Yeah, the NYT runs one "Japan... weird, right?" story every three months, typically sourced off a single interview with a counterculture aficionado in Tokyo. Remember, e.g., anti-mugger camouflague dresses to turn you into a Coke machine?
My theory is that Japanese people are rich enough to count as white and rare enough in the NYT newsroom to count as Republican, which makes this OK by their lights. If the published an article on hip hop teeth as a craze sweeping the nation, they'd lose face with people they actually care about.
Oh, there are idiotic trends in the west as well. But they have an entirely different flavour to them.
Grills are an ostentatious display of wealth. Ostentatious displays of wealth are severely frowned upon in any culture (or subculture) where wealth is actually common. White people, or Japanese people, or even middle-class black people, would never wear something as tacky as a diamond-studded tooth grill... they'd rather display their wealth via something like a $20,000 watch that only folks with $20,000 watches know is a $20,000 watch.
Now, LEDs aren't expensive, so they don't work as ostentatious displays of wealth. About the only thing they work as is an ostentatious display of your willingness to adopt trends in the full knowledge that they're completely stupid-looking. And that kind of thing may play well in Japan but it won't fly in the west where we're not quite so ironically detached.
Now, LEDs aren't expensive, so they don't work as ostentatious displays of wealth. About the only thing they work as is an ostentatious display of your willingness to adopt trends in the full knowledge that they're completely stupid-looking. And that kind of thing may play well in Japan but it won't fly in the west where we're not quite so ironically detached.
Honestly, "willingness to adopt trends in the full knowledge that they're completely stupid-looking" and "ironically detached" sound like pretty good descriptions of Western hipsters. I don't know if that's what motivates these Japanese people or not, but if so, it's a concept that isn't unique to them.
Well if it's on their forehead, that's a pretty good sign that there's something wrong with them. If it's elsewhere, it really depends... for the most part, no generalization to be made.
Many, many, many years ago only really tough guys had tattoos, almost exclusively sailors and former or current prisoners.
Today teenage girls go to the tattoo shop together with their moms. If you get a tattoo today, it just means you want to be like everyone else.
This has had the unintended side effect of prisoners having to tattoo their faces to show they are harder edged folks then your average teen. And this in turn makes it harder form them to a get a job once they are out of prison, because previously you could just wear long sleeves and that would do the job most of the time.
Also back in the day if you had tattoos, with nothing else, a lot of people would actually think better not mess with that dude. Today, it means nothing.
But according to my anthropology professor, most civilizations thought the ages. had body modifications well beyond what we're doing today.
Tragically I'm pretty sure there are plenty of stupid and obnoxious people who will never wear these.
Many years of experience have taught me that it's often possible to identify the stupid and obnoxious people via their appearance anyway. Unfortunately many years of experience and my mother also taught me not to judge people by their appearances, so I'm not sure what to do now.
The concept is not worthless: It could be a useful punishment to give these 'glowing teeths' to the avatars of cheating/bad behaviour players in your favourite online game.
These would be pretty cool with a few extra features. Say flashing in time with music or sound as you are speaking. Or wirelessly connected so that they sink and can act out 'symphonies' of light displays. Great for advertising!
The first demo video does show flashing and colors sensitive to music, and the second video shows a large groups' lights staying in sync, though the mechanisms of communication (wireless signals?) aren't clear.
Body decoration is nearly a human universal -- it's unsurprising that new technology will be adopted for this, though whether this particular fad will take root is doubtful.
While this particular project seems like a novelty item, I recommend taking a closer look at Daito, one of the artist-hackers mentioned in the article. I enjoyed digging a bit deeper into the works on his site.
I've been subscribed to his youtube channel for a while (http://www.youtube.com/user/daito) and it's very entertaining to see some of his projects come up, decontextualised: electric stimulation to people's faces (usually his own), drawing on photosensitive liquids with a laser, recreating a photograph using a sheet of cardboard and a nailgun.
Given that history I'm inclined to see this more as an interesting piece of art than a stupid fashion trend.
Funny to see this on HN after seeing something very similar at a Ramstein concert on Friday night. The singer has a cheek piercing which he feeds a wire through to light up his mouth.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 74.2 ms ] threadPublicity stunt by a fashion designer/store in Harajuku sounds much better.
If this winds its way down to Nagoya, I think I'm going to need to move to a different island.
My theory is that Japanese people are rich enough to count as white and rare enough in the NYT newsroom to count as Republican, which makes this OK by their lights. If the published an article on hip hop teeth as a craze sweeping the nation, they'd lose face with people they actually care about.
Grills are an ostentatious display of wealth. Ostentatious displays of wealth are severely frowned upon in any culture (or subculture) where wealth is actually common. White people, or Japanese people, or even middle-class black people, would never wear something as tacky as a diamond-studded tooth grill... they'd rather display their wealth via something like a $20,000 watch that only folks with $20,000 watches know is a $20,000 watch.
Now, LEDs aren't expensive, so they don't work as ostentatious displays of wealth. About the only thing they work as is an ostentatious display of your willingness to adopt trends in the full knowledge that they're completely stupid-looking. And that kind of thing may play well in Japan but it won't fly in the west where we're not quite so ironically detached.
Honestly, "willingness to adopt trends in the full knowledge that they're completely stupid-looking" and "ironically detached" sound like pretty good descriptions of Western hipsters. I don't know if that's what motivates these Japanese people or not, but if so, it's a concept that isn't unique to them.
The inside of his mouth glowed for a week.
Related: Glo-sticks burst in a shower of (hot) glowing liquid when thrown in a campfire.
This comes pretty close to fulfilling that wish.
Today teenage girls go to the tattoo shop together with their moms. If you get a tattoo today, it just means you want to be like everyone else.
This has had the unintended side effect of prisoners having to tattoo their faces to show they are harder edged folks then your average teen. And this in turn makes it harder form them to a get a job once they are out of prison, because previously you could just wear long sleeves and that would do the job most of the time.
Also back in the day if you had tattoos, with nothing else, a lot of people would actually think better not mess with that dude. Today, it means nothing.
But according to my anthropology professor, most civilizations thought the ages. had body modifications well beyond what we're doing today.
Many years of experience have taught me that it's often possible to identify the stupid and obnoxious people via their appearance anyway. Unfortunately many years of experience and my mother also taught me not to judge people by their appearances, so I'm not sure what to do now.
It would have been a success in counter-strike!
http://www.daito.ws/
Given that history I'm inclined to see this more as an interesting piece of art than a stupid fashion trend.
Good photo here: http://en.affenknecht.com/first-professional-pictures-from-t...
The first video is quite funny, though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU1wLryjuEw