Monthly Archives: April 2020

Buying Someone Else’s Dream

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Fullerton
Performance Date: 4/29/2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean, Mandarin

A Korean practice on buying dreams for good luck.

Text:

Informant:

There’s this Korean thing we do where we buy each other’s dreams. You can buy someone’s dream off of them. Dreams with pigs, dragons, or dreams where you poop or pee are considered good luck. I think the latter part originated back with farming when poop was good for crops. That’s why those are considered good dreams. So, if you tell someone about your dream, they could offer to buy it from you. You can name your price or work something out between the two of you. When someone buys a dream they also buy the luck that comes with it.

Context: I asked a group of friends to share any superstitions they were raised with. This was one of their replies. The informant is of Korean descent and was raised in both Korea and China. 

Thoughts: I find this a very interesting practice, especially since there’s nothing stopping someone from pretending they had a good dream.

Sending Someone the Evil Eye

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 48
Occupation: human resources manager
Residence: San Fernando Valley
Performance Date: 4/29/20
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

EA: The ojo (eye) is that people do believe that there are other people that have the ability to. If they have something that belongs to that other person like a picture or something they can with bad things upon them. It is called “hiciste ojo”(“gave the eye”). For example, if someone wants some harm to come to someone else they will take a picture of that person to that individual and they will say I want them too whatever. There is the belief that there are people than have that ability to I guess curse them with bad things. You like a form of voodoo because it is kind of like you have an alter for them. You have a picture of them, you have their hair. You have some thing that belongs to them 

Interviewer: Where did you hear this?

EA: I heard this from my parents and like people, aunts. You know when a lot of bad things are happening to you it is common for people to say “ay, alguien me hiso ojo, necessito una limpia!”(“someone gave me the eye and I need a cleaning”). Then you go to someone that does the good and they take that curse away from you . 

Context

EA is my mother who was born in Southern California, but whose parents are both from Mexico. She and her whole family are Catholic. However, she is not as religious as the rest of her family. She is a Human Resources manager at a small manufacturing company in the San Fernando Valley. The information taken from a casual conversation I was having with my mother about any folklore she had for me while my sister was also present.

Analysis 

It is surprising to me how much magic is involved in this considering how religious many of my family members are. Magic is normally frowned upon in the church as God is the only one that should be able to do things like see your future and change your destiny. However, getting the evil seems to be something that many people in Mexican culture are afraid of. The trope of the witch or “bruha” character that many are afraid of even portrayed through their entertainment, and I’m sure people talk about who they feel practices this dark form of magic. It is also similar to many other forms of contagious magic where you need something of the person in order to curse them, since our belongings and images are extensions of ourselves. 

Korean belief on Japanese Spirits

Nationality: Korean-American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Fullerton
Performance Date: 4/29/2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean, Mandarin

Text:

Informant: The reason why Japan is such a hot spot for spirits and ghosts is because ghosts can’t cross water, and Japan is an island country. Korean people who travel to Japan, especially people who have a wider third eye, have to be very careful. They have to be very mindful of what kind of spirits they might accidentally carry back over the water. Spirits can’t cross water themselves, but they can cross on someone’s back or someone’s shoulder. I feel like it was made up to keep us from traveling to Japan ‘cause we’re supposed to hate each other.

Context:

I asked a group of friends to share any superstitions they were raised with. This was one of their replies. The informant is of Korean descent and was raised in both Korea and China.

Thoughts: The subtle xenophobia in this reminds me of the Mexican Pet story in that it teacher the listener to fear what comes from the other country.

“Ping” as Computer Science lingo

Nationality: Jewish
Age: 20
Occupation: Student/Computer Scientist
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

Interviewer: What does ping mean?

Informant: To check nn on someone, or following up with someone. If I were waiting for someone to send me a new version of their code, I would say “I am going to ping them” which basically means the same thing as “I am going to follow up with them.” 

Interviewer:Where did you learn it?

Informant:I learned it from the coding community, very much so. 

Interviewer: Do you use it frequently?

Informant: Uhhh…yeah actually I just used it in an email. I guess I use it so frequently I forgot that I use it in the first place if that makes any sense, haha.

Background

The informant is a good friend and housemate of mine, and is a junior at USC studying Computer Science and Computer Engineering. He is originally from Manhattan Beach, CA and has been coding ever since highschool. He has had several internships with different computer science companies such as Microsoft and is very involved with different coding clubs on campus. 

Context

One day while we were at home my informant used the word “ping” in front of me and I had no idea what he meant. During the interview I asked for more context on this word and when it would be used and where he learned it from. 

Analysis

I think that much of the folk speech used between computer scientists is heavily dependent on the different technology that they use. Always focusing on efficiency and collaboration with larger coding projects, students and computer scientists alike use words and folk speech in order to communicate with more ease and to form a sense of community within the coding community.

Fancam Culture

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Fullerton, CA
Performance Date: 4/29/2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean, Mandarin

An explanation of the origin and evolution of Fancam culture from the perspective of a k-pop fan.

Text:

Informant: Fancam culture at the moment is in its most evolved form on Twitter. In which, people will reply to viral tweets, even if they’re unrelated to kpop, with a video that’s focused on a certain figure/idol/celebrity that they like. It started in kpop ‘cause there’s this thing called a direct camera or the fan cam where there’s one camera that doesn’t move and shows the whole performance, but there’s another set of cameras and each of those follows one specific member of the group throughout the performance. That one is where the fancam originated. Basically these videos are available for download on websites like Naver– it’s like Korean Google. On lot’s of fan sites they’re made officially and for download vertically. Nowadays they’re largely vertical videos so it’s like hella advanced. You can download these, keep them, and save them. I actually have like four on my phone right now. Anyway, people started posting them on Twitter. As the kpop fanbase became more populated, getting a lot of views on your idol’s videos became an achievement you unlock as you go through the ranks of being a stan. People started replying to viral tweets with a fancam because if anyone sees it the views go up automatically. So if a tweet goes viral, and you tag it there the views will go up. That was the origin of the dancing fancam. Those are the videos where you just see people dancing. Then k-pop fans started making edits. Edits are videos of a celebrity set to a song or an aesthetic. They’re often set to American rap songs by like Nikki Minaj or Cardi B. They subsequently became a part of, and often take the place of, the traditional fancam. Those two separate but similar fan edits merged to the more overall idea of “fancams”. The goal of fancams are now just to get the views up on every single kind of k-pop video, and recently it’s started to stretch out into all other fandoms.

Context: I asked a friend to explain fancams to me.

Thoughts: I only began to be exposed to fancams once they began to be edited to American music, and I think they have taken on a largely ironic nature after that. I’ve seen people make fancams as absurd as possible for very niche celebrities. Like green M&M and Kermit the Frog.