My mum is now a big fan of Youtube. She used to be one of Korean drama fans like other ajummas in Korea or even in the world. One day in last year, she asked me how to ‘watch’ the video that one of her friends sent to my mum via Kakao Talk. I taught her how to ‘touch’ that link and ‘watch’ those videos on Youtube on her smartphone. She brought earphones and grab her smartphone to watch that video on Youtube. That was her first experience of watching TV on her mobile not on TV in our living room.
After that day, she seems to enjoying new ways of watching TV on Youtube. Whenever she came back home she put earphones on her ears and started watching videos sent from her friends. The genres of videos are tremendous. From her friends’ grandchildren’s videos to some serious political issues as well. In my opinion, her favourite genre is pretty much about political issues and some traveling video logs. So now, she rarely watch the TV in our living room even though there are Korean dramas every night on TV.
She said that she and her fiends enjoy watching Youtube on their smartphones because they can ‘choose’ the channel what they want to ‘watch’ without barriers of time and space. Also she mentioned about her own space while she’s watching her chosen Youtube channel on her smartphone. (I found that is very interesting because I also feel like I’m in my own space whenever I watch my subscribed Youtube channel by myself) Indeed, watching those Youtube videos are sorta big trend among my mum’s fiends (and her age group, ajummas). They now share good, useful or hot issued videos through Kakao Talk’s group chat room and they’re talking about those videos when they meet at offline spaces. (from online to offline and come back to online again, it is a looping communication process I already mentioned in my thesis).
Furthermore, my mum has her favourite Youtube BJ (ajumma BJ) and she said that BJ is very famous among ajummas. (I’m watching Youtube almost everyday but I never heard about that BJ before. So I realised that the world of sns such as Youtube is amazingly big to know every single channels and their BJS because of its characteristic reason. Everyone’s needs are becoming various and wider so the small channels (niche channels) are becoming bigger and deeper I think. For this reason, there are famous ajumma BJs on Youtube but I’ve never heard about them at all. And vice versa.
These days, I feel like I’ve reached my limit on this Ajumma research because there’re so much funky and something useful/informational research around me. I am kind of losing my confidence to keep doing this research about ajummas. So I didn’t do much working, studying and writing recently. But, I changed my mind and I will do something very exciting research about ajummas. Maybe my research isn’t that necessary to change this world or to impress others on the conferences, etc. I truly don’t care about others. I love my research and I will keep doing my research and writing even though my English writing isn’t that good enough compared with other ‘native’ writers/speakers. I will keep working hard and at the same time I will enjoy my life as an ajumma expert, like my mum started learning something very new and enjoying those new things.
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