Directory of Lost Causes

It's no secret that I filch most of my content for this blog from Momus's blog, Click Opera. I'd never heard of Magibon, until I read this post. Magibon is an American Japanophile who has apparently become famous on Youtube for doing 'nothing' in front of a camera, but has also (apparently) blown her image by allowing herself to appear in front of someone else's cameras, thus relinquishing control of how that image is mediated.

This is not going to be a very focused post, I'm afraid, because I'm about to pack for London.



I'll just try and jot down a few random thoughts.

She is, indeed, very good at doing nothing. I find this to be a far more artful nothing than that peddled by Andy Warhol back in the sixties. When I say artful, perhaps I mean artless. Warhol's nothing was stilted; this isn't.

I was surprised at the incredible amount of hatred directed at this girl. For doing what? For doing nothing. Look in the comments and you will find rage. Now, if I were on a train or a bus and I waved and smiled out of the window, would I expect someone to spit back at me and make an obscene gesture? Well... I feel like that's what's happening here.

I suppose it might seem a bit rich for me to criticise people for expressing hatred. I seem to express hatred quite often on this blog. Perhaps my blog would be improved if it more closely resembled Magibon's Youtube posts.

Nonetheless, I do at least feel my hatred is a notch above the hatred on offer here. Nothingness. It's almost like a Rorscharch test. What are you going to see in this nothingness? I see an intelligent, unassuming girl who, in a modest way, is adding some beauty to the world.

Others, it seems, immediately see, well, this sort of thing:

It was finally revealed that Magi is nothing more than a hick with one very fucked up pair of chompers, who fooled millions of pedos into thinking she was hot jailbait using clever camera angles and flattering lighting.

How tiresome.

That particular piece of foul hatred was referring to this, [inevitably, the Youtube clip in question has been taken down, but here is a clip from the same show that someone has pointlessly and annoyingly tampered with... ah, this clip appears to be a bit better] the television appearance in which, supposedly, Magibon's image was ruined. She seemed to me like what I have described, an intelligent and unassuming girl. A normal girl, in a good way. No damage done in my eyes, whatsoever.

I think one reason that Magibon is the target of so much hatred is that she is doing something that is actually incomprehensible to Americans and the Anglo-Saxon world generally. I suppose they imagine that if she were talking and giving some kind of content about, I don't know, politics, or something, that would mean they weren't being cheated. They can't see anything outside of the fact that she's not giving them words. Apparently that makes her stupid or something.

No, Magibon is not stupid.



I'm rather worried now, however, to see how much I live in a world in which people cannot understand the wordless. If we cannot understand the wordless, then we truly are lost. That, to me, is the real stupidity.

It's amazing, too, isn't it, this Anglo-Saxon obsession with paedophilia. She looks child-like, so immediately their minds are full of 'paedophilia'. I would really hate to be imprisoned inside such a mind. I'm sure they're very seedy places.

Magibon's Japanese is not great, but considering it's self-taught, and she had never even been to Japan until recently, it's pretty damned good. I have studied Japanese. I know the world of the Japanophile. I know girls like Magibon. I look at these clips, and I recognise them in her. I understand what she's doing. She does not deserve to be hated. She's only doodling cute cartoons in her scrapbook, that's all.