture
Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers
Kill them all slowly, kill them all painfully

…

Fox Nation: 1, Hair Guy: 0.

In PSY’s defense, this was in 2004. It was way easier to hate America in 2004. I kind of hated America in 2004. We’d just reelected the same incompetent shitslice to our highest office and were basically scratching our heads as Iraq turned into Cannibal Holocaust. And the South Koreans had even more to be pissed about – a year or so before that performance, a US military truck ran over two South Korean teenagers and the military court let the drivers off scot free.

But at the same time, crap, dude! That’s basically the worst possible thing you could say! If Khalid Sheik Mohammad had been at that concert he probably would’ve been up front in the mosh pit grinding on Fred Phelps. You couldn’t have thought of a better way to alienate 350 million potential fans if you’d tried.

I have a hard time knowing how to feel about this. I used to hate America a little. PSY used to hate America a lot. Now I love America a lot, and PSY presumably loves it less than I do but at least enough to feel bad about singing a song about torturing American children to death. I guess I still love PSY.

I don’t doubt that PSY is sorry for saying what he did – hell, I bet you $35 that even if you presented him with an eight year old American girl when he was onstage saying that stuff he still wouldn’t have tortured her to death. That said, knowing that the guy frolicking around Seoul on an imaginary horse was onstage calling for the deaths of the fucking Yankees’ daughters and wives a few years ago kind of detracts from the innocent, carefree fun of Gangnam Style.

Despite my best laid plans, Gangnam Style has been kind of ruined. But at least it wasn’t ruined by overexposure – it was ruined by the guy who created it. PSY giveth, and PSY taketh away.

Truman Capps still hasn't listened to Call Me Maybe all the way through.