The Socially Awkward Network: Meet Your Idols on G+

“AKB48 and Google+ have a lot in common. Only psychologically stunted, obsessive-compulsive geeks understand how they work.”
- Some famous dude

For many fans, their first memory of the AKB48/Google+ launch was the futility of trying to submit comments as the Google servers got hammered. Or perhaps, prior to that, signing up/reactivating G+ accounts that were otherwise useless because everyone was still on Facebook or Twitter.

But now that the smoke has cleared (and people can comment on the girls’ posts like normal human beings), the online landscape has shifted dramatically.

Two tone?

The AKB48 Popularity Curve

Things I do at work when there is no work to do:

Predictable rankings are predictable

The above graph shows the “most talked about AKB48 members online,” according to an informal study by Japanese entertainment portal BARKS. The search totals are based on the number of times each member has been mentioned in blogs and social media since January 1st of this year.

In other words, “How many times did someone say Atsuko Maeda’s name on the internet?”

It is … the Most Interesting Domain on the Internet

An online prank 5 years in the making surfaced over the weekend as J-pop fans and otaku discovered that a seemingly obvious web address led to some not-so-obvious places.

Come into Mayu's deep love core ... oopswrongfandom

News sources reported that the domain “akb48.com” was up for grabs on Yahoo! Auction Japan, with a starting bid of OVER 9000 10 million yen, or about $120,000 IN AMERICA. Now, I’ve heard of some AKB48 goods selling for crazy-ass prices (one would need to put down around $200 to legitimately own the ENTIRE contents of No Sleeves’ 1st album—seeing as the A, B, C and Regular editions each have individual exclusive tracks) but it would take a stupid ass wota of an entirely different financial caliber to make this purchase.

Not that this has anything to do with official AKB48 management—the group’s actual site, as even the most BEGINNER of fans should know, is found at akb48.co.jp, using the traditional Japanese domain suffix. The .com location, on the other hand, is a much stranger entity, as curious visitors found out when they tried to access the site. Anyone who types akb48.com into their browser window … ends up in enemy territory.

I Have Seen the Future: The Death of AKB48

I do not know what kind of group will surpass AKB48, but I do know how they will be surpassed.

What the hell ever happened to THIS, huh? I ASK YOU.

It is not an answer I could have figured out without watching another once-legendary idol group plunge into irrelevance. Over the last few years, surely everyone has asked themselves at least once, “What the hell ever happened to Morning Musume?” and of course many stupid ass opinions have been thrown about in an attempt to answer that question. “Because so-and-so graduated!” “Because the new leader has no personality!” “Because the arrangements suck!” “Because TSUNKU.” And all of these may have had some whiff of correctness to them, a reflection of the prevailing attitudes at the time, but none ever truly cut to the core of the issue.

Here's the Earth. And you say, DAMN, that is a sweet Earth.

We are like ancient astronomers staring at the sky, believing that the sun and the planets all revolve around the earth, until something weird happens and we have to make an excuse for why Mercury went backwards, so we start making up weird celestial maps with tons of interlocking circles and crap to make up for all the orbital irregularities we keep seeing, until Nicolas Copernicus is like, “HAY GUYS what if maybe the EARTH goes around TEH SUN?”

And everyone’s like, “WHY U TROLLIN”

Because you would have to be CRAAAAAZAY to think that the Earth is not the center of the universe, I mean LOLOLOLOLWAT next are you going to tell me that we get sick from breathing in tiny little creatures floating around in the air?

Anyway the point is, after watching Morning Musume, not to mention most of the rest of Hello! Project, sink like a shapely, slender-limbed Titanic (culminating in their last-blaze-of-glory appearance IN AMERICA), I finally saw, out of everywhere and nowhere at once, the answer. The heliocentric view of the idol universe. And it is this: