The all important 6th AKB48 general election is underway, and with sales on the first day topping 1,462,000 a new record has been set – though online there is some doubt as to just how they accomplished this feat, with vast numbers of sales evidently going the creepy otaku desperate enough to buy scores of copies so they can vote up their favourite girl.
According to AKB48’s number one chart shill Oricon, their new single “Labrador Retriever” hit 1.462 million copies “shipped” on its first day, beating out the previous “Sayonara Crawl” by a suspiciously slight 11,000.
How it managed this feat is may well be obvious – the more dedicated fans have long made a point of demonstrating their devotion to their girl of choice by photo-bragging their boxes of voting ticket laden CDs on 2ch and elsewhere:
Outside AKB worshiping circles their antics seem to have resulted in them being more shunned that never:
“What a waste.”
“This is just farcical.”
“200 singles a box?”
“All the discs in just one of those photos would buy an artist onto Oricon’s charts…”
“At least they seem happy.”
“They really are trash. Someone should make an issue out of this.”
“What do they do with all these discs…”
“They buy all these and all they get to do to them is shake their hand!”
“With that kind of money you should just go to a brothel and be done with it.”
“Cool Japan indeed. More like Crazy Japan.”
“The shame of Japan!”
“At least sell the tickets on their own!”
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Produced, shipped, purchased, opened for half a second to extract the voting ticket, dumped in the garbage.
This is consumerism taken to an absolutely disgusting degree.
Hahaha, I agree. Why some people care about that shit is anyones guess, just buy a CD, cast a vote and move on. Anyone who buys dozens of CDs to vote up their idol is pretty pathetic. She'll never recognize their existence, it's not worth pouring your hard earned cash into it.
If you go often enough they *will* remember your name. You're not supposed to just stand there you're expected to talk. She will if you don't. Plenty of people get their name remembered, just like you would eventually remember people who you are paid to talk to for a few minutes (with multiple tickets, anyway) every 2 months.
"it's not worth pouring your hard earned cash into it."
Hard-earned money? I don't think spoiled kids like them earn their money though. (I don't know their ages but they all seem like kids to me)
I would imagine a lot of AKB48 followers are over 18 and a lot may have jobs. Given how expensive stuff is, I can't see people buying dozens without earning $$$$.
I think it's more likely that these people are hikkikomori who shut themselves indoors and live off of their parents' money and sympathy.
And most of them are probably in or over their 30's.
Nope your totally wrong, these are grown men most over 30 who have good jobs, but no wife or kids. They probably have been saving money since the last election so just they can spend it all on this one. Sad thing is, they'll throw away all teh CDs after wards.
Considering Amazon.jp listings, the lowest CD goes for 1,387 Yen (about 13,60 USD) and the highest goes for 2,560 Yen (about 25,10 USD) there seems to be some major Money involved here.
And I dont think any Parent just gives there Hikkikomori Child 300k+ Yen to just toy around with...
http://goo.gl/QOoL1h
When you live in the same apartment for most of your adult life, have no car, no kids, no wife, and your only other cost aside from rent is food and clothing, you can afford a ton of shit. Many of these people earn good livings due to very low living costs and expenses.
I sure 13 year old kids from UK and US would buy last years albums just because its J-popular among fans.
I don't doubt that a lot of these are probably people living off their parents... hard to get so much disposable income otherwise. People who earn their money generally value it more.
On the other hand, there are also plenty of fans who have a proper job, I reckon. They just don't have a proper social life and thus spend all their income on this.
Femdom. Level 99
Maybe you shoud consider that their money is not hard earned.
Ask anyone who has a job who works at least 20 hours a work if their money is hard earned ;)
I once spent five hundred dollars over a few months on a pay2win server of a game and still feel disgusted about that.
Then I look at this and feel it was just an expensive learning experience compared to this utter insanity.
pretty dumb waste of money
but its not my money so i dont care
still ppl like this must have some brain illness and should seek help
Capitalism Ho!
Dammit, I missed Recette and Tielle now :(
It's time to boot up that game and be a capitalist again.
Seriously, their business model revolves around a few obsessed guys with too much money buying all the CDs.
As long as you have a customer base and there is no law against it, you are a genius.
true
Idiotism Ho!
true. just like what i read about Star Wars when the new owners try to trash the entire mythology and create a new one.What about my entire collection of Star Wars novels and comic books even those Sunday strips i've cut out from newspapers,this just mean it's worth of collective nothingness nowadays?
AKB48 fans have more money then sense.
Not that hard since one of those they have none...and the other will soon run out if they keep doing that.
Nah, you can't waste this kind of money unless you have a steady job. Which means they just live poor lives in order to subsidize the idol industry.
Just like bronies.
The things those horsemonglers buy with their disability cheques.
21:26 26/05/2014
and otakus
bitch please horsehater
Ah the incredible "Pica" disorder strikes again. Instead of food it's crap. Well one man's food is another man's crap I suppose.
carp fisherman speaks!
Why can't they at least buy/sell digital copies so they're at least not wasting plastic on their quest for stupidity?
Doubt you can vote with those...
Or handshake, get posters, get photos.
For normal singles (not election ticket ones) people usually make quite a mint from the photos, at least as an offset. You don't need to worry about their money.
It's harder to get people to waste money on numbers rather than boxes.
These idiots took pictures of their boxes after all.
Or they could just sell the voting/handshake tickets separately.
They really should sell this trash in cardboard sleeves or as digital downloads on a cardboard postcard.
Japan does not have that many forests...
And? What, you suddenly forgot CDs come with printed artwork?
I want one CD AKB
where I live does not sell.
protip: import it
what is amazon.jp
A website that refuses to ship half the shit it sells to people who live outside of Japan. I haven't been able to buy from there before due to their Japan only thing for 99 percent of their products.
Use a proxy shopping site to buy it like http://www.goody-japan.com/
Play Asia sell Japanese CD's and other stuff internationally
Fucking idiots! LOL xD
I've talked to some of my Japanese friends here about my theory that the producers and employees of the company are taking stock and making these photos to scare people into buying more, and that most of them are not real.
After all, if 100 people buy 10 it would be better than all of them just buying 1. Whiles some of the fans may be scared off completely by these pictures, there's a chance that more will buy multiple copies.
PR people in Tokyo do some crazy shit. One of my friends, who worked for Tower Records Japan corporate, said that I'm most likely right. And if there are fans crazy enough to copy them…well, they double win.
hey that's an interesting theory and very plausible. I can easily see those people pulling this stuff just to make (idiot) fans buy more cds, specially since 2ch is a 100% anonymous forum.
hmmm, that makes more sense
Those boxes are probably just too much money for most Otaku to buy.
Imagine if this guy is a 40-50 y/o head of a major business company, secretly spending his money (bypassing the accounter and taxes to avoid it being recorded) on those disks. You never know if your boss some closet pervert.