I don’t think it matters what one thing gets people to start thinking outside the bands they know or the countries whose bands they follow. It can be tiktok, it can be a picture on instagram, it can be a random tweet that makes you do a search on Spotify or Youtube that you wouldn’t normally make. Everyone starts somewhere, and if they’re lucky, they find a whole new world. Me, I was searching for the theme song to Noragami and there was Visual Kei in the recs. If it was now, tiktok would be a pretty likely introduction.
2 Likes
Sometimes I think I should try my hand in doing some vids and spread actual information on that hell app. But I HATE short videos, I would rather do an 1h30 video essay exploring the political text of The World of Mercy
5 Likes
“China has been into the ‘New Media Era’ for years…”, “People’s habit of receiving information now has a great intention of ‘fragmentation’…”
I’ve seen sentences like these over a hundred times, and most of them praise tiktok and kuaishou (tiktok’s biggest rival in china). but that’s not for me. (I had a job of editor, so I’ve read thousands of articles, about 30% of them are about multimedia.) nor I don’t use short video applications at all.
not just for vk scene but for music in general, I’m against short video promotion. I think the best way to get into a scene is “deep learning”. cuz music is a sort of culture, we should respect it. some short videos will mislead the audience apparently, in order to avoid it, just don’t use it.
2 Likes
I know this thread is actually super outdated but I would like to know people thoughts now . Specialty after some vkei bands got kinda viral on Tiktok
Like dadaroma and kaneto Juusei.
And also there are two different sides of vkei tiktok (same as twitter) , the real vkei bandman becoming tiktokers and promoting themselves on Tiktok and th other side the vkei fandom and all the cringe teens content hahaha, well everything on Tiktok is kinda cringe (I include myself). But thanks to tiktok a lot of ppl is discovering my favorite band and i like that.
1 Like
I post quite a lot of vkei related tiktoks bc i enjoy sharing what i like and just making stupid ass videos but i swear almost all the “vkei fans” on tiktok take no time in researching what vkei actually is and just acting like its some random trend to hop on, i think tiktok is a good way for vkei to get exposure since the scene is dying but since it is tiktok the exposure its getting isint very good…
I think that if the vkei fans on tiktok actually take time to get involved in the scene and listening to smaller bands then it might get better but yk it is tiktok so most of the info on vkei there is just misinfo
I like interacting on vkei tiktok, but good lord is it insufferable most of the time
1 Like
I also have mixed thoughts
All the literal children calling 25+ year old men “pookie” ir “dad” grosses me out
1 Like
i get what you mean it’s just like… idk plus the people calling bandmen their husbands or boyfriends just makes me want to implode atp
1 Like
Asking important questions, does jrock tiktok exist?
1 Like
Like listen I get it, celebrity crushes are normal. I also have a soft spot for one bandman, but he’s like 30 so no thank you. Even if I ever would have the chance irl, I would have to think about it real hard.
I do think that they are blowing some kind of new life into vkei, but they have a lot left to learn and to adjust themselves to.
I don’t really use tiktok (just some vids my bff sends me) so what kind of misinfo are we talking? Just the Usual stuff that is floating in the internet for ages like wrong “real names” of bandomen or something else?
kind of? I see a lot of posts about jrock music but they barely get any views
there was a whole rumor that versailles was going to disband and there are constant people making up things about bandmen to “cancel” them, like the ai situation kinda
1 Like
I’ve never seen any Japanese content at all going viral on tiktok outside of Asia, if that says anything, so…
I was at a Japanese fashion event, dressed in some darker jfashion, and this teen comes up and blindsided me asking if I like Vkei. I said yeah, and she proceeded to record a video for tiktok asking me to “receive a rose from Mana-sama in the style of my character” and I was just, absolutely bewildered by it. What character? Eugh.
So. Not a great opinion by the little I’ve interacted with it.
2 Likes
Welp, that’s just teenage cringe, let her have fun and be free 
Tbh this reminds me of early anime convention days www
It would certainly throw me off too if I were on the receiving end of this, but I know that it didn’t come with bad intentions. She should be asking you for permission first instead of whipping out her phone and recording a video for the public straight away.
3 Likes
This video describes a lot of Visual Kei fans today. Old people who remember when the music was “inspired” and now it’s all generic and lame and new talent are industry plants. As well as young zoomers who pretend to really care about the genre but don’t know any of the major acts besides the ones that blew up on Tik Tok.
1 Like
Adding the link of the video you’re referring to here
2 Likes
Social and short-form media have been enzymatic in globalization and increasing audience reach, but also has drastically decreased the average shelf-life of new trends and movements. Struggling economies and post-pandemic “social stuntedness” compounding its effects on the terminally online does not mesh with the paced, live-venue diet us older folks are used to. Everything is now performative and/or entrepreneurial because everyone has the tools to start and everyone (themselves may or may not be backed by a larger entity) is selling them on it… but money and SEO optimization still needs to be involved to get the ball rolling.
So we’re back to power-dynamic square one, rather they never left because self-production is not scalable and sustainable for most, and after the respite users had with growing platforms like TikTok’s, large media has now rubber-banded back to gain top-down coverage. Gabi has a video on Chinese drop-shipping and online retailers, and big labels are trying to play the exact same game, the algorithm. Knowing how this plays out with that kind of scale, theoretically there would eventually be far less frontiersmen left like how all small retail got eaten up.
Sounds doomer-y, but does this mean everything goes to shit? No. There will always be good stuff wherever you listen, but I think we’ll inevitably yearn for a more established counterbalance from it all. In fact, this has happened before, remember when “Video Killed the Radio Star”? We will adapt. Where there is a market for young adults wanting to build out their identity and flush their anxiety, they will follow. As the proverbial internet room gets packed, I’ll imagine they’ll be a greater push for more in-person, less SNS/corpo-y spaces —I would hope.
Now shifting focus to Visual Kei, unless I’m missing a bunch of stuff, I don’t really see it the same way. A cursory look at TikTok suggests to me it’s simply younger foreign fans trying to engage themselves with the scene and fumbling along the way, catching the ire of some older, also foreign, fans. I see a rise in alt-idols and vk adjacent visuals, but I can’t really pick out industry plants aiming to turn the tide. Honestly, I can’t imagine there’s much money going around for that atm. There have been a number of parody bands, but they don’t come off as malicious. I’ve found newer bands to pretty respectful to the old-guard, for the most part.
Could there be some trying to capitalize on visual kei and reappropriate it? Potentially, but that’s where the informed come in to educate, temper expectations, and dispel creepy rumors, etc.
5 Likes
I begin to lose brain cells when I hear the term “visual kei mixed with tiktok” just a bunch of pre-teen babies uwu allover these guys like there the saviour of there world Jiluka is one of the starting ones that made a major hit off of them but if you dare to utter the words “cross dresser” you will be labeled all kind of things and bashed into next year.
Don’t even get me started on there obsession with American culture having to be jammed into Visual Kei history “EXUSEEEEEEEEE MEEEEEEE WERE NOT IN THE 1900S THEY COULD LEARN NOT TO SAY THE WORDS CROSS DRESSER AND KNOW WHAT PRONOUNS AND OTHER AMERICAN THINGS ARE!!!” …there Japanese not American they were not born nor do they currently live in AMERICA THERE IN JAPAN! things are majorly different in that country and are not obsessed with gender, pronouns and other things that America would like to shove down every single person throat
the term “visual kei core” comes from everything needing it’s own ‘core’ or ‘space/bubble’ in America culture you like shirts? shirt-core you like metal music? 50000 cores of it you like visual kei? there a core for it you like makeup? makeup space etc etc they have a warped mind set of everything has to belong somewhere you can’t just be like “yeah, I like Visual kei” and each ‘core’ or ‘space/bubble’ has to have it’s own style you don’t fit it? well they will try and force it
7 Likes
I am not sure if anyone else brought this up but they are extremely innapropriate like for example back when i had tiktok i saw a post about Malice Mizer with the song gekka no yasoukyoku playing and i check the comments and they were all really gross like “this song is so good i came” and they think its normal making innapropriate “jokes” about a song. And on SoundCloud i go to the comments on any song from Moi Dix Mois or Malice Mizer (which i have noticed tiktok fans only think Malice Mizer and Kane To Jussei exist lol) most of the comments were very weird. But overall they are just weird they were the reason i uninstalled tiktok lmao.
7 Likes