Happy end of the year everyone and I hope you all are staying safe! Here goes a final post of the year, just because.
The usual glossary for people who haven't been following this:

Eurovision: ~~The Gay Olympics~~ An international music contest in which most countries in Europe and some not in Europe take part.
EBU: European Broadcasting Union, an international body made by many national broadcasters that organizes Eurovision and sets its rules.
TVE - Radiotelevisión Española, the Spanish national broadcasters that represents Spain at Eurovision.
Juries: Panels of alleged music experts who vote, both in Eurovision and in national finals.
Televote: Vote by the public, usually done by phone/SMS and in some cases by internet, both in Eurovision and in national finals.
National final: A televised show in which a national broadcaster selects their representative, usually with vote by the public.
Internal selection: When a national broadcaster doesn't hold a national final, an instead appoints an artist to represent them.

So, for summary, Spain had two rather controversial wins in the sixties, then kind of coasted for the next three decades, and then in the 2000's got trapped in a masochistic relation with Eurovision when their best was not good enough but their worst did rather well, and nowadays the Spanish public is convinced that Eurovision is a joke, which in turn makes them not want to see TVE put that much of an effort to do well, and the lack of effort perpetuates the bad results which in turn reinforce the attitude by the public. The only ones that want TVE to put effort and that actually want Spain to do well are the hardcore fans, who each year in the early stages hype themselves believing that this will be the year that they will return to good results, only to have their hopes dashed time and again when the results appear on the screens. But hey, hope is the last thing to die.
2012 and 2013: How you do it is just as important as what you do.
In 2011 Spain had held a national selection and placed third from the bottom. So in 2012 they decided to go for a hybrid format: They internally selected the singer, Pastora Soler, and held a televised final where the public could vote three songs: Tu Vida Es Tu Vida, Ahora o Nunca and the eventual winner Quédate Conmigo.
There was no much drama this year and things went pretty well. Pastora was one of the most experienced artists ever to represent Spain (by then she already had been performing for 18 years) and the song was perfect for her.
(Insert the standard hype of Spanish fans believing that this year they will win, but not so much because Sweden's victory was absolutely obvious for everyone that was paying attention.)
In Eurovision her staging was pretty effective and she delivered a powerful performance and while she didn't win she placed tenth, Spain's first top ten result since 2004. Remember, in 2002 placing seventh had been a disappointment, but after a decade of doing worse and worse this was perceived as a triumph.
(As a bit of trivia, there is a thing called OGAE second chance contest that is basically an officially-sanctioned competition for songs that failed to win their national finals, and Tu Vida Es Tu Vida won the 2012 edition. It's been the only time that the winner of the Second Chance Contest has taken part in Eurovision the same year)
So the next year Spain decided to do try again the same formula. For 2013, they picked El Sueño de Morfeo, a folk rock band rooted in the Celtic culture of Spain and with over a decade of experience, that rebranded themselves as ESDM for Eurovision. Again, they held a national final with three songs, Dame Tu Voz, Atrévete and the eventual winner, Contigo Hasta el Final..
There was some minor drama here when some Spanish fans insisted that the Georgian song was a copy of Pastora's song last year. The songs share the same composers and producers, so there is a lot of similarities, but that's it. No one paid attention to them, but I can imagine the Georgian fans being all puzzled as of why so many Spaniards seemed to hate their song.
On the road to Eurovision, things were shaping... not bad. (Insert the standard hype of Spanish fans believing that this year they will win.) I mean, staging was kind of secondary because the 2013 edition had the ugliest stage we've had this century and no one would actually look GOOD there. If you don't believe me, just compare the winner (Denmark) in HER national final versus in Eurovision. So the key would be the song and the performance. And they had a good song.
You get one guess at what failed.
In the big moment, the lead singer Raquel del Rosario had a bout of stage fright right when she had to perform. Just hear this.. She kind of recovered in the second half of the song, but she was so busy trying to save the song that she had no time to sell it. They had a couple of visually stunning moments, but the damage was done already. Spain placed last in both the juries and the televote, and only an artifact of how the scores were combined saved them in the overall ranking, leaving Ireland last. (Fun fact, me and my friends did our own ranking and he was our winner.)
Here goes an explanation of why that could happen, skip this paragraph unless you're interested in Eurovision theory: Under the voting system active at the time, each country had a jury and a televote that would rank the songs, and then those rankings would be combined per country to determine their points. This means that to get points from a country you had to place high enough in both its jury and its televote. Ireland got more points than Spain in both, but they got their jury points in different countries than their televote points, so in the combined scores they barely managed to scrape points. On the other hand, Spain got very few votes in both but got them all in the same countries, so they actually were getting points from there.
El Sueño de Morfeo met a lot of backlash for their poor performance and dissolved shortly afterwards. Yup. Eurovision basically killed them as a band.
This created another problem for Spain or TVE. (Which is, by the way, a problem also experienced by other countries like France or the UK): Eurovision being seen as bad for your career. If you're a novel artist or a washed out artist trying for a comeback the risk may be worth it because you have nothing to lose, but if you are a big name you will prefer to stay away from the contest because it could do more bad than good, and this is another way in which the bad results feed on themselves.
2014: Division due to dueling divas
Unsurprisingly, in 2014 Spain couldn't convince an established artist to represent them, and then they went for a national final with five acts, two of which instantly positioned themselves as frontrunners:
The first one Brequette Cassie, a former contestant of The Voice Spain, with Más (Insert the standard hype of Spanish fans believing that this year they will win. No, seriously, they were doing it since before she had even been selected).
The second one was Ruth Lorenzo, a former contestant of the X-Factor UK, with Dancing in the Rain..
Now, there is only one thing an Eurovision fan loves more than a diva, and it's looking at another fan in the eye and telling them: "My diva is better than your diva" and feeling that you're right about it.
It was inevitable that having two strong divas as frontrunners the fandom split right in the middle, with half supporting each of them. And Ruth was perceived to be the better singer but Brequette was perceived to have the better song, which only fanned the debate on what was more important to do well in the contest. The true answer, of course, is that you need both. The debate was heated, but still overall civil.
This national final played the cheesiness up to eleven: Each artist was shown clips of their family and friends putting up posters on the street to support them, during their interviews they were given a memento from a family member to make them cry on camera (when one of them didn't cry everyone knew he was not deserving to represent Spain) and each artist had to confess a fear they would promise to face if they won. For example Brequette's fear was to interact with lions and feeding them, and Ruth's fear was swimming with sharks.
Let's give a mention to the other three contestants just for the sake of completeness:

Dama with Estrella Fugaz. Fear: Parachute jumping. Notable parts of her song: forgetting that January doesn't have thirty days.
Jorge González with Aunque Se Acabe El Mundo. Fear: Rollercoasters. Notable parts of his song: Just look at those muscles.
And finally, Raul with Seguir Sin Ti. Fear: Bungee jumping. Notable parts of his song: Not really.

Anyway, Brequette was rather nervous and stiff and spasmed onstage, while Ruth was a lot more reassured but quite shouty. (Some years later in an interview Brequette confessed that she couldn't stand rewatching herself in that performance.)
Brequette won the juries and placed second in the televote, while Ruth won the televote and placed second with the juries and they tied for first place, and since the tie breaker was the televote Ruth was chosen as the Spanish representative. And yes, she swam with the sharks.
Then the song went through a series of revamps with the aim to improve it for Eurovision. In your world and mine this probably would be a good thing, right? But in the world of Eurovision fans the only question was how to use it to prove that "my diva would have been better than your diva".
Things were more or less like this:

Brequette fan (BF): See? They changed the song again. It's what, the second revamp this week?
Ruth fan (RF): What's the problem with that? They're just trying things to see what's the best for the contest.
BF: Not even they are convinced by the song, how are you expecting me to be convinced? We clearly should have sent Brequette.
RF: Well, she couldn't perform and that's why Ruth won.
BF: Yeah, and she's gonna represent us with a half-done song.
RF: Better that than being represented by a half-done singer.
BF (with a dangerous edge on his voice): What. Do. You. Mean?
RF: Brequette was too green for Eurovision. Look how she cracked under pressure in a much smaller show!
BF: But she would have much more experience in Eurovision! She would do a lot more shows in the meantime and she would be ready for Eurovision.
RF: Well, it's not like she was given a week to prepare for the national final. Why wasn't she ready then?
BF: Because that's not what counts. What counts it was happens in Eurovision!
RF: Well, it counted enough for Ruth to win.
BF: Yeah, and she's gonna represent us with a half-done song. Look, they just announced ANOTHER revamp.

(Repeat ad infinitum)
Before we say how things end, let's introduce another player here. Unlike English language, in which there is not an "official" standard on how the language works and even the best regarded dictionaries don't completely agree with each other, Spanish is more centralized, with an organization called the Real Academia Española (Spanish Royal Academy) better known by it's acronym RAE, that tries to regulate and maintain consistency in the language and has an official dictionary that only they can update.
They are perceived as very conservative, not in a political sense but in the sense that they tend to resist change in the language and usually go at least a decade behind the actually spoken Spanish and actually try to hold it back from evolving. They're also pretty Spain-centric even if only 48 of the 480 millions of native speakers of Spanish live in Spain (That's even less than in the United States, for reference).
Well, they sent a communication expressing "concern" about the song having a title and a chorus in English and calling it "shameful", and even stated that several Latin American countries had expressed the same concerns. I live in a Latin American country and I can attest that the amount of people who knew about this was minimal and the amount of people who cared about it was zero. This communication got leaked and RAE ran to do damage control and insist that it was a "private letter" that they hadn't intended to become public.
Then I found at least one Mexican newspaper reporting on the controversy, but only because RAE was making waves.
TVE and Ruth basically said that all they cared was about what would be the best version for Eurovision, whether it was all in Spanish, mixed or even all in English. (Translation: Suck it up, RAE). Eventually they added a bit more English in the verses, making the song about 70% English and 30% Spanish.
At the end, though, things worked perfectly. Ruth managed to put together probably the best staging ever by Spain in Eurovision and placed tenth, the second top place from Spain in three years and their last one to date. And actually, she tied for ninth place with host country Denmark but the tiebreaker this time didn't work in her favor. By the way, remember what I told you about 2013 having the ugliest stage ever? Go watch again the videos from 2013 and then come back here and compare with Denmark and Spain. And here's the 2014 winner Austria just to hammer the difference a bit more. 2014 was BEAUTIFUL.
Also, the way this performance and result were achieved was perceived to be more the work of Ruth and her team, instead of TVE (which is seen, at least by the fans, as worse than useless) so eventually Ruth proved herself as the right choice and became probably the most loved Spanish representative in modern times.
2015: Having all the chances to get it right and wasting them.
In 2015 TVE did an internal selection, picking Edurne, a former contestant of one of the later editions of Operación Triunfo (the ones no one cared about) who had a very successful album a decade before and had kept a middle of the road career in music and as a TV presenter and was at the moment known as the winner of Tu Cara Me Suena, the Spanish version of Your Face Sounds Familiar. There was no national final, the song Amanecer was also internally chosen and in March 2015 she released the official video that included highlights like an almost shirtless dude jumping off a cliff, Edurne reacting to a marriage proposal by morphing into a tiger, Edurne transforming her dress using fire, and multiple scenes shamelessly ripped from Lord of the Rings.
Some fans hated it and some fans loved it by all the wrong reasons, and overall it was clear that no one was taking it seriously. Then in an attempt to fix it, in late April they released a performance of Amanecer with a symphonic orchestra. And the fans loved it. This was more restrained, a lot less narmy, and in general there was the perception that they had finally nailed things for the year.
(Insert the standard hype of Spanish fans believing that this year they will win.)
So when a bit later TVE announced than in Eurovision Edurne would sing the original version of the song, you can imagine their shock. They tried to write and call and tweet TVE to pick the symphonic version and even tried to make a trending hashtag #AmanecerEsSinfonica (Translates as "Amanecer Is symphonic". I swear there were a lot more tweets about it five years ago), but TVE had already made their choice.
In the moment of truth it didn't matter because Amanecer had a staging even more chaotic than the music video, with highlights like Edurne pretending to control the stage lights with her hands, bad framing that showed her backing dancer holding her cape, revealing a dress change two seconds before it happened, bad framing that showed her backing dancer running away with her cape after she took it off, bad framing that showed her backing dancer literally crawling away from her... and just a lot of bad decisions piled on top of each other.
Edurne placed twenty-first out of twenty six countries, and while the fans may have wanted to blame this on the lack of the symphonic version, the truth is that not even the symphonic version would have been able to save this. Maybe that version plus a better thought and executed staging would have worked, but... who knows.
2016, or how you do it matters as much as what you do (Reprise)
After this, it's not so surprising that in 2016 TVE couldn't find a willing artist big enough to justify an internal selection, so they went again for a national final with six acts.
RAE jumped again right after the acts were announced. Three of the acts were entirely in English, Electric Nana with Now, and the two favorites Xuso Jones with Victorious and Barei with Say Yay.
If you want the other three acts, you had Maverick with Un Mundo Más Feliz (with the best lyrics ever, like "the cookies smile at me on the breakfast table" and "My neighbor Cruella de Vill opens the elevator for me"), María Isabel with La Vida Sólo Es Una (She had won Junior Eurovision for Spain eight years before and she absolutely tried to use this as a selling point half a dozen times during the national final) and Salvador Beltrán with Días de Alegría, all three RAE-approved with no English to offend their sense of hearing. Not that anyone cared.
This year Spain decided that along with the televote and the Spanish juries they would have an international jury. This is done by some countries to gauge the opinion of other countries that will eventually be the ones to vote at Eurovision. Salvador Beltrán won the international juries but placed dead last in both the Spanish televote and the national juries (I will never forgive Spain for this, btw), while the second place in the international juries, while Barei placed second in the international juries but won both the local juries and the televote and was selected to represent Spain.
(Insert the standard hype of Spanish fans believing that this year they will win.)
At the end Barei had a rather bad run and placed twenty second, fifth from the bottom.
(Insert the standard conspiracy theory that TVE doesn't want to deal with hosting so they will sabotage the entry to make sure they don't win.)
Yep, this is the second half of most Spanish conspiracy theories. They believe that TVE is convinced that they can win and they need to make an effort to avoid it (whether they actually can win or not is irrelevant for this conspiracy theory), so they will try to sabotage the performance of their entrants to ensure that they won't have to spend money on hosting. Some of them even believe that this comes directly from orders of the Spanish government. And in no year that will play a more important role than this year.
For context: As soon as a stage design is approved and while the construction is underway, the host country sends the specifications of the stage to all the other participating countries so they can start planning their staging. Some countries even build a mock stage to make sure their choreography can fit in the space available (I'm sure there was a video of Denmark doing it that same year but I haven't been able to find it), and then they send stage directions to the host country.
Then when the stage is finished the host country does a proof of concept with stand in artists and sends it to the contestants who review it and plan changes. I'm not sure if this process is done more than once, maybe. Anyway, the idea of this is to get the contestant as ready as possible, so when they arrive to Eurovision they already bring a solid staging plan that only needs minor tweaks in the on-site rehearsals.
Now, all what comes next has no official confirmation so take it with a grain of salt.
According to Barei in an interview after the competition, TVE didn't submit to the host TV the final PDFs with seventy pages of stage directions that she had created with a full team during three months, and when she arrived to the host city and reviewed what was done so far she found out that all the staging was half done, and in the rehearsals they had to clean up, patch and iron the staging instead of just polishing it, which led to her disaster.
Not all the years you can find the stand-in rehearsals, but in 2016 a lot of them got leaked or released (I'm not sure which one) and Spanish website Eurovision-spain uploaded some of them. Here you can see the first rehearsal with the stand-in and here you can see Barei's performance.. It certainly looks like a very rough draft of the final performance, but I'm not sure how much it is supposed to look like that.
For comparison, they also leaked the stand-in rehearsal of Armenia, so I will let you compare with the final performance.. It's a good thing that it's Armenia because that is a masterpiece of camerawork (and that comes from someone that HATES that song) so it's a good reference point of how preliminary the stand-in rehearsals are.
The fans immediately jumped on this theory and started accusing TVE of sabotaging this entry and all the others. ESDM? TVE hadn't pushed them to prepare, so Raquel wasn't ready and that's why she sang so poorly. Ruth? She had managed to prevail against TVE's machinations. Edurne? TVE had intentionally sent the worse version of the song and designed a poorly conceived show. And of course, they had intentionally sabotaged everything Barei had done. And of course, none of the artists could speak up because they had gag-orders in their contracts or they were afraid of retaliation and losing their careers.
I'm personally in favor of not attributing to malice anything that can be properly explained by incompetence, but hey, that's me. And I have to admit that TVE has sometimes been so consistently incompetent that you start to wonder...
Although there is also the fact that the song seemed to be perceived differently in the stand-in rehearsal. What Spain was seeing as fresh, youthful and playful, other countries (or at least Sweden) saw as goofy and kind of clownish, so if Barei didn't manage to overcome that perception she had not that much to do.
And by the way, Salvador Beltrán who had lost in the national final, one year after won the international song competition in Viña del Mar. Do with it what you want, I just want it to rub it in the face of the Spanish voters.
Anyway, this is all for the year. And I mean 2016 because 2017 was so messy it needs a post of its own.
And this is all for the year as well in 2020. Happy new year, everyone!

Which team NCT 127 and WayV are on during Rooftop Fight. Let's take a look of NCT's biases in Dream!

2021 came, the year all Nctzens anticipated for THE ROOFTOP Fight! If you have no idea what rooftop fight is, take a look if my recent post covering the issue.
The thing is, Dream is ready and Nctzens made their bets. Polls were prepared and choices are made. Even SM is ready which is suprising because the content is now scheduled and it will be in NCT Dream's yourube channel. But for today we are covering an importsnt question, who do you think NCT 127 and WayV members root for deep down? Which teams are they in? And does your bias roots for also your Dream bias? Lets find out. As usual we go from oldest to youngest.

Taeil_Team_Haechan/Jeno

Taeil is a pacifist in the nature, the unofficial maknae of Dream probably closest to Haechan because of 127 and clearly has a huge soft spot for Haechan. But recently he filmed It's Awkward but its okay series with Jeno who happens to be another pacifist in the nature just like Taeil! As you can guess it was a bit awkward since both of them are introverts but clearly they hit it off well. Although his pacifist nature and the old man he is, he advices all Dreamies to not fight and prays for all of their health. However he just can't help but be sliiightly biased towards Jeno and Haechan.

Taeyong_Team_Jisung/Mark

While Markyong is the son and father duo, offically THAT duo, I also think that Taeyong has a cute little soft spot for Jisung, the maknae of whole Nct. Sure Markyong bonds over many things like for their passion for music, dance and writing lyrics even though they are absolutely worst at explaining... Yeah they can make eye contact and think they should look out for each other because there is a lot coming with diffrent units. They make breakfast together, jump to the pools and do face masks... They kill on the stage together and work on many unreleased songs and they bond over struggles of being a leader for their unit... BUT Taeyong just can't help but also root for Jisung, the ultimate maknae. His leader instincts take the control and looks over for the youngest. In the end Taeyong roots for Mark and Jisung, probably the ones that will lose first... Taeyong I am sorry but your love for your ~~kids~~ will not help you win this bet.

Johnny_Team_Mark/Jaemin

Well Johnny is a man with suprises. He roots for Na Jaemin, the man who is as passionate as him in photography and the owner of this catch phrase 'Sexyy' which Johnny approve. This pair bonded over in It's Awkard but it's okay series and showed a great chemistry and proved they are a hilarious duo indeed. Their bond continued to grow in Work it promotions. Despite the similarities Na Jaemin and Johnny shares like their perfect english vocabulary we can't forget Mark Lee. No Johnny can't forget him because this duo is iconic. Mark Lee who is a permenanet guest in JCC, Mark Lee whom Johnny just can't help but tease lovingly. Although we know Mark has absolutely no chance at winning this fight, Johnny just rootes for him so that he can tease him for losing in the most Johnny way ever, meaning protectively. Like how a brother does to his little sibling...

Yuta_Team_Mark/Chenle

Chenle as the biggest fanboy of Nct 127 previously promised to cover for Yuta if he is busy in future! Knowing all choreographies of nct 127 and remembering them even better than original members, with his passion of rap and nearly stealing Markyong's main rapper position Yuta and Chenle were a pair destined to happen. On the other hand Yuta bonded with Mark for a long time ago and this time he is shameless with his affection. From threatening people if they ever hurt Mark in HSR and ultimately resulted for his screentime to be cut to teasingly start "Don't overreact Mark" catchphrase and clowning his farts their relationship evolved something more affectionate and loving. Now we are seeing Yuta absolutely dote on him and hug him every possible time. With that it's safe to say Yuta is on team Chenle and Mark!

Doyoung_Team_Jeno/Renjun

There is no suprise Doyoung is on team Jeno after he announced that Jeno is officially his son and his favourite dreamie and Jeno returning the favour by telling Doyoung is his favourite nct member. However Renjun climbes the top of Doyoung's bias list very fast, after bonding over an Awkard meeting which created an iconic series, pair also did many vlives proving their chemistry. However the real reason why Doyoung %100 supports Renjun is obviously because Renjun is his successor. Renjun will do what Doyoung couldn't do and that's beating Lee Haechan. Doyoung is known to lose to Haechan in everything. And I mean everything... And the solution is crystal clear to Doyoung. It relies on Haechan's scary, you g and ruthless friend Renjun who is most probably the only one that can challenge Lee Haechan. Well Doyoung got Renjun's back so we will see how this plan will end up! While we can never know who Doyoung would root since he is an unpredictable person we are absolutely sure that there is no chance Doyoung roots for Haechan.

Kun_Team_Chenle

I am pretty sure this didn't came with a suprise since Kun not only adopted Chenle but also spoiled him like there is no tomorrow and showed his bias without even regretting. These Chinese duo is known with their cute bickering but also faking care of each other and sharing cute stories. Despite being in completely diffrent units and mostly in diffrent countries it never stopped them to share their affection towards each other. You can see how Kun stays back for Chenle in recording diaries, in his radio show and Chenle constantly mentioning Kun in his Weibo and Bubble. Based on all these evidences I will say Kun is a hardcore Chenle biased!

Ten_Team_Mark/Jaemin

Ten and Mark has known each other for years, debuting together and now in SuperM. They are also one of the pairs that never lost connection even though they both had diffrent and packed schedules. Ten letting Mark use his Netflix account, their wholesome moments in JCC and 90s Love promotions it's clear these foreign swaggers cherish each other very much. But Mark isn't the only one Ten has an amazing chemistry with. During Work It promotions Ten hyping Jaemin with his own catchphrase and Jaemin's affectionate himself hugging Ten passionately clearly shows how also this duo missed each other. That's why Ten is on team Mark and Jaemin, his younger brothers who he missed a lot!!

Jaehyun_Team_Whoever_Wins

Jaehyun is infamous with his neutral unreacting face. While people may think it's cold actually Jaehyun loves all dreamies so much saying they are closer than expected. So he chooses to stay neutral and enjoy the show while he surely roots whoever wins because his competitive ass doesn't let him do otherwise. But can you blame him? Who should he needs to root? His other half Mark or his former roommate Haechan? His favourite younger member Chenle or his awkward pair Jisung? Or should he root for Renjun and Jeno whom take a lot of pictures together? In the end he loves all dreamies and he will root for the winner. You can say Jaehyun is a man with smart choices, there is absolutely no losing for him.

Winwin_Team_Mark/Chenle

Winwin who dodges every affection from NCT members suprisingly only affectionate to Mark and Chenle. While I do not know his reasons and I am just guessing maybe because he relates Mark with that affection and how Chenle is just adorable and his young Chinese brother, it's clear that Winwin bias them.

Jungwoo_Team_Jaemin/Chenle

While Jungwoo showed a quite great chemistry with Mark he decided to scrap that plan with his It's Awkward but It's Okay series partner Chenle. They both decided to not rely on Mark to communicate with each other and promised to play basketball. On the other hand he and Jaemin goes way back, especially in their trainee days which is clear by how Jungwoo can freely tease Jaemin and work well. To put it blatantly Jungwoo is team Chenle, Jaemin and he is a passionate supporter of them in every way.

Lucas_Team_Mark/Renjun

Lucas and Mark, the same age friends that got close with each other very fast in 2018, made a great iconic vlive with full of laughter. Till this date Nctzens still miss that vlive. Luckily they were able to meet with each other with SuperM and now Resonance where we can still see the great chemistry they have. However Lucas is also close with Renjun who is his other Chinese friend and is strong enough to carry Lucas. While Renjun impressed all Nctzens who underestimated his strength with that stunt it also made everyone painfully aware with his capabilities. And Lucas is a man who respects that, he is team Mark and Renjun.

Xiaojun_Team_Renjun/Chenle

Xiaojun is China line biased and jt shows! He did instagram lives with Renjun and Chenle often and joined their lives as well. You can see how they are comfortable with each other because they joke and tease so freely. Watching their lives feels like a sitcom show where you thirdwheel to very close friends. Xiaojun just has that energy when he is with Renjun and Chenle. He is just so carefree with them you can't help but stupidly smile at them. With that I will say Xiaojun is team Renjun and Chenle!

Hendery_Team_Jisung/Chenle

While Hendery is already a friendly guy he particularly gets along well with Jisung and Chenle who are goofy enough. Their first Vlive was very comfortable and they mentioned how they don't feel awkard with each other despite they met new. Hendery also mentioned how he wants to get close to them so with that I conclude thag Hendery is team Chenle and Jisung!

Yangyang_Team_Renjun/Haechan

Yangyang roots for Renjun and Haechan who are ironically their biggest enemies, but it's simply because Renjun is his best friend in nct. As expected from China line, they have a great chemistry and their lives are even funnier than normal who are equally savage. On the other hand Yangyang also expressed his wish to get closer with Haechan and in 90s Love promotions we can tottaly see that! So Yangyang roots for Renjun and Haechan who both have high rate of survival. Safe to say Yangyang has solid bets!

Sungchan_Team_Haechan/Jisung

So Sungchan who just debuted with Nct has mentioned several times how he appreciated Haechan and is comfortable enough to tease him which takes a lot of courage. There is no need to deny he is Haechan biased but also he is unexpectedly close with Jisung. He constantly mentioned him as a person who he wants to get close and because of his age he feels comfortable with him. That makes me think Jisung is Sungchan's biaswrecker which means Sungchan is either team Haechan or Jisung!

Shotaro_Team_Jisung

Shotaro who is the new Nct member, very shy but cute but also very comfortable with Jisung who is most probably his dream bias. In a nct content where Jisung and Taeil introduces new members to Nctzens with some healthy tips, Shotaro looks more comfortable than ever. Thinking how they are also close in age it's safe to assume that Jisung is Shotaro's dream bias.

Conclusion

And with that we finished NCT's biases in Dream and who they root in this rooftop fight! Luckily SM announced they will release the rooftop fight and I am so excited. We will see how close our predictions come and also I will end this series with one last post that means next in our series which will be posted after the video...
Rooftop Fight Analysis... Who winned and why? Where did our predictions go wrong?
Stay tuned

[Eurovision] Spain in the late 2000's: El Chiki Chiki and the next years, or how an internet meme became one of the most memorable acts in history and broke Spain's spirit forever.

Oh yeah. If you have seen the comments of my previous post, the most common comment in all of them is "Where is El Chiki Chiki?", and if you don't follow Eurovision you must already be wondering what the hell is that and why people request it so much.
Buckle up, you're about to find out.
Here's the usual glossary for those who haven't been following this:

Eurovision: ~~The Gay Olympics~~ An international music contest in which most countries in Europe and some not in Europe take part.
EBU: European Broadcasting Union, an international body made by many national broadcasters that organizes Eurovision and sets its rules.
TVE - Radiotelevisión Española, the Spanish national broadcasters that represents Spain at Eurovision.
Juries: Panels of alleged music experts who vote, both in Eurovision and in national finals.
Televote: Vote by the public, usually done by phone/SMS and in some cases by internet, both in Eurovision and in national finals.
National final: A televised show in which a national broadcaster selects their representative, usually with vote by the public.

The setup
So I already told you how Spain is the only country with 100% victory drama in the sixties and a bit of miscelaneous drama in the next three decades.
And then it came the early two thousands, and they got their hearts broken in 2002 when, after hyping themselves believing that Rosa would win or place very close to the top she only placed seventh and from then on the placements of Spain went steadily downhill, and the Spanish public became convinced that Eurovision was a big joke, that Spain would never do well and that basically it wasn't worth the effort.
Here we will deal with the next three years, and if you want a heads up, what happened here was what would happen if the Trump electoral campaigns were an Eurovision country.
2008: Or why letting internet trolls pick your national representatives is not a good idea
In 2008, Spain decided to hold a national final to chose their representative in Eurovision. The title was, Salvemos Eurovisión, which translates as ~~"Miraculously we found a fuck to give but it's probably the last one"~~ "Let's save Eurovision", just so you can gauge how their spirits were. And they decided to hold their national final, for the first time ever, via the internet.
Now, you need to remember that 2008 was twelve years ago and the internet back then was radically different from what it's now. Reddit was less popular than Digg, Yahoo was worth money, Chrome didn't exist and this was the most watched video on Youtube.
For social media, Facebook was still only a blip on the radar and TVE decided to use MySpace for the national final. (If you don't know what that is, ask your parents).
TVE set up a platform on MySpace in which any artist could submit a song and anyone in Spain could vote. The five songs with the most votes and five more picked by a jury would qualify to a televised final.
They received a grand total of 536 songs from all over Spain. (Amongst them La Revolución Sexual from La Casa Azul which is how I discovered Eurovision, so you can blame them for this post if you want).
One of these online entries was El Chiki Chiki by Rodolfo Chikilicuatre. This is very blatantly a joke entry. Besides being intentionally performed badly, it parodies reguetón music that was pretty in at the time and mocks some iconic dance steps (el brikidans, el cruzaíto, el maiquelyaison and el robocó).
But there's more: The lyrics make barely veiled references to the prime minister of Spain José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the opposition leader Mariano Rajoy, president of Venezuela Hugo Chávez and an the time the Spanish King told him to shut the fuck up in an international summit. In theory, this is all political commentary that is against the rules of Eurovision, and somehow TVE accepted it.
Another point of controversy was that Chikilicuatre was a comic character (The real name of the guy is David Fernández and you're not going to remember it just like I don't) created for a late night show that promoted his song heavily and whose host called his public to vote for him. Other contestants protested, saying that he was getting an unfair amount of promotion, but TVE told them tough luck, maybe they should have thought of becoming friends with a late night host too.
And then, enter the next big player: Forocoches.
Although its name is an allusion to cars, Forocoches was an internet forum with very little moderation and a high propensity for trolling, that kind of was the closest thing Spain had to a native version of 4chan (you already can see where this is going, right?) and they decided it would be a hilarious joke to vote the song and make it go to Eurovision. They started voting for Chikilicuatre en masse and between this and the tv promotion he shot up to the top of the voting.
Then there was a fallout between the trolls. The users of Forocoches were expecting some acknowledgement from the show and its host (they were allies, after all), and when they didn't get it they decided to divert their efforts to an even more trollish act: Antonio el Gato with "La Bicicletera", which is either an amazing example of abstract dubstep or one of the worst songs ever. El Gato shot from 300 votes to over 80,000 in two days and TVE decided that maybe letting internet votes be manipulated was not a good idea. They disqualified El Gato, but they kept Chikilicuatre.
So Chikilicuatre and Forocoches were pretty much stuck with each other. He won the online voting round and then he also won the public vote in the final and not even by a slim margin: In total he got 60 points versus 48 of runner up Coral.
This wasn't just a TV show promoting him or just internet trolls voting for him. This was a majority of the public deciding to send him because they were done with Eurovision and sending a joke act to laugh at Europe and tell them how little they cared. They were not the first country to do that nor they would be the last, it's all part of the game.
Now, the lyrics have a lot of politics which is is a big no in Eurovision, so obviously they would have to sanitize them for Eurovision. Of course.
LOL, NO.
The final version had some lyrics rewritten to add fake English, but the only political allusion that was removed was Hugo Chavez. Anything else was still there and somehow the EBU let it pass because it was in a language that a majority of Europe wouldn't understand.
The rest of the act had been taken up to eleven, including playing a toy guitar at the beginning, a backing singer pretending to fall and flashing her underwear to the audience, a mock crucifixion with Chikilicuatre held in the air by his backing singers... He was going full force troll act.
I personally don't like it, but I have to admit that as a joke act it's VERY effective. You don't need to understand the language to be in the joke, you just have to watch it, and it's pretty memorable. At that time the scores in Eurovision were 100% televote and the public responded... comparatively well to it, taking it to sixteenth place in a field of twenty-five.
Is it a good place? Meh, not really. He was barely avoiding the lower third of the score table. But is it a good place for the expectations about him? Hell yeah! And not only that, it was the best place Spain had in four years and precisely when they were trying to avoid it.
Just like Rosa's relative failure did six years before, Chikilicuatre's relative success had a big impact in the Spanish psyche and giving the same exact message: Eurovision was not worth taking seriously. Just look at this! A serious act with all their effort behind it had only placed seventh, while a troll act full of disdain had managed to place sixteenth! Why try hard or even try at all, if phoning it in you didn't risk disappointment and could actually end up in better spirits? (Since people recall better their feelings than the facts that caused them, a decade later some people actually believe that Chikilicuatre placed higher than Rosa)
The top performers of the year didn't help: The winner for Russia brought his own ice rink and an Olympic skater to dance on it (And for reference, this is the same guy that two years earlier had brought a piano with a ghost woman and to ballerinas ) Ukraine managed to give boners to both gay and straight dudes wit a Swarowski-clad diva climbing a translucent wall (No, really, watch that. It's probably the ultimate 2000's Eurovision act. We PEAKED there, people) and Greece rounded the top three with a pop-up book slightly smaller than my living room. They're all very over the top, flashy acts with that are at least as focused on the show as on the song, if not more, and also Russia, Ukraine and Greece belong to strong voting blocs (Former Soviets and Balkans, respectively), so this continued reinforcing the perception of Eurovision as a joke.
And... well, that's the story of how Spain lost the last fuck they had to give, by having a very successful joke that went better than expected. Positive reinforcement is a hell of a drug.
And that, kids, is why internet trolls shouldn't be allowed to weigh in real world decisions.
2009: They stole our votes!
The next year Spain organized again a national final, titled "Eurovisión: El retorno" (That translates as "Eurovision: The return" but pretend it doesn't. It was bullshit and everyone knew it). The format was pretty similar, with first an online round (With a whopping 978 songs) from which the public chose 20 and after adding more songs from a jury and three semifinals, twelve songs faced each in the final. This year there were no troll shenanigans and the national final was shaping up pretty smoothly until the first semifinal.
At the end it came down to two rather similar acts: Soraya with La Noche es Para Mí and Melody with Amante de la Luna. (If they seem a bit similar to two of the top three of last year is because they are. Spain has talent to find what works in Eurovision after it worked).
Melody was in a partnership with Los Vivancos, a group of dancers known for mixing Spanish folk dance with stripping onstage. The kind of things the Eurovision public likes. Four days after the first semifinal in which they competed and qualified, they decided that the stage was too small, the audio was bad, the video was bad, and that what was supposed to be an equal partnership between them and Melody was being treated in media as if they were only her backup dancers. With only ten days left to the final, they announced they were dropping out and left melody scrambling to find a replacement group of dancers. Which she did.
And at the end her performance was not that bad. They even had the pecs and everything.
Melody won the juries and placed second in the televote, and Soraya placed second in the juries and won the televote, and since the tiebreaker was the televote she was chosen as Spain's representative.
Her song, by the way, had been composed in Greek two years earlier and had been rejected by three artists before she took it, had it rewritten in Spanish and released it, and urged by her fans she entered it to the online voting two hours before the deadline. (It was eligible since none of the other artists released it commercially). Now, I'm not saying anything, but maybe if three artists already rejected your song you should take a step back and reconsider if you really want it...
The Spanish fans, of course, started hyping it because that's what they do. It was a powerful song, it would be rewritten to make it even more powerful, Greece would vote for Spain because the original composers of the song were Greek, Sweden would vote for Spain because Soraya's boyfriend was a Swede... and I'm not kidding, this is what some of them said, forgetting that the people who care about this kind of details is a minuscule fraction of the total voters who only care about the song and only hear it on Eurovision night.
And Soraya fed them. She promised the fans an amazing show, in which they (I quote) "would see butterflies instead of eyes" and they would have "an amazing concept never seen in Eurovision".
What did they get instead? Smoky eyes and a disappearing trick with a piece of orange fabric.. (You can click here for the part of the trick). It wasn't bad, but... ok, yes, it was bad. Particularly because of the fabric. You could see the seams, literally and figuratively, and at the end she just moved a couple meters to the left and the camerawork didn't help to hide it.
In 2009 juries were back and left her dead last, while televote left her slightly higher and the combined votes put her in second last position, 24 out of 25. Spain had placed last before but it had been with less countries competing, and in absolute terms this was Spain's lowest position ever.
But let's go back in time to several weeks before the contest: Spain was originally planned to broadcast the first semifinal on Tuesday and vote on it (although they were not competing in the semifinal due to being automatically qualified to the final), and because of some to some internal issues by TVE they requested to switch to the second semifinal on Thursday.
This was already a problem because two of Spain's neighbors (Portugal and Andorra) were in the first semifinal and they would miss the chance of some sweet neighborly votes. Both countries protested but EBU accepted it, although with some reluctance. At the end Portugal qualified and Andorra placed so low that getting votes from Spain would have made no difference, but anyway...
Now, the Madrid Open on tennis was also happening on Thursday a few hours before than the second semifinal and TVE was already commited to show it, and when one of the Thursday matches went into overtime and started eating the time on the semifinal, TVE decided to continue showing it because they gauged that Spaniards cared more about tennis than about Eurovision. They later played the semifinal with a one-hour delay, and instead of using public vote and juries they used only the jury votes.
Most of the countries taking part on the semifinal complained and for very valid reasons: Semifinals are a way for the European public to get a first contact with the songs competing, and a lot of the Spanish public missed this chance because a rerun is not as exciting as a live event, so the countries that qualified to the final would miss an advantage on the final that they should have had (It's not THAT unfair: From the countries not competing in the semifinals, Germany and UK were showing the first semifinal, and France and Russia showed the second semifinal, so each semifinal's qualifiers would have an advantage with those particular countries).
And it was even worse for the countries that did not qualify, since they missed the only chance to show to the Spanish public their songs (including these masterpieces about a shoe and a traffic jam because this is fucking Eurovision). Now, one of the purposes of Eurovision, particularly for small countries without that much tourism, is simply to remind their existence to the rest of Europe and increase their regional presence, so cutting the chance to do this in one of the biggest markets in Europe was a big deal and none of the countries in the second semifinal were particularly happy with Spain.
So, the Spanish fans came up with an alternative explanation for their low placing: All these countries were angry and agreed not to vote for Spain to punish them and...
No, I'm just kidding. THAT would have made sense. The explanation they created was that Soraya had actually placed in the top 10 but EBU wanted to punish Spain for the delayed broadcast and had lowered their score by a hundred points. Never mind the fact that this would require rewriting the votes of at least a dozen countries and probably more, while the vote was happening, that it would have affected the standing of all other entries in the final, and that this could be solved simply with a fine.
Hardcore fans who are more privy with how Eurovision works will say this ironically, but some of the average Spaniards honestly believe this.
And a second explanation, that made so much noise that it was even echoed by one of the major TV channels in Spain, was that this was all on purpose. Spain knew that Soraya had high chances to win and they didn't want to deal with the expense of hosting the contest next year, so they had intentionally delayed the broadcast of the semifinal to make other countries angry at them and force EBU to punish them to make sure they didn't win.
(Nevermind the fact that Alexander Rybak with Fairytale had been the red hot favorite for months and basically had the victory in the bag since he was selected to represent Norway, and that the winner hosting is a tradition but not mandatory)
5D chess, everyone!
Then Spain sued Norway in the Supreme Court of Europe asking to remove their win... wait, wrong year and continent. My bad.
2010: Because having internet trolls influence your choices once was not bad enough.
In 2010, Spain did again a national final in two parts, first an online selection titled ~~OH GOD WHO CARES THEY CHANGE THE NAME EVERY YEAR~~ "Eurovisión: Tu país te necesita" (Translates as "Eurovision: Your country needs you") and then a televised final.
The online process was rife with irregularities. Even if TVE said that joke entries would be avoided because they didn't want another Chikilicuatre, there was a lot of them.
The frontrunner of the votes, Karmele with Soy un Tsunami, was disqualified in late January. I think this is the song and if it is, it probably was disqualified for having lyrics mentioning the Spanish claims over Gibraltar, for mentioning commercial brands and for plagiarizing an old francoist song. She threw a tantrum, but there was not that much she could do.
Chimo Bayo, who was in third place in the votes with La Fiesta del Fuego was disqualified as well for having been released in pubs before the required deadline of October 1st. Although another most probable reason was because he had close ties to competitor channels to TVE (some other songs with limited releases have been able to compete). Two other acts were also disqualified.
Then El Pezón Rojo (That translates as "The red nipple") shot to the top of the votes with Y yo tan sexy, and twelve days later they were disqualified as well because their song had been aired in a podcast two years earlier. Three other acts were also disqualified.
The online voting phase ended three days later and ten songs passed to the televised final, Destination Oslo.
A lot of things have been gone from the internet in these ten years, so please excuse me for getting third hand reports about the whole thing, but apparently what happened here is that Forocoches had originally supported Chimo Bayo, and when he got disqualified they decided to boost the worst act they could find and their pick was John Cobra with Carol.
I don't really like Chikilicuatre, but I have to admit it's a well conceived comedic act and it requires a lot of talent to successfully pull it off. John Cobra was just not that at all. It's not well conceived and it doesn't require or show any talent.
Despite TVE's assurances that they would not allow troll acts, somehow John Cobra slipped through their filters and when the online voting finished he was on second place and passed to the televised final.
And he made an absolute shitshow then: Allegedly, some members of Forocoches in the public booed him because they had asked him to wear a t-shirt with the logo of Forocoches and he failed to do it. The rest of the public booed him simply because he was just awful.
His response was grabbing his crotch and shout at the public to suck his dick, on live TV. The presenter spent several minutes scolding him like a kindergardener and trying to get him to shut up just so she could continue with the show while he alternated between aggressively requesting a blowjob from his haters, aggressively thanking Forocoches and aggressively interrupting the judges when they were giving him their opinions, until one of the judges shut him down and told him that his attitude disqualified him to be in music forever. This got probably the loudest applause of the night.
The presenter had to apologize twice for his attitude to the public and the viewers, once in the moment and another before announcing the winner, calling him "shameful".
You can see the whole nine minute shitshow here or a highlight reel here. Even if you don't speak Spanish it's worth it.
Unsurprisingly, he placed last.
The winner and Spain's representative was Daniel Diges with Algo Pequeñito, a ballad of a man asking for a small show of love from his partner. The 2008 runner up Coral placed second again just to rub salt on her wounds.
The song got a rather meh reception from the Spaniards. It wasn't seen as bad, but it was definitely considered cheesy and boring. But hey, at least it wasn't John Cobra and that was a pretty good quality. (Can anyone say Biden?). And most people disliked his staging, with backing dancers dressed as circus performers (kinda like childhood keepsakes) and pretty nonsensical dancing. But hey, he wasn't John Cobra!
The dancing has it's merits, though: Imagine standing in one leg without moving at all during the first minute of the song. Now imagine doing that but in a handstand. That was difficult. But yes, it was creepy. His backing dancers are pretty much out of a child's nightmare.
During his performance in Eurovision, a Catalan professional invader that had entered the field of soccer and tennis matches and even the track of a Formula 1 race and had already been arrested for assaulting Roger Federer jumped on the stage and joined the dancers, wearing a traditional Catalan headwear. (I'm intentionally not linking his profile or writing his name, btw). He was onstage for around half a minute until security chased him out, but you can still see him get dragged out in a couple takes after he jumps off the stage.
Then when Daniel's backing singer entered the frame as it was planned, some people thought it was the streaker again and were very confused until they realized what was happening.
Here you can see the whole thing.
In hindsight, this played in Daniel's favor because of how professionally he and his dancers handled it. They didn't miss a beat of the performance even if they had no idea what was happening and this could actually have been dangerous. They were allowed to perform again at the end of the show and this second performance went without interruptions, and Spain eventually placed fifteenth.
(This was one position higher than Chikilicuatre, but I bet you no one in the Spanish public remembers it).
So yeah, 2010 was the year where trolls had a second chance and almost got it, but in the end, they didn't and everyone gave a sigh of relief.
Some other stage invasions, just because.
I'm not sure if this was the first stage invasion in Eurovision, but it certainly wasn't the last. Some people asked for this and since it wouldn't merit a post of its own, I will take the chance to write about two other notorious stage invasions:
In 2017, when previous year's winner Jamala was performing as an interval act in the final, an Ukrainian guy drapped in an Australian flag jumped onstage and bared his ass and was actually tackled out the stage. He probably was treated much more roughly because political tensions in 2017 Ukraine were much higher than in 2010 Norway and he was deemed a much more serious threat. EBU later uploaded her performance on the rehearsal the day before as the official version. I watched it twice waiting for the mooning moment before realizing what was happening. Shame on me.
And in 2018, a British political activist interrupted the performance of Surie, representing United Kingdom, to demand press freedom. They cut to shots of the public while security reduced him and gave Surie back his microphone. I was watching this contest live on a square in Lisbon, btw, but at right that moment I was too busy trying to get into some Irish dude's pants and missed it happening. And I didn't even get the dude. Shame on me.
Just like Daniel, Surie was offered the chance to perform again but she declined, saying that she was proud of how she had handled it. (A year later she revealed that it had been pretty traumatic, though, and she actually had to deal with PTSD because of it). And just like Jamala, EBU uploaded the version in the rehearsal of the previous day as the official version, but BBC decided to keep the version with the invasion.
Just so we don't miss a year, 2011
2012 was a turning point for Spain, so I want to write about 2011 here to tie things up. There wasn't much drama this year. They changed the format to a show to pick first and foremost artists. Three acts made the national final with each of them being given three songs, and then the most voted song by each artist would go to a final round to be chosen by the public.
The winner was Lucía Pérez with "Que me Quiten lo Bailao", a song she really didn't want to perform (She was much more keen of Abrázame, another of her songs). Still, she was stuck with that song and tried to do her best.
At the end, Spain placed third from the bottom with 50 points. This is actually a very high score for such a low placing and 2011 had the most even final ever, with the winner scoring only 221 points. As a comparison, in the most uneven final ever in 2015 both songs in the top 2 passed 300 points, a score of 50 would have put her in 12th place, and the third song from the bottom scored only 4 points.
Germany was hosting in 2011 and they took LED screens in the background to a new level, and there is an urban legend that Spain didn't specify what they wanted on the screens and when they were shown a stereotypical palms and fireworks background they protested, only to be told that it would be either that or exploding pigs.
I don't think that's true, but I decide to believe it because it's hilarious.
So that's it. I hope you enjoyed it and stay tuned for the 2010's: How Spain kind of got their mojo back and lost it again.

Associates of Reddit, I need your help.

Let me preface this by giving some background about myself. I've been a member here for quite some time, I'm active and try my best to be logical and level headed as much as possible in my posts and replies. I normally use this subreddit as a place to vent and clear my head.
This is different however. I find myself in a difficult to explain situation and would really like some help. Because either I am losing my mind or something really weird is happening at my local stores.
Right, we have three walmarts locally, one in one town, two in the other. The two towns are connected due to growing together so basically, it's one small city. About three days ago I was BSing with some friends that work in the other two stores and we got to talking about weird and crazy customers. Since the restructure I've been put in limbo, on the doors. It's easy work but really boring. After a few crack head stories and some funny old people tales, my friend, let's call him Bob tells us about some strange guys he's been seeing every night for the past few weeks about two hours before close. I'll type this out as close as possible as I can to his exact words.
" I've seen these guys, two or three a night, every night at around 9:30. I only say they are a group because of how similar they act, talk, and look. Mid twenties, very fit, clean shaven, short and neatly cut hair, well dressed but almost like the clothes are brand new and not what they normally wear. Very nice and polite just.....odd. At first I didn't even take much note of them, until I started to see the same tattoos night after night on different people. So far I've counted eleven with the same tattoos, and about thirty more that fit the type without. They always get normal things, day to day food and supplies. Thing is, they always say the same thing as they leave. I check the receipt, wish them a good evening and they always reply, "You as well, stay safe and good luck" like it's scripted. No feeling, no emotion, just the words. It's creeps me out."
Thing is, Bob isn't the only one. There's seven of us, from all three stores. We've all seen them. Most of us are front end grunts or customer hosts. Kyle is a cart pusher that works at my store. Hyperaware due to way too much caffeine and the Adderall the takes for ADD. We've spoken about these guys a few times over the last month. He brought it too me because he was worried it was some gang or organization casing the store.
Let me add a bit to Bob's description. I'm prior service, I know all too well what it's like trying to fit in wearing civilian clothes after wearing a uniform day in and day out. They fit the bill. Also the hair cuts and matching tattoos fit as well. Their build fits too, between 5'5 and 6'0, built but not stocky, fit and tone. Clearly they train hard and by how they walk and observe their surroundings constantly they have pretty good training. We get soldiers in our stores, lots of retired and recently separated vets around here.
That's not what got my attention. Even the number of them and they way they always say the same thing when you tell them to have a good night. It's how they interact with each other. They ask where things are, make small talk, and even respond to jokes and banter. In perfect english. When speaking to each other however, it's Hebrew. I don't know enough to understand them and to be fair, what they say to each other is none of my business. I just found it odd and filed it away as a "welcome to Walmart, this is that place" kind of thing.
Untill last night. There were four of them in our store, doing walmart shopper things. A lady overheard them talking while they were at the self check outs and said something to them in Hebrew. They froze, then one of them yelled something at her and all four walked out. Left their carts mid checkout and just....left. As they passed one of the other hosts asked if everything was ok and one of them said, "No! If we knew Jews touched the things here we never would have come." About ten minutes later one came back in and bought a straight talk phone, made a call after activating it, threw it away and got in his car and sped away.
About the tattoos. Black diamond, inside it is a circle with a Chinese character inside it, below that is a black lizard or chameleon, below that is the eye of horus. If it means what I think it means, it gives me the chills. It's the very similar to one I have and many others as well. To explain its meaning would give away more than I'm willing to share publicly as it could be used to identify me personally. Suffice it to say, it's military in nature.
Now for y'all. Have any of you seen similar over the last few weeks or months? Have any of you seen groups of people frequenting your stores that are clearly trained military or law enforcement? Have any of you had strange interactions that seem scripted or planned, except you aren't in on the plan?
I know this sounds crazy and to be honest, I think I might be loosing it. However I know military when I see them, I know what it looks like when people try to "fit in with the locals", and Im pretty sure folks that converse fluently in Hebrew usually don't have an aversion to those of the Jewish faith. I feel as if it's some series of coincidences that my mind is associating falsely as being linked. I'd ignore it all accept my group of associate friends have all seen them, spoken to them, and a few have even inquired with AP and their SMs as to weather or not its worth reporting to the FBI or Homeland.
Any advice, input, or experiences would be very welcome.
-Pigeon
Edit: We have made our concerns known to our APASMs and our Store Managers. Market was informed by email this morning, with an in person meeting requested for asap.
Edit2: I do NOT think the freak out on the self check was anything more than that, a freak out. Nothing myself, or the others, have seen says these people are anti-semites. We have a large Jewish population here, and this is the first instance of anything being leveled at them. These folks have never done anything other than shop and go on their way before last night.
Edit3: Holy hell. Even if half of the messages I've received are BS, people from at least 12 states have seen similar. This fact and our current plan to make reports tomorrow to federal and local law enforcement means that farther specific information will be with held until I am given permission to continue. This seems to be a bigger deal than I thought and IF I were to operate like they seem to be, I'd be looking at social media for any impact my folks may be having. So I'm gonna leave it at this until tomorrow. I'll still try to respond as much as I can but farther details will have to wait.
Needless to say, y'all are amazing and I believe strongly we should continue to reach out regarding odd things we see, scams that are on going, and other happenings that could effect our company and our people. This subreddit is a resource, we should be using it more.
FINAL EDIT: We wrote down our accounts and presented them to the local sherrifs office. We intended to go to the FBI field office in a near by large city, however due to COVID we were encouraged to report to the Sherrifs department instead, and they would pass on the report. A conference call was arranged after a Deputy read through the accounts. We were then informed that similar reports have been received and that the situation was infact benign.
As many had suggested these folks are government employees here for training. What that training is I am not sure but I have a pretty good idea. We were also thanked for our report and told that we should continue to keep our eyes open. I did a bit of research on the locations of similar reports I was given in PMs and sure enough, every single location has either a military base or a flight training program.
I want to apologize if I worried or made anyone afraid. While this was a false alarm, I firmly believe we must keep our eyes open and continue to keep ourselves safe. Thank you all for the replies and the rational responses. We were not given any specific information of anything, were just associates, not anyone special. I am very glad to be able to put this behind me and am happy to be put at ease.

Should I cut ties with these friends

[Long] How we destroyed our teacher and principal:

Apologies in advance if some details are blurry as this happened almost 14 years ago. Also, this is going to be a long one, so bare with me, I swear the result is worth it, at least it is to me.
The beginning: It all started when I (M25) was 12 years old. My grade 7 teacher (M46 at the time) was infamous for being intimidating and, in my opinion, abusive to his students. He was the disciplinarian of the school. He was in charge of keeping track of detentions and announcing who will be sitting every Friday during assembly.
We suspected at that time that the reason why he never got fired was either because his students were too scared to report him, or because of the fact that the principal was his brother-in-law.
Reasons why I hated him: He was constantly making vaguely racist remarks, complaining about the "New South Africa" and constantly bringing up how his life was better during the Apartheid regime (He's a white guy who was raised on a farm).
I always felt like he had an issue with me as a person because I'm a practising Muslim. He would make the class laugh at how "funny" Muslim women looked with their heads "wrapped up". His jokes about Muslims missing out on eating bacon were endless, in fact, he one day purposely stood in front of my desk eating a cheese and bacon panini.
He used to often rant about how the school is no longer a "pure Christian institution as it once was back in the day". He would say these things and glance at either me, my twin sister, or the black students in the class who practiced their own African religions.
When it was his birthday, my mom encouraged me to buy him a gift. I spent of my pocket money, which was already limited (my parents didn't believe in allowances) to buy him a big slab of chocolate and a long piece of Droëwors (dried sausage). Throughout the day, he would get gifts from students in his class and others.
He would get up from his desk to greet and thank them, and then shake their hand. I remember noticing this because I always found it weird when students shook hands with teachers because of how small our hands were compared to theirs.
However, when I gave him my gift, all he did was look at me for like a second, look away and nod his head slightly. I remember being thankful for not offering my hand out for him to shake because I thought he might have ignored it in front of the entire class. To say I felt like shit is an understatement.
The experience that made me hate him the most happened just before we wrote 2nd or 3rd term exams. I was walking with my friend David (fake name) back from the tuck shop during interval. We took a shortcut between the English and Afrikaans kindergarten classes and saw a group of boys huddled together.
One of them walked towards us and I saw that he had one of those camping multi-tools with the folding knife out, and instantly got a fright. He told us "Give me your stuff before I cut your neck" and then started laughing and walked back to his friends. It was clearly a joke but David looked close to tears and I had a very bad fright because of what he done. I told the guy (Fake name Xander) that he's not allowed to have knives at school and that I'm going to tell my teacher.
We walked straight to our teacher and when we spoke to him, David burst into tears.
We told him what happened and David was sobbing when he said he felt like he was going to die. Our teacher barely looked up from his computer while we were speaking and when he asked for the guy's name. We told him the name and he said he will deal with it and for us to go out for interval again.
I went home and told my mom who I felt didn't fully believe me at the time.
The next day we saw Xander were basically making fun of him for getting into trouble with our teacher and likely getting expelled at worst, or sitting a Saturday detention at best. He laughed back at us and said our teacher just came to his class, asked to speak to him and told him to never bring it to school again. No detention. No suspension. Basically nothing. He still had the knife on him for the rest of the day before.
We were so upset we went back to our teacher and I told him that Xander said that he didn't get into trouble for having the knife. He gave me the ugliest look as if I was bothering him, and coldly said to me that maybe I should fix my late-coming problem before I try to get other people in trouble.
I would come late 4 or 5 times a month because my mom's car's battery terminals were broken so the battery would run flat and she couldn't afford to have it fixed. She had to put the neighbour's battery in her car, start it, and then idle it while she took that battery out and put her own battery back in to charge up. My mom taught me the value of always having a number 10 spanner in your car lol.
I felt betrayed by my teacher. The person who was supposed to make us feel safe while we were away from home.
When I spoke to my friends about it, they told me that Xander was actually the principal's son, meaning he was my teacher's nephew. I decided to take the opportunity to speak to my friends about getting evidence that our teacher is treating students unfairly.
3 of my 4 close friends had camera phones. I sat in the far left corner, my one friend sat in the opposite corner by the door, our other friend sat in the middle, and the last friend was right at the back of the class by the window on the left. One thing about our teacher: he did not give a fuck about where we sat as long as we answered him when he done roll call and didn't bother anyone when we swapped seats.
We came to an agreement that whenever our teacher would sound like we was going to say something vaguely racist or islamophobic, we would all discreetly take videos of him.
Any private conversation we had with him was voice recorded on our phones. We caught him on camera telling a really racist joke about black people, and saying that Hindus must have a lot of problems since they have so many Gods. We caught him saying a lot of bad things, but a lot slipped through our fingers because we weren't fast enough.
It was extremely difficult to keep our friend group motivated to record him and not tell anyone else about it. It was especially difficult because at the time I had a hand-me-down Samsung D900 which was seen as an expensive phone at the time.
My mom prohibited me from taking it to school. She instead bought a cheap R79 ($5) phone for us that could only make calls and send SMS's. This was in case she needed to reach us in an emergency. I got caught several times sneaking my camera phone to school. My biggest mess up at school was when my mom phoned me on my Samsung and I answered it. Big oof but I was a dumbass.
After I think a month we decided that we couldn’t let it go any further.. One of our friends was a black guy named Tatenda (fake name). Tatenda was a problem child. His mom died when he was four and his dad was an alcoholic. He was raised mostly by his uncle who up until today I think was a pimp. He used to act out at school because of undiagnosed ADHD, his dad and uncle didn't believe in learning disabilities and always assumed he was just lazy and badly behaved.
Tatenda especially got onto our teachers nerves because not only was he black, but because he would bring broken calculators from home and take them apart during class. One day our teacher told him to clear his desk and throw away the bits of plastic and calculator shit. He ignored the teacher. The teacher then started screaming at him, and Tatenda done the only logical thing an 12/13 year old would do in such a situation: he mockingly put two pencils into his ears.
Our teacher lost his shit, grabbed Tatenda and threw him against the door. The narrow window pane cracked and Tatenda's head was bleeding. He told us he was fine during interval afterwards and we put money together to buy him a Sprite. I almost cried when my friend who sat way behind me said he got the whole thing on camera. We didn't even trust that the whole class' testimony would get him into trouble. We decided that enough was enough.
The revenge: First we showed the video to Tatenda's uncle, who showed it to his father. Then I showed my mom all the other videos and recordings.
She. Lost. Her. Mind.
One of my friends sent all of it to his older sister who had a Facebook account and she posted it there and tagged the school and as many parents as she knew. It blew up. Parents and people from around the province phoned the school demanding answers as to what is going to happen to our teacher. He was immediately suspended.
There were rumours circulating that he had to go into hiding because Tatenda's uncle and his friends were looking to kill him. I even met Tatenda's dad for the first time in the weeks after the whole thing exploded. He liked to joke that his dad sobered up especially for this lol.
The principal pulled Xander out of the school. We never saw him again. My mom told me an investigation was launched against the school because of the improper handling of bullying complaints. If I remember correctly, 3 English kids in my class alone spoke out against teachers dismissing their complaints of bullying by the Afrikaans kids. We were a mostly white, Afrikaans speaking school with 3 Afrikaans classes but only 1 English class per grade.
They called us"souties" which was short for "soutpiel" which literally tranlates as "salty dick". It's a derogatory term for English speaking, white South Africans. It means your one leg in is South Africa, your other leg is in England, so your dick is hanging in the ocean.
We only saw our teacher once after he was suspended. He looked badly beaten up, and was accompanied by a policeman and two other male teachers so he could gather the rest of his stuff from his class.
But it didn't end there.
Because so many kids needed the evidence that they were being bullied and nothing was done because of it, the CCTV footage was brought up. My friend's mother who was part of the school governing body that time, told us a few years ago that when they reviewed the footage, it became apparent that the principal was having an affair with one of the grade 2 teachers.
He could be seen grabbing her ass at the furthest point away from the camera. They slipped up a few times and kissed in clear view of the camera, but I guess once you're surrounded by the cameras everyday at work, you forget that they're there. It was very apparent that sometimes they thought they couldn't be seen.
My mom's friend's sister (basically my aunt) sells Tupperware and one of her regular customers and close friend's is the principal's ex wife. Not only did she leave him, but they were not married in community of property due to a prenup agreement. The house they lived in was in her name since before marriage, so she effectively made him homeless because none of his family wanted to take him in.
He ran into severe debt from staying in guesthouses and burned many bridges from overstaying his welcome at friends. As for my teacher, his reputation was destination fucked. He served jail time, don't know how long, and eventually left the country because it seemed everyone knew his face from the media attention he received.
The reason why I made this post: I was never going to tell this story on Reddit as I've told it over and over through the years since primary school. But I felt I had to because of what I experienced at the beginning of this year.
My family is part of a non profit organisation that has feeding schemes all over the country. The last Friday feed of February I'm standing security as I usually do since we're few volunteers and there's many homeless people and most are on drugs and can get violent.
I'm walking down the line to make sure there are no fights or anything that could start a riot, and I see a familiar face. My old principal is standing in the line, waiting for a bowl of stew and bread, with absolutely no idea who's standing beside him. Obviously he wouldn't have recognised me, but I never forgot his face. I'm not gonna lie, I cried quite a bit behind my sunglasses. Seeing him brought back the feelings I had when I was 12 years old in 7th grade, trying absolutely every excuse in the book to not have to go to school and be bullied by my teacher.
So yeah, for those of you who are still reading, this is the end of how my friends and I destroyed the lives of my teacher and principal.
If you got this far and are feeling depressed, worthless, or less than your peers, I love you. I appreciate you, and you, are seriously fucking awesome. Bye Bye..
Edit 1: First of all I have to say that I'm absolutely blown away by all the love this post has received. I never expected it to explode this much. It was more of a cathartic exercise for me to post my story but to see so many people speaking of their own experience with racists and islamophobes, makes me glad I finally did it.
I want to thank every person who has awarded my post. It's highly unnecessary but equally appreciated. As soon as I get off work I will be responding to your messages with the same love that you have showed me. I appreciate all of you.
Now, there seems to be a lot of people who don't believe me, and to be honest, I don't really know what to tell you. I didn't post it here to be believed, I posted it for myself for my friends. But since I have an unignorable need to be liked by random people on Reddit, I'll explain.
People have pointed out that there are "holes" in my story like Facebook, I honestly don't know if facebook was a big deal in 2006. I was 12, I didn't speak to my friend's sister because she was like twice my age. He came to school and told us she posted it. My mom showed me the post a while after.
Also, I didn't have "two phones". My mom's boss got the Samsung D900 as a gift when it came out and decided to give it to my mom as part of her bonus. My mom then gave it to my grandma who used it for a while, who gave it to my aunt who also used it, who finally gave it to me.
It wasn't an old, broken phone, but it still was a hand-me-down. That said, my mom took the measure of buying the cheap nokia phone for myself and my sister to use so that our more expensive phones lasted longer and didn't get stolen at school.
We weren't rich, but we went to bed having eaten every night, because my mom and dad worked insane hours and lived without the luxury of having a car that started every morning, to make it so.
And to the guy with the tractor username who lived in SA for only 1 and a half years and can make a sweeping declaration that the traditional African religions are no longer practiced here, you know more about the country I've lived in all my life than I do. I applaud you sir.
Also, I'm not going to post a TL:DR. I shared a very traumatic period of my life with you, using as many words as I felt was necessary. If you don't want to read it, then don't. It's no skin off my face.
I love you all. Even the skeptical ones. Thank you.

201212 LOONA [12:00] Release: Orbit Ring Fansign #12 Roundup

Most translations via @orrery_nim or other various sources mentioned or by OP who attended.

🐰
x cr. @bar_heejin
universe-by heejin
x cr. @bar_heejin
God gave me a letter yesterday and asked me to send it to her
x
Heejin: Oh, Idol House...! 😆 I don't know why I was like that at the time, I'm kind of embarrassed about that so I haven't watched it properly yet.
x
By how they act/behave, how old would you say the members are?
Heejin🐰(in Japanese): grade school

Everyone?

🐰For Hyunjin, More than one might think - 20? The members are actually all like grade school kids IMO.
x cr. @thetwelfthtrack
Me: Sudoku or CHUU?
HEEJIN: CHUU! Chuu is my sister.😄
x cr. @thetwelfthtrack
FILORBITS! HEEJIN has something to say!
x cr. @thetwelfthtrack
Here you go.. HEEJIN's reaction when I told her about the EDSA billboard 😆 @cosmorabbit_, @loonatheworldph, @heyoliviahye thank you too!
x cr. @thetwelfthtrack
Me: Bread or HYUNJIN?
HEEJIN: Ah. This is hard.. I choose HYUNJIN!
x cr. @thetwelfthtrack
Me: I am speechless right now.
HEEJIN: Noooo~! You're the most beautiful woman ever.
x

Anything you want to do in 2021?

Heejin🐰: sigh, if everything was all how I'd like it, I really want to have a concert. We would go and do shows and concerts, and go abroad too. I'd want that. I think it's frustrating..
x

How was your 2020?

Heejin🐰: 2020, mmm... Well, let's be satisfied with what we got!
... Honestly it was a shame! I really wanted to be way busier, but.. Well...! The situation..!

But you showed a new side of yourself many times this year

🐰Oh, right, right. I have no regrets about that. Since Orbits liked that a lot too.

🐱
x cr. @mystery_oyster
Hyunjin said Music Core PD asked her if she was wearing the Apple Watch on stage again. She said no lol. She also said tomorrow is last stage
I asked if she will make more vlogs and she said soon :D
I told her I saw them at Kcon LA and she said she wants to go back. Today's TMI is that she ate a bagel with cream cheese and strawberry cake
x cr. @chemistinorbit aka u/chemistinprogress
I had my 1:1 call with Hyunjin and I didn't record anything because I was so caught up trying to just answer the call and start talking I'M A FOOL but here's ✨orbit ring #loona #hyunjin 201212 thread✨ with zero images/video (I'm actually going to cry) #김애옹편지
Apparently my mic was low, so we took up a little time just making sure we could hear each other well.
I told her she looks really pretty today (and every day); she thanked me. I said that when I put LOONA on tv, my mom can identify her out of everyone because I have so many pictures of her; I pointed them out in the background.
🐱: Wowwww, really? pouts thank youu
I asked if I could sing for her, but she misunderstood and asked if I wanted to hear the Carol, so I said sure! She sang up until before the chorus.
Then I clarified and grabbed my ukulele so I could sing the last chorus of Around You to her. She swayed back and forth; she even closed her eyes and smiled for some of it. She clapped at the end saying, "Very good!! Thank you!" with hearts.
I probably was not very good, I was SO nervous. I covered my face with my hands at the end out of embarrassment. She gave me a thumbs up and said, "good!!" She was really sweet and seemed touched.
I prepared a slide presentation with questions translated into Korean so I could try to get a little more in. I held it up so she could read, and it worked really well!
🌙: If you could play one sport professionally, what would you choose?
🐱: Soccer!
🌙: Can you give a name to your fans?
🐱: Ahhhh mmmmm... Ong-ie! points at herself I am "Aeong"! points at me You are "Ong-ie"!
🌙: Do you like piano or guitar better?
🐱: Piano!
🌙: Me too! even though I have guitars in the background 😅
🐱: You should do a cover!!
[first kim lip, and now hyunjin is telling me to do a cover...]
🌙: What are your favorite songs to play?
🐱: For piano, Around You. For guitar [I couldn't hear the name very well😭she sang a little bit of it, but I didn't recognize]
🌙: I want to see a full cover!
🐱: Yes!
🌙: What do you have planned for loona logs?
🐱: Beatboxing! beatboxes and laugh at herself
🌙: claps for her Can you add this? makes waterdrop noise
🐱: 😮tries to do it too but just pokes her cheek and goes "bweep" [it was adorable]
🌙: Speaking of videos, I make videos! [I showed thumbnails of some of my reaction videos]
🐱: Wow! thumbs up
🌙: I always use your pictures in my thumbnails!
🐱: laughs thank you~~
I always notice Hyunjin juggling (ish), so I pulled out my juggling balls (a hobby from long ago😶) and gave her a 15 second juggling tutorial. She seemed really impressed, and I told her I hope she tries it one day. She gave lots of thumbs up.
At this point, I super lost track of time (but I also prepared WAY too many questions), she started saying "see you next time~", but I quickly said "wait just one last thing!!" and skipped to the end of my slideshow.
🌙: [slide said 나랑 결혼해 줄래? - Will you marry me? and I held up the ring pictured]
🐱: huge gasp, makes a hand heart
YES! very pretty! I miss you!!! Bye bye~~ more hearts
(((I would not actually propose with this ring. I just had a ring and a box and put them together for a prop 😔)))
To sum up, it felt long and short at the same time. There were hardly any lulls, and she understood really well when I wasn't using the slides. She was so sweet and patient as I jumbled around with everything.
Hyunjin fans have been dubbed "Ong-ie." We're engaged and I have no proof of it 🤦‍♀️ I always think, "How could I possibly love Hyunjin more?" And then she literally just exists, and the love increases #김애옹편지 hyunjin i love you, see you again soon~
x cr. @aeongsol
HYUNJIN: She said Yes! We're engaged now, byeeeee. ;_;
x cr. @aeongsol
the way that 3/5 Ong-ies that got into HYUNJIN s Withdrama 201212 Orbit Ring proposed to her and she said yes to all three of us.
Her Ong-ie collection has started 💛

🐸
x
Yeojin 🎙 The Carol
x

Yeojin's favorite winter snack?

Yeojin🐸: Mandarins🍊?

Mine are hotteok and bunggeoppang (fish-shaped buns)! Which of those do you like more?

🐸 Bunggeoppang! Filled with red bean!
Yeojin: But I looked this up, and some people were curious about that. I actually like pizza filling most, but they haven't been selling that kind these days.
x
Yeojin🐸, can you sing Black Mamba?
🐸 😆😆 I sing it all the time! I love it. Yes!
We take pics like that all the time!
🐸 🎙I'm the aespa, there can't be two-- 😆😆
Yeojin 🐸: At the dorm, I wear these red
PJs - Yves unnie got them for my birthday.
I wear those and I'm just doing Black Mamba aggressively shakes head in the living room!
x
Yeojin's dinner recommendation for OP: pork belly
But she doesn't like meat that much, prefers rice/stew
On being an adult soon: She doesn't expect to feel much.
It's not like she'll suddenly pay the phone bill herself, and she has no interest in alcohol, & can't go anywhere like spending the night at jjimjilbangs (Korean saunas).
She still wants to get a driver's license ASAP
The person she'd like to be with for her first drive: Mom

🦌
x cr. @vivithereal
Funny story when you were in Hong Kong? (The WiFi was bad here so I think she misunderstood the ?)
Vivi: “During hi high concept, my family came to visit in Korea and my brother is very little and I have not seen him in very long, so he was acting quiet with me & didn’t—“
“speak many words to me, which made me very sad. I was like “oh my god, he is forgetting me!” 😥 So now I always call him and say as a joke “why don’t you miss me??” and “I want to talk with you more” 🥺🥺🥺
x cr. @kaheivv01
said about the hk bday ad
🦌: yeah i know about it, some fans said about it last time and some of my friends in hong kong told me as well
told her i organized the bday ad
🦌: ahh, thank you!
🦌: really? i was v. happy to see that bday ad and was v. happy that you support me, since you're also hker so it makes me feel so warm and there is not much hk thing(?) in korea so i was so happy when i see it, thank you sm!
told her that lots of orbits went to take pictures with the bday ad and all of them really love her
🦌: thank you so much!! ahhhh... i really... really thank you so much and... ummm i dont know how to say, ahh! (continue being that cutie puff she has always been😭💗)
ask if she ate any bday cake this year
🦌:yes i did, for this year's birthday we have schedule and shoot so we basically shoot the whole day but the members kept on saying hbd and singing happy birthday to me for the whole day, they really did that for the whole day until 00:00
x @siyeonlover
i asked her to sing butterfly, but the call froze as soon as she started singing... so i cut that part out, but I had to let her know that shes good at singing anyways
ahh,,, she rly said "im happy to talk to you" like 3 times 😭😭
x cr. @siyeonlover
none of this in order... but here you go guys vivi's my wife <3
(please her reaction im crying so bad)

🦉
x
Kim Lip took an MBTI test again (a paper test this time, not online) and got ESTP
(She got ESTJ before this) src: OP had Orbit Ring with Kim Lip today
x
Kim Lip: Jung Jinsol unnie you're being loud!
We actually spread out farther than last time.
So as soon as she entered, she asked why we were more spread out, and asked whether it was because she was loud last time...
Kim Lip: So, as soon as we came in, I asked her if she could be a little quieter today. But she's still loud. I'm gonna lose it.
Lip: That was her laughing, right? Gonna lose it.
To get an idea of how far they are: Yves showed Olivia Hye for someone else for a moment in another call
x cr. @siyeonlover friend

this is not my video. it is my friends. (he does not use twitter + i was given consent to share)
i don't know korean that well, so my translations are very vague and probably off

Full video
x
Kim Lip: There were 6 others today from abroad, so earlier I had to run Papago (translator app) on my phone, like this! 😭
For the last person, I was so sorry! The person kept saying sorry and I said sorry a ton too
Lip: like "sorry, sorry I'm so sorry!" 😭
We couldn't communicate that well and I got asked for Starlight, but I could only think of "Starlight~ Starlight" (Star), so I asked which Starlight? Did they mean OEC?
They used Papago, but it said "weird pupil..??" (in Korean)
Lip: I was thinking, "what's weird pupil..?
Did they mean ODD EYE CIRCLE then?..."
I thought I was going to lose it, breaking out in cold sweat... But I've found my speech again now.
x

Is tomorrow the end of activities? Will we see you onstage again before your birthday?

Kim Lip: Activities end this week. Tomorrow (T/N: Inkigayo). Before whose birthday? Mine? In person?
Kim Lip: Ah, we will (be onstage again before my birthday)!
I can assure you of that.
T/N: well there's this for later
x

Is Jinsoul next to you today too?

Kim Lip🦉: Yes. Someone earlier said "I can't hear you over Jinsoul," and I was like "really?" So I'm talking like this now. You can hear me well, right? That's a relief.

Did you sing a lot in today's fansign too? Kim Lip🦉: No just once. Fascinating right?
(You had many intl fans today)

🦉: Yeah I was sweating, and had to use Papago (translator app) then showing my phone! While saying "I'm so sorry..! Sorry!"

We managed to talk like that.

Do you still exercise daily these days?

Kim Lip: Lately, no. So just by eating less-- honestly I don't diet either 😆
x
In LOONA Log 18 you bleeped out Jinsoul and Olivia Hye, what were they saying?
Kim Lip🦉: Yeah how'd you know? It wasn't Why Not. It was a song by Blackpink. Yeah! So we can't use those!
So I told them to stop bothering me.
Kim Lip 🦉: The song was out at the time, it was taken a long time ago, so..

💬

🦉 Yeah probably! But anyways, they were singing.

A carol that you like?

🦉 Carol? Christmas songs? I like Dear Santa by TTS, and Miracles in December (EXO).

🐟
x
If she were to go on KoMS Jinsoul would like to sing Lim Jeonghee's "I didn't weep tears,"a favorite of hers in high school
Her mom saw Lip's baby pic for KoMS and loved it, and told Jinsoul she'd send her's too if needed
x
Jinsoul: What I named my Airpods? Last time, it was Doripods.
But this is my second pair, so it's Doridoripods. 😁
Jinsoul: mmm, set yours as Doldolpods.
x
Favorite 12:00 photocard?
Jinsoul🐟: I don't recall since I sent a bunch of selcas..
But with the jacket pics, they were just selcas, but this time I used the basic camera app in the white outfit, the one with the hat.
I didn't know they'd use that photo, so I liked that one a lot.
x
OP asked what gesture Jinsoul would use on Inkigayo
Jinsoul said she'd use this one (🔫) which a fan suggested
[She did use it today on Inkigayo]
x cr. @orbitrainbow
I asked JinSoul if she had anything to say to LGBT fans and (translated, click for full version) "We are all the same, we're all human and must all be respected. (...) 'TOGETHER, WE ARE LOONA' which is our slogan so I love and respect you all."
x
Jinsoul♥: So funny! Couldn't hear you earlier but you were making a heart!
(OPs earbuds died before the call; in case OP was called, OP held up a ♥)
I watched it all! So funny! The staff saw you holding up the heart.😆😆
x
Jinsoul: I like mirror selfies but we can't post those, so...

🦇
x
OP asked Choerry what prompted their reaction before their Inkigayo stage (201206)
She said the BBC executive who was there suddenly went "fighting!!!" and suddenly started cheering a ton on the spot - but he was never someone who was like that
x
Choerry🍒: About not being 20 anymore? I can't understand how I'll already not be 20. This year went by really fast. Actually I think December's going by the fastest, right? So I didn't really think "20: I'm an adult."
x
Choerry🍒: we can't go anywhere these days so I've been marathoning Harry Potter again. I don't leave my bed!
You don't go anywhere other than music shows?
🍒Nowhere. Practice! Dorm! Broadcasting studio! Just those three.
No, we're all so healthy, so
x
Recommend an item for us to follow!
Choerry🍒: Lately for me: a ring! This is a couple ring with Chuu unnie!
Just you two?
🍒Chuu unnie suddenly wanted to get a ring. So I was like "a ring?"
Choerry: Then [Chuu unnie] said she wanted to get a couple ring with me! "Oh okay! Let's get it then!" So, we did! That's how I got this couple ring
x
Choerry 🎙: Even if it's a little dangerous, it's alright
[OEC - Uncover]
x
Choerry: Stop playing video games!

🦢
x cr. myself
My contribution/snippet during this solo:
I showed Yves the recent clip of Sunmi mentioning her. She already watched it multiple times courtesy of Heejin sending to her. She said she cried 🥺At the end I said I hope they can meet soon.
Yves was so happy to speak about Sunmi. It was so wholesome I need them to meet and take a photo!
x
Yves: Yes (shows mole under her eye) should I not show it?~
Back during pre-debut, this was really light, I could cover it easily. But, I cover them a lot, but I have a lot of freckles too you know.
Yves: Remember Vegan Tiger?* Yes. My freckles in that video weren't just makeup, they were real. So I actually have that many freckles. And as those freckles got more pronounced, so did this mole.
The vegan/alternative fur ad feat. Yves
Yves: But I decided to show it onstage once - during makeup, I go over it to make this look more pronounced.
After trying it, it wasn't so bad. So after that I showed it more, and the fans liked it, so I'm still doing that.
x cr. @baephrodite aka u/reeses_peaces
I said I had a pic of my girlfriend on my phone and I wanted to show her. She was like “😮 yeah go ahead!!” then I showed her a picture of herself lol. She responded “ok I’m your girlfriend now. Is this a proposal? Where’s my ring?”
I asked for her favorite English word and she thought about it and went “my favorite English word is...!” I started laughing and was like “you’re funny” and she said “I’m serious!” I then asked “솔직히?” and she was like “🥺솔직히!!”
We talked about the last song we listened to. She said Sole’s 같은 마음. I said Sunmi’s Gashina and then she asked me to sing it for her... I did the dance a little and she said “you look like Sunmi!” and I was like “nah. Don’t lie to me 😂”
Yves singing and dancing a little bit of Sunmi’s Gashina plus her cutely going “가사 뭐지? (What are the lyrics?)” at the beginning
End of thread side note: I was actually curious about her favorite English word but she had to flirt 😂 I set myself up for that for doing the girlfriend thing right before...
x cr. @rappervivi
i asked about princess Sofia (i was rlly curious about why they gave it to her? also i wanted her to say my name more lol)
and she was like??? she thought it was rlly funny i asked. she said the stylist just gave it to her and she thought it was weird since Sofia is a kid
x cr. @rappervivi
i asked her to sing Heart Attack and @chuubmo thought it was weird but listen
this song got me into LOONA, and i love Yves in the MV and thought it’d be cute to listen to it from Yves’ perspective
also CHUU CAMEO!! i was calm but in my head i was freaking out 😭😭 CHUU

🐧
x
Chuu 🎙: Sam Kim - Scent
x
Chuu: How about you debut!

Me? Me, debut?

Chuu: 😄 You could debut! Chuu! You could debut as Juu, from Jiwoo. Orrrr (looks at OP's name to shorten it) Cheo! Cheo! "I'M CHEO! FAREWELL--"
x

Do you like bunggeoppang (fish-shaped buns)?

Chuu🐧: Yes!

Do you eat from the head or tail first?

🐧Tail. So crispy.

I eat from the head...

🐧😡Why?.. Why??

Because it's nicer to hold it by the tail...

🐧UAhhaahh! No! The head is sooo squishy.

Then isn't it better to save the tail for last?

🐧Yes. Starting with the tail and eating all the way to the head is okay. Texture-wise.

So you eat the part you like first!

🦋
x
Go Won: I'm stuck inside the screen, please get me out
x
Go Won watching footage of OP's cat
x
201205 OP (Joke/concept): Why didn't you call me last week Go Won 😥
Go Won: Lately I've been busy and just~...
201212 OP: You called this week! 😁
Go Won: Well this week I wanted to see you, so I gave you a call 🙂
x
(Do people have 1 or 2 butts?)
Go Won: Ahh, why are you all doing this?? When I first heard that, I was on team 2(-butts).
But after talking about it, I was wondering "why... was I considering them separate?"
Go Won: When I was on team 2, it was like, we have 2 separate legs. So! I just thought there would be 2 of that as well. But after hearing the 1-team talk, "yeah... I guess it could be just 1 too..."
x
Q: Do you eat bunggeoppang (fish-shaped bun) from the head or tail first?
Go Won: Head!

Why?

Go Won: because of the shape, you just grab it by the tail and go nyam! The top has more red-bean filling so I have that first.
Chuu was firmly on team tail-first
x
Go Won: Lately I'm playing Cookie Run! Not too long ago I started playing again.
x
Go Won🦋: When the fans prepare silly stuff to say, it's so fun!

You were shy about it before, now you're taking it well!😆#1 idol park chaewon

🦋The fans though like? They're so shameless and do their bits so well!

The cute reactions make us want to do it

😆 Ah but I took Go Won's call - how come there's an angel sitting there?
🦋😁... Unnie, you're amazing?
🦋But I'm curious... When you prepare these things 😆 it's so fascinating!
x

A word for people who are living their lives without knowing about our Chaewon?

Go Won🦋: Oh, really! Not knowing about me yet, that's such a shame! 😆
First, it's better to like me in advance...
Go Won🦋: I think it'd be good to know me sooner!

I'll promote you lots TT

🦋 Oh! Sounds good.
x
Go Won: Really, I really want to..! [post selfies, according to original tweet]

🗯

Go Won: 😮... I feel the same way!
x
Go Won🦋: A song I listen to often? Lately, carols. No one in particular. I always run my playlist on shuffle.

I'm the type to loop one. Song rec for today?

🦋DAY6 - Zombie

Zombie?

🦋(🎙Day6 - Zombie) I like that song.

🐺
x
As soon as Olivia Hye takes the call with OP she asks whether OP's puppy, Dubu, is there
Olivia Hye: Hey Dubu, hey Dubu~ Oh its ear moved! Hey Dubu!! Our Gureum never even looks at me but you're so smart..

Our Dubu doesn't normally look either..

Olivia Hye: Really? I guess it likes me.
(OP is wearing earbuds, the dog can't hear Hye)
x
Olivia Hye: Yes. Both my parents worked, and my older sister had a bit of an age difference so she'd go to after-school classes, so I was always home alone. So my dad asked me what I thought about raising a dog.
I didn't think much of it, but my dad just brought [Gureum] home one day. So I raised him, and I ended up basically growing up with him.
(Olivia Hye was 10 years old when she first met Gureum, so Gureum is ~10 years old now)
x
Olivia Hye to the Hye-lover-squad: You've worked so hard in 2020 as well, and thank you very much for being with me this year, when I was 20 years old 👏
x
All the members are still wearing the pants from the outfit.
I couldn't deal with it and changed to my own sweats. My top/bottom are very mismatched right now.
I think I always live so that I'm comfortable. (shows pants) 😆 I've been exposed!
x
OP asked Olivia Hye to spoil M Countdown (MCD asked Orbits for their wishes; what they'd want from #LOONA)
🤫 Shhhhhh.... A song I like
🤫 Shhh... You know, right?
a carol
x

Did you go to get beer on your own from a corner store after turning 20?

Olivia Hye 🐺: not as soon as I turned 20 but on that day, I went to get a beer.

Did they check your ID?

🐺 No... They didn't.

😂 S..Sorry...

🐺 It's fine, but some others did later on.
🐺 I was looking forward to [showing them my ID] too, but...
x
Olivia Hye🐺: I think this line is just right.
Not the maknae, but right above maknae.

You always act like the unnie to Yeojin though

🐺 Oh for her, I'm the unnie. 😁
x
This is Olivia Hye's favorite fancam of herself (So What with red uniforms, at Inkigayo, on comeback week):
x

I prepared an acrostic poem with leejjok jeojjok (here and there)

Olivia Hye 🐺: Here and there?
Something's ominous here... OK.

이: send me a kiss in the cutest way ever!

🐺(쪽):😆..😘 (jjok = the sound of a kiss)

(저): excuse me once more please in a sexy way

🐺(쪽): 😘, oh no, my senses were right..

Olivia Hye to her fans: Get home by foot, everyone. Don't crawl home. nyeh

x
Olivia Hye🐺: For soju I like Jinro. For beer, for somek (beer+soju), Terra.

Terra? You know your stuff~

🐺: You unnies know better, what even~

No that's true but--

Do you know the "I'm the aespa" thing?

Olivia Hye🐺: Yeah

Do "I'm the Hyeju?"

🐺 OK, "I'm the Hyeju, there can't be two~" oh we actually took a bunch of pics like this, with a mirror.
There was one from Go Won that I wanted to post but 😕

Please post them 😥

🐺 But, it's not up to us 😞
x
Olivia Hye: Thanks unnie, Next year, when I'm 21, when I'm 101, let's still be together. Bye!

Okay👵... I'll try to live that long

Olivia Hye: 😆 Bye!
x cr. @sieunwrld
i asked hyejoo if she liked pepsi.. she said yes but she prefers coca cola more 😭 and then i said i do too and she like laughed with me and asked me to high five her 🤣 sorry izzayy hyejoo and i are besties now

Going to confess feelings, doubts, feedback ?

This is an update to : https://www.reddit.com/Crushes/comments/kh1j6mixed_signals_confused_am_i_dumb/
Wanted to thank sultan_joe for his replies that helped me.

Now the actual update to all of this, so you know what are the main events that hapenned since last time, note that there is more than this, but this was getting so long...
1- Second "Date", me and my crush agreed to eat only together like we did before, at the same place since it's the only open restaurant in covid times. But there was rain and we were like, none of us want to go outside because we have nowhere to sit, then she decided to go eat to the cafetaria in school, but we both knew there will be all her friends, and also mine, she told me that this time we can eat together here but as soon as possible we can eat together like we used to do, meaning for her, there is a difference between eating with her friends and me, and eating only with me. Anyways we started to go to the cafetaria and then I realised my only way of payment was by the restaurant website, so I told her, well I can't so i'll go alone at the restaurant and you can stay here no problem, she decided to come with me in the rain and we started going to the restaurant like before. She seemed to be glad. THEN comes one of my friends, they all knew it was my crush and I needed to eat only with her, but they had only this place to go, so they decided to come just to take their food and leave asap. They came and one of my friends was "innocent" and decided to say once me and my crush were sitted, "Hey I'm eating with him and her i'll stay!" (Context : My friend who said that didn't really knew about my crush and he said that while my two other friends were leaving us alone intentionally) Since my two other friends knew about my crush, they tried to do signs to make him understand to go and leave us, and then my friend who were sitting with me totally changed his mind in a way that was way too obvious and he said "After all i'll go with them bye!" And then me and my crush talked and we did our "date" normally, she seemed glad so at the end of it I told her I really liked and appreciated this moment etc... She replied "Me too!" And to finish with this when my crush was leaving me because school was starting again for her I started calling someone on my phone so I didn't had any vision on her during this time. And after my call a friend who had vision on her told me that just before entering shcool she turned back and looked at me for a quick second before leaving. So yeah that's was the second date. My friends were way too obvious and I strongly think she understood the situation but i'm unsure. (Tbh it was really obvious IRL, like it was so funny actually all my friends were, clumsy haha) And after this event I sent her a message where I was saying that I really appreciated this moment, with a cute blushing emoji, she replied it was the same for her with the same emoji as me, don't remember exact word but you got the idea.
2 - When we were not at school we talked together, on SMS and she almost never starts a conversation, but this was normal with her, she is not the kind of person to do that, wich I understand lol, and one day I was absent to school, we only had some classes in common and she texted me that she took the lessons for me and when I am back she would give me them with that blushing emoji, while also asking me what's up, this kind of things. Next day I came back etc, and another day I was absent again, and she just sent me a (Traduced from french so terms might not be the same) "Hello how are you ?" I told her I was just tired etc, and also thanking her for checking up on me. She replied Your Welcome with that cute emoji again, and she also asked me when I was going to come back to shcool. It was an unusual conversation. Nothing really important but the context was important.

3- Ofc lot of other things hapenned but not going to list them here but the most recent thing was at home, we had to do some homeworks, we had these homeworks in common, I asked her if she wanted to do it with me, she replied "With pleasure (blushing emoji)" and we called the next day on discord to do them, we worked like 40m and then talked 3 to 4 hours. It was really great. The next day I told her I loved the last time we talked and that I didn't saw the time pass, wich was true lmao, she replied "Me too (blushing emoji)" And our conversations in SMS were already getting a lot of these cute blushing emojis, more than before, and it started after that weird "date" with my really intelligent friends haha, joking they made this day the best with their clumsiness lol.

So basically, it's been almost 4 months, and all my IRL friends, who saw some of the situations told me it was really obvious she either liked me, or just understood the whole situation wich I agree with but also being unsure, since I have so much doubt. My closest friend is a girl, and she know everything about this, and she told me that if she didn't understood at all, it's almost impossible given the circumstances, same for my other closest friends. Another one thing is that some of my crushe's friends knows about this story, and told me I had all my chances. And by the way, my crush didn't had any experiences like this so I'm maybe thinking she maybe doesn't know how to handle that kind of stuff ? After all It could be just me, just being dumb and thinking the wrong things. It's hard to give a such correct context by text on reddit, because either It can seems that i'm over reacting to small normal things, because of the non detailed text, or because of me not listing all the event but anyways, hope I was clear of what I wrote.
To conclude, since it's been almost 4 months I decided to confess my feelings this monday. Since i'm going to ask her on a 3rd "date". At least the only thing that I am sure, it's that in my heart everything is fine, and I deeply think it's the right time to confess, and also the right thing to do. Let's hope for the best, and the goal of this post is to get general feedback, and encouragements maybe ? I feel very stressed about this. Already hapenned in the past, but not like this time. I have so much doubts, thanks for reading this. I'm not natively english, I really hope it was smooth to read and to understand!
Don't hesitate to ask questions if you have

[Eurovision] Spain in the late 2000's: El Chiki Chiki and the next years, or how an internet meme became one of the most memorable acts in history and broke Spain's spirit forever.

Eurovision: ~~The Gay Olympics~~ An international music contest in which most countries in Europe and some not in Europe take part.
EBU: European Broadcasting Union, an international body made by many national broadcasters that organizes Eurovision and sets its rules.
TVE - Radiotelevisión Española, the Spanish national broadcasters that represents Spain at Eurovision.
Juries: Panels of alleged music experts who vote, both in Eurovision and in national finals.
Televote: Vote by the public, usually done by phone/SMS and in some cases by internet, both in Eurovision and in national finals.
National final: A televised show in which a national broadcaster selects their representative, usually with vote by the public.

The setup
So I already told you how Spain is the only country with 100% victory drama in the sixties and a bit of miscelaneous drama in the next three decades.
And then it came the early two thousands, and they got their hearts broken in 2002 when, after hyping themselves believing that Rosa would win or place very close to the top she only placed seventh and from then on the placements of Spain went steadily downhill, and the Spanish public became convinced that Eurovision was a big joke, that Spain would never do well and that basically it wasn't worth the effort.
Here we will deal with the next three years, and if you want a heads up, what happened here was what would happen if the Trump electoral campaigns were an Eurovision country.
2008: Or why letting internet trolls pick your national representatives is not a good idea
In 2008, Spain decided to hold a national final to chose their representative in Eurovision. The title was, Salvemos Eurovisión, which translates as ~~"Miraculously we found a fuck to give but it's probably the last one"~~ "Let's save Eurovision", just so you can gauge how their spirits were. And they decided to hold their national final, for the first time ever, via the internet.
Now, you need to remember that 2008 was twelve years ago and the internet back then was radically different from what it's now. Reddit was less popular than Digg, Yahoo was worth money, Chrome didn't exist and this was the most watched video on Youtube.
For social media, Facebook was still only a blip on the radar and TVE decided to use MySpace for the national final. (If you don't know what that is, ask your parents).
TVE set up a platform on MySpace in which any artist could submit a song and anyone in Spain could vote. The five songs with the most votes and five more picked by a jury would qualify to a televised final.
They received a grand total of 536 songs from all over Spain. (Amongst them La Revolución Sexual from La Casa Azul which is how I discovered Eurovision, so you can blame them for this post if you want).
One of these online entries was El Chiki Chiki by Rodolfo Chikilicuatre. This is very blatantly a joke entry. Besides being intentionally performed badly, it parodies reguetón music that was pretty in at the time and mocks some iconic dance steps (el brikidans, el cruzaíto, el maiquelyaison and el robocó).
But there's more: The lyrics make barely veiled references to the prime minister of Spain José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the opposition leader Mariano Rajoy, president of Venezuela Hugo Chávez and an the time the Spanish King told him to shut the fuck up in an international summit. In theory, this is all political commentary that is against the rules of Eurovision, and somehow TVE accepted it.
Another point of controversy was that Chikilicuatre was a comic character (The real name of the guy is David Fernández and you're not going to remember it just like I don't) created for a late night show that promoted his song heavily and whose host called his public to vote for him. Other contestants protested, saying that he was getting an unfair amount of promotion, but TVE told them tough luck, maybe they should have thought of becoming friends with a late night host too.
And then, enter the next big player: Forocoches.
Although its name is an allusion to cars, Forocoches was an internet forum with very little moderation and a high propensity for trolling, that kind of was the closest thing Spain had to a native version of 4chan (you already can see where this is going, right?) and they decided it would be a hilarious joke to vote the song and make it go to Eurovision. They started voting for Chikilicuatre en masse and between this and the tv promotion he shot up to the top of the voting.
Then there was a fallout between the trolls. The users of Forocoches were expecting some acknowledgement from the show and its host (they were allies, after all), and when they didn't get it they decided to divert their efforts to an even more trollish act: Antonio el Gato with "La Bicicletera", which is either an amazing example of abstract dubstep or one of the worst songs ever. El Gato shot from 300 votes to over 80,000 in two days and TVE decided that maybe letting internet votes be manipulated was not a good idea. They disqualified El Gato, but they kept Chikilicuatre.
So Chikilicuatre and Forocoches were pretty much stuck with each other. He won the online voting round and then he also won the public vote in the final and not even by a slim margin: In total he got 60 points versus 48 of runner up Coral.
This wasn't just a TV show promoting him or just internet trolls voting for him. This was a majority of the public deciding to send him because they were done with Eurovision and sending a joke act to laugh at Europe and tell them how little they cared. They were not the first country to do that nor they would be the last, it's all part of the game.
Now, the lyrics have a lot of politics which is is a big no in Eurovision, so obviously they would have to sanitize them for Eurovision. Of course.
LOL, NO.
The final version had some lyrics rewritten to add fake English, but the only political allusion that was removed was Hugo Chavez. Anything else was still there and somehow the EBU let it pass because it was in a language that a majority of Europe wouldn't understand.
The rest of the act had been taken up to eleven, including playing a toy guitar at the beginning, a backing singer pretending to fall and flashing her underwear to the audience, a mock crucifixion with Chikilicuatre held in the air by his backing singers... He was going full force troll act.
I personally don't like it, but I have to admit that as a joke act it's VERY effective. You don't need to understand the language to be in the joke, you just have to watch it, and it's pretty memorable. At that time the scores in Eurovision were 100% televote and the public responded... comparatively well to it, taking it to sixteenth place in a field of twenty-five.
Is it a good place? Meh, not really. He was barely avoiding the lower third of the score table. But is it a good place for the expectations about him? Hell yeah! And not only that, it was the best place Spain had in four years and precisely when they were trying to avoid it.
Just like Rosa's relative failure did six years before, Chikilicuatre's relative success had a big impact in the Spanish psyche and giving the same exact message: Eurovision was not worth taking seriously. Just look at this! A serious act with all their effort behind it had only placed seventh, while a troll act full of disdain had managed to place sixteenth! Why try hard or even try at all, if phoning it in you didn't risk disappointment and could actually end up in better spirits? (Since people recall better their feelings than the facts that caused them, a decade later some people actually believe that Chikilicuatre placed higher than Rosa)
The top performers of the year didn't help: The winner for Russia brought his own ice rink and an Olympic skater to dance on it (And for reference, this is the same guy that two years earlier had brought a piano with a ghost woman and to ballerinas ) Ukraine managed to give boners to both gay and straight dudes wit a Swarowski-clad diva climbing a translucent wall (No, really, watch that. It's probably the ultimate 2000's Eurovision act. We PEAKED there, people) and Greece rounded the top three with a pop-up book slightly smaller than my living room. They're all very over the top, flashy acts with that are at least as focused on the show as on the song, if not more, and also Russia, Ukraine and Greece belong to strong voting blocs (Former Soviets and Balkans, respectively), so this continued reinforcing the perception of Eurovision as a joke.
And... well, that's the story of how Spain lost the last fuck they had to give, by having a very successful joke that went better than expected. Positive reinforcement is a hell of a drug.
And that, kids, is why internet trolls shouldn't be allowed to weigh in real world decisions.
2009: They stole our votes!
The next year Spain organized again a national final, titled "Eurovisión: El retorno" (That translates as "Eurovision: The return" but pretend it doesn't. It was bullshit and everyone knew it). The format was pretty similar, with first an online round (With a whopping 978 songs) from which the public chose 20 and after adding more songs from a jury and three semifinals, twelve songs faced each in the final. This year there were no troll shenanigans and the national final was shaping up pretty smoothly until the first semifinal.
At the end it came down to two rather similar acts: Soraya with La Noche es Para Mí and Melody with Amante de la Luna. (If they seem a bit similar to two of the top three of last year is because they are. Spain has talent to find what works in Eurovision after it worked).
Melody was in a partnership with Los Vivancos, a group of dancers known for mixing Spanish folk dance with stripping onstage. The kind of things the Eurovision public likes. Four days after the first semifinal in which they competed and qualified, they decided that the stage was too small, the audio was bad, the video was bad, and that what was supposed to be an equal partnership between them and Melody was being treated in media as if they were only her backup dancers. With only ten days left to the final, they announced they were dropping out and left melody scrambling to find a replacement group of dancers. Which she did.
And at the end her performance was not that bad. They even had the pecs and everything.
Melody won the juries and placed second in the televote, and Soraya placed second in the juries and won the televote, and since the tiebreaker was the televote she was chosen as Spain's representative.
Melody won the juries and placed second in the televote, and Soraya placed second in the juries and won the televote, and since the tiebreaker was the televote she was chosen as Spain's representative.
Her song, by the way, had been composed in Greek two years earlier and had been rejected by three artists before she took it, had it rewritten in Spanish and released it, and urged by her fans she entered it to the online voting two hours before the deadline. (It was eligible since none of the other artists released it commercially). Now, I'm not saying anything, but maybe if three artists already rejected your song you should take a step back and reconsider if you really want it...
The Spanish fans, of course, started hyping it because that's what they do. It was a powerful song, it would be rewritten to make it even more powerful, Greece would vote for Spain because the original composers of the song were Greek, Sweden would vote for Spain because Soraya's boyfriend was a Swede... and I'm not kidding, this is what some of them said, forgetting that the people who care about this kind of details is a minuscule fraction of the total voters who only care about the song and only hear it on Eurovision night.
And Soraya fed them. She promised the fans an amazing show, in which they (I quote) "would see butterflies instead of eyes" and they would have "an amazing concept never seen in Eurovision".
What did they get instead? Smoky eyes and a disappearing trick with a piece of orange fabric.. (You can click here for the part of the trick). It wasn't bad, but... ok, yes, it was bad. Particularly because of the fabric. You could see the seams, literally and figuratively, and at the end she just moved a couple meters to the left and the camerawork didn't help to hide it.
In 2009 juries were back and left her dead last, while televote left her slightly higher and the combined votes put her in second last position, 24 out of 25. Spain had placed last before but it had been with less countries competing, and in absolute terms this was Spain's lowest position ever.
But let's go back in time to several weeks before the contest: Spain was originally planned to broadcast the first semifinal on Tuesday and vote on it (although they were not competing in the semifinal due to being automatically qualified to the final), and because of some to some internal issues by TVE they requested to switch to the second semifinal on Thursday.
This was already a problem because two of Spain's neighbors (Portugal and Andorra) were in the first semifinal and they would miss the chance of some sweet neighborly votes. Both countries protested but EBU accepted it, although with some reluctance. At the end Portugal qualified and Andorra placed so low that getting votes from Spain would have made no difference, but anyway...
Now, the Madrid Open on tennis was also happening on Thursday a few hours before than the second semifinal and TVE was already commited to show it, and when one of the Thursday matches went into overtime and started eating the time on the semifinal, TVE decided to continue showing it because they gauged that Spaniards cared more about tennis than about Eurovision. They later played the semifinal with a one-hour delay, and instead of using public vote and juries they used only the jury votes.
Most of the countries taking part on the semifinal complained and for very valid reasons: Semifinals are a way for the European public to get a first contact with the songs competing, and a lot of the Spanish public missed this chance because a rerun is not as exciting as a live event, so the countries that qualified to the final would miss an advantage on the final that they should have had (It's not THAT unfair: From the countries not competing in the semifinals, Germany and UK were showing the first semifinal, and France and Russia showed the second semifinal, so each semifinal's qualifiers would have an advantage with those particular countries).
And it was even worse for the countries that did not qualify, since they missed the only chance to show to the Spanish public their songs (including these masterpieces about a shoe and a traffic jam because this is fucking Eurovision). Now, one of the purposes of Eurovision, particularly for small countries without that much tourism, is simply to remind their existence to the rest of Europe and increase their regional presence, so cutting the chance to do this in one of the biggest markets in Europe was a big deal and none of the countries in the second semifinal were particularly happy with Spain.
So, the Spanish fans came up with an alternative explanation for their low placing: All these countries were angry and agreed not to vote for Spain to punish them and...
No, I'm just kidding. THAT would have made sense. The explanation they created was that Soraya had actually placed in the top 10 but EBU wanted to punish Spain for the delayed broadcast and had lowered their score by a hundred points. Never mind the fact that this would require rewriting the votes of at least a dozen countries and probably more, while the vote was happening, that it would have affected the standing of all other entries in the final, and that this could be solved simply with a fine.
Hardcore fans who are more privy with how Eurovision works will say this ironically, but some of the average Spaniards honestly believe this.
And a second explanation, that made so much noise that it was even echoed by one of the major TV channels in Spain, was that this was all on purpose. Spain knew that Soraya had high chances to win and they didn't want to deal with the expense of hosting the contest next year, so they had intentionally delayed the broadcast of the semifinal to make other countries angry at them and force EBU to punish them to make sure they didn't win.
(Nevermind the fact that Alexander Rybak with Fairytale had been the red hot favorite for months and basically had the victory in the bag since he was selected to represent Norway, and that the winner hosting is a tradition but not mandatory)
5D chess, everyone!
Then Spain sued Norway in the Supreme Court of Europe asking to remove their win... wait, wrong year and continent. My bad.
2010: Because having internet trolls influence your choices once was not bad enough.
In 2010, Spain did again a national final in two parts, first an online selection titled ~~OH GOD WHO CARES THEY CHANGE THE NAME EVERY YEAR~~ "Eurovisión: Tu país te necesita" (Translates as "Eurovision: Your country needs you") and then a televised final.
The online process was rife with irregularities. Even if TVE said that joke entries would be avoided because they didn't want another Chikilicuatre, there was a lot of them.
The frontrunner of the votes, Karmele with Soy un Tsunami, was disqualified in late January. I think this is the song and if it is, it probably was disqualified for having lyrics mentioning the Spanish claims over Gibraltar, for mentioning commercial brands and for plagiarizing an old francoist song. She threw a tantrum, but there was not that much she could do.
Chimo Bayo, who was in third place in the votes with La Fiesta del Fuego was disqualified as well for having been released in pubs before the required deadline of October 1st. Although another most probable reason was because he had close ties to competitor channels to TVE (some other songs with limited releases have been able to compete). Two other acts were also disqualified.
Then El Pezón Rojo (That translates as "The red nipple") shot to the top of the votes with Y yo tan sexy, and twelve days later they were disqualified as well because their song had been aired in a podcast two years earlier. Three other acts were also disqualified.
The online voting phase ended three days later and ten songs passed to the televised final, Destination Oslo.
A lot of things have been gone from the internet in these ten years, so please excuse me for getting third hand reports about the whole thing, but apparently what happened here is that Forocoches had originally supported Chimo Bayo, and when he got disqualified they decided to boost the worst act they could find and their pick was John Cobra with Carol.
I don't really like Chikilicuatre, but I have to admit it's a well conceived comedic act and it requires a lot of talent to successfully pull it off. John Cobra was just not that at all. It's not well conceived and it doesn't require or show any talent.
Despite TVE's assurances that they would not allow troll acts, somehow John Cobra slipped through their filters and when the online voting finished he was on second place and passed to the televised final.
And he made an absolute shitshow then: Allegedly, some members of Forocoches in the public booed him because they had asked him to wear a t-shirt with the logo of Forocoches and he failed to do it. The rest of the public booed him simply because he was just awful.
His response was grabbing his crotch and shout at the public to suck his dick, on live TV. The presenter spent several minutes scolding him like a kindergardener and trying to get him to shut up just so she could continue with the show while he alternated between aggressively requesting a blowjob from his haters, aggressively thanking Forocoches and aggressively interrupting the judges when they were giving him their opinions, until one of the judges shut him down and told him that his attitude disqualified him to be in music forever. This got probably the loudest applause of the night.
The presenter had to apologize twice for his attitude to the public and the viewers, once in the moment and another before announcing the winner, calling him "shameful".
You can see the whole nine minute shitshow here or a highlight reel here. Even if you don't speak Spanish it's worth it.
Unsurprisingly, he placed last.
The winner and Spain's representative was Daniel Diges with Algo Pequeñito, a ballad of a man asking for a small show of love from his partner. The 2008 runner up Coral placed second again just to rub salt on her wounds.
The song got a rather meh reception from the Spaniards. It wasn't seen as bad, but it was definitely considered cheesy and boring. But hey, at least it wasn't John Cobra and that was a pretty good quality. (Can anyone say Biden?). And most people disliked his staging, with backing dancers dressed as circus performers (kinda like childhood keepsakes) and pretty nonsensical dancing. But hey, he wasn't John Cobra!
The dancing has it's merits, though: Imagine standing in one leg without moving at all during the first minute of the song. Now imagine doing that but in a handstand. That was difficult. But yes, it was creepy. His backing dancers are pretty much out of a child's nightmare.
During his performance in Eurovision, a Catalan professional invader that had entered the field of soccer and tennis matches and even the track of a Formula 1 race and had already been arrested for assaulting Roger Federer jumped on the stage and joined the dancers, wearing a traditional Catalan headwear. (I'm intentionally not linking his profile or writing his name, btw). He was onstage for around half a minute until security chased him out, but you can still see him get dragged out in a couple takes after he jumps off the stage.
Then when Daniel's backing singer entered the frame as it was planned, some people thought it was the streaker again and were very confused until they realized what was happening.
Here you can see the whole thing.
In hindsight, this played in Daniel's favor because of how professionally he and his dancers handled it. They didn't miss a beat of the performance even if they had no idea what was happening and this could actually have been dangerous. They were allowed to perform again at the end of the show and this second performance went without interruptions, and Spain eventually placed fifteenth.
(This was one position higher than Chikilicuatre, but I bet you no one in the Spanish public remembers it).
So yeah, 2010 was the year where trolls had a second chance and almost got it, but in the end, they didn't and everyone gave a sigh of relief.
Some other stage invasions, just because.
I'm not sure if this was the first stage invasion in Eurovision, but it certainly wasn't the last. Some people asked for this and since it wouldn't merit a post of its own, I will take the chance to write about two other notorious stage invasions:
In 2017, when previous year's winner Jamala was performing as an interval act in the final, an Ukrainian guy drapped in an Australian flag jumped onstage and bared his ass and was actually tackled out the stage. He probably was treated much more roughly because political tensions in 2017 Ukraine were much higher than in 2010 Norway and he was deemed a much more serious threat. EBU later uploaded her performance on the rehearsal the day before as the official version. I watched it twice waiting for the mooning moment before realizing what was happening. Shame on me.
And in 2018, a British political activist interrupted the performance of Surie, representing United Kingdom, to demand press freedom. They cut to shots of the public while security reduced him and gave Surie back his microphone. I was watching this contest live on a square in Lisbon, btw, but at right that moment I was too busy trying to get into some Irish dude's pants and missed it happening. And I didn't even get the dude. Shame on me.
Just like Daniel, Surie was offered the chance to perform again but she declined, saying that she was proud of how she had handled it. (A year later she revealed that it had been pretty traumatic, though, and she actually had to deal with PTSD because of it). And just like Jamala, EBU uploaded the version in the rehearsal of the previous day as the official version, but BBC decided to keep the version with the invasion.
Just so we don't miss a year, 2011
2012 was a turning point for Spain, so I want to write about 2011 here to tie things up. There wasn't much drama this year. They changed the format to a show to pick first and foremost artists. Three acts made the national final with each of them being given three songs, and then the most voted song by each artist would go to a final round to be chosen by the public.
The winner was Lucía Pérez with "Que me Quiten lo Bailao", a song she really didn't want to perform (She was much more keen of Abrázame, another of her songs). Still, she was stuck with that song and tried to do her best.
At the end, Spain placed third from the bottom with 50 points. This is actually a very high score for such a low placing and 2011 had the most even final ever, with the winner scoring only 221 points. As a comparison, in the most uneven final ever in 2015 both songs in the top 2 passed 300 points, a score of 50 would have put her in 12th place, and the third song from the bottom scored only 4 points.
Germany was hosting in 2011 and they took LED screens in the background to a new level, and there is an urban legend that Spain didn't specify what they wanted on the screens and when they were shown a stereotypical palms and fireworks background they protested, only to be told that it would be either that or exploding pigs.
I don't think that's true, but I decide to believe it because it's hilarious.
So that's it. I hope you enjoyed it and stay tuned for the 2010's: How Spain kind of got their mojo back and lost it again.
Note: This was originally posted in /HobbyDrama. You can find the original post here.

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