Cracking the Dots Enigma

/ Homicidol Maniac

Yesterday, not long after this whole business got started, an old pal and collaborator reached out with some questions. While I appreciated the trust that I could be a resource for much of anything other than official Twitter accounts and comparisons of idols to 25-year-old rock songs, I wasn’t too much help because what we were talking about is one of the great mysteries of idol.

I of course am talking about Dots, and I’m talking about Alex from that time we got in a good-natured fight, and:

This is good.

Alex took a good, long look at the strange phenomenon that is Dots, and he put some actual brainpower to it, and he has some ideas of what might be going on here.

While there’s no clear meaning to all this, the concept surely opens up to different interpretations. Both sound and appearance share the same importance in the Idol world, and in a way, the Dots project is portraying this peculiarity in an ironic – if not provocative – way: the girls are represented as unknown dots (both in the name of the unit itself and on the website) and the choice of depersonalizing them may hide a message that indirectly prompts the fans to care first and foremost about the music and performance, also a potential sideswipe at the Idol concept that dominated the industry for over a decade in the past.

For real, go read the whole thing. While the possibility of understanding the Dots enigma feels almost initiatory, it’s also a little bit of a disappointment to find that there might actually be limits on what we’ll eventually get from them.

Also, because this is now topical, a friend of mine was recently asking if I ever get called out for showing favoritism or clear preferences for particular performers, and I said, it’s been a long time since anybody did that. And then she said, do you ever actually show favoritism, though? And I thought about Dots and said yes. #comeatmebro

2 thoughts on “Cracking the Dots Enigma”

  1. If any dots are reading this. Please release some new material soon, charge what you like I’ll buy it. Thank you.

  2. Pingback: Does This Nightmare Count as a New Dots MV? | Homicidols

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