Dear diary,
I'm tired asf, and I almost died at school, and my teachers hate me. AP exams are over, and I still have a test I have to do for AP calc, which is a class that I'm NOT GONNA NEED IN THE FUTURE CUS I'M AN ART MAJOR. I'm also becoming more and more niche as time goes on.
Like…
REALLY niche.
Like yk that one blue monkey on pinterest that's really heisei retro and studd and is in a lot of stickers and t shirts? (His name's Angel Blue) So I got a sticker book with all the characters, fell in love with it, and I went so far that I downloaded a Japanese only Nintendo DS game with all the Harumiya characters in it, used it to journal, planned out my day with it, and now, I'm tracking my finances with it.
And among all of my friends, I'm the only one coding cutesy, glossy y2k websites out of literal scrap pieces and free internet tutorials, and I'm writing BLOGS. Shit that people used to do at a time period when I wasn't even born.
And on top of that, I'm obsessed with this one tv show I remember watching as a kid with absolutely shitty graphics that was about these two gophers talking about different places in America. And they spoke in like, really weird European accents idek they like had rlly weird humor too looking back…
ANYWAYS
The point of this blog is, I wanna give my take on being niche, especially cus now, it has become something really popular to talk about, and people are debating whether people are trying to be niche for attention, or if they're actually being niche because they love the art of it.
As kids, I feel like we've always wanted to be niche or cool in some way. I remember kids talking about their cool vacations to Aruba and how they went to cruise ships and went skiing over vacation, and as someone who did not have the privilege to go on all those fancy trips, I would try to make my Korea trips sound as fancy and cool and unique as possible, and every other chance I would get to make up something unique about myself, I would make some random shit up in my head like I remember we were talking about Iceland in class, and in my head, i would tell myself that I was half Icelandic and I would make stories up in my head about how my oldest ancestors settled in Iceland and then to Korea, and that's why people think I'm fully Korean. I also remember doing one of those past life meditation things on youtube, and I pretended that I became my mom's dead dad (I don't wanna talk abt it, it's so cringe, I'm sorry, Icelandic people and my mom's dad).
But now, I feel like I've just been gravitating to nicher things out of love and curiosity, such as that one Angel blue game, or the fact that I became a huge Pokémon fan because of my brother's hand me down of pokemon ruby on the Game Boy. But then I also have friends who embrace not being niche and have already accepted the fact that they like basic things, and hearing that gave me a bit of an identity crisis, because it's like “what am I doing with my life?” “Am I really being niche to be performative?” “ngl, it feels so weird being in a fandom that could fit in a minivan.” how can you even tell if someone's being niche for the love of the game or if they're doing it just for the ladies?
Something else I loved doing as a kid was keeping my very own little secrets, and I think it's something all of us loved doing. It would always give me a sense of pride, and in the present day, I think it also gives us a reminder of how human we are ykwim? I feel like the reason why people love gatekeeping so much is to preserve the close-knittedness of the community that they can never experience anywhere else. And I think it aligns really well with the morals of being niche. In a world full of mass media and constant overconsumption, we are now searching for that close-knittedness through these niche communities, and I think that's really beautiful
Anyways I love u all gn.
