Gangnam Style Finally Gets a Second Life -- Machinima & Custom Animations!

I worried it would never come, but now it's finally here: Thanks to Iron Serpente and a host of SLers from Korea, Second Life finally has a "Gangnam Style" machinima parody. Mount your invisible horse, get ready to drink your coffee quickly, and for God's sake, sexy lady, hit play:

The video is actually a promotion for a "Gangnam Style" dance and gesture for SL avatars, which you can buy on the Marketplace here.

Also comes with a couple's poseball, so you can do the horse-riding pose that PSY does with Hyuna. All in all, not a bad parody video, even though the SL version of PSY is considerably more buff than the real world version. Also wish the horse-riding animation was a bit more fluid. But you know, the great thing about parody videos is people can make many different versions that I can blog, he blatantly hinted. Speaking of which, don't miss Iris' post on Korean pop-esque fashion you can buy in SL, just in time for own KPop machinima.

Oh, and since you probably need to see the original video several more times at least, here it is below, for comparison's sake:

Post more sightings of SL "Gangnam Style" in Comments!

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[Archangel Mortenwold]

Heh. A few acquaintances and I did our own funny dance video a few years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DxiGQ-8iok

[Tizzers Foxchase]

@Archangel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwj3tpBfyTQ

:)

[Jo Yardley]

What on earth?
I have no idea what on earth this is all about.

[Pienaar]

@Jo Yardley: Are you never leaving your house? Don't you have any friends in the net?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/gangnam-styles-invisible-horse-dance-crazegiddyup/2012/08/23/0dec6ace-ed29-11e1-b09d-07d971dee30a_blog.html

Or how someone in the net put it:

whenever i go lan,i hear ppl playing it.
whenever i go bugis street,i hear shops playing it.
whenever i go comex fair,i see 90% of the display laptops/comps playing the MV
whenever i open my facebook,i see people sharing the parodies of it.
whenever i play my favourite game dota2,i see in game nicks of 'gangnam style' everywhere.

How could you have missed that???

[Rin Tae]

I actually agrre with Jo about not knowing what this is about ;P

a freind of mine showed me this a while ago but I forgett about it after watching since it has not struck me as anything that would develop some sort of meme. But stranger thigns happen so why not this too ;)

One reason for missing it in germany might be however is, that the music is obviously something the GEMA (the agency that is theoretically responsible for making sure all intelectual rights holders in the arts and music industry are paid but is also generally said to be a evil kraaken that strangles the last cent out of anything it gets it's tentacles around) has a problem with .. and since GEMA and Youtube cant agree on something sane, all videos with music the GEMA manages to spot are blocked.

[Amanda Dallin]

@Pienaar

"How could you have missed that???"

by not having the same group of friends you do.

There is no single internet culture. There are many internet cultures that interact in only a very limited way. The same is true of Second Life.

[Iggy]

@Pienaar, I've a hard enough time keeping up with the freaks I know to bother with this Korean Weird Al, step-dancing freak.

But I know two things now I did not before:

1)“Gangnam Style” is hilarious and a guilty pleasure

2) Asia is going down the doofus-highway America took a long time ago. Yay, US! The world will join us in Dumb and Dumber land and soon!

Now back to my James Joyce and a snifter of brandy.

[Joker]

"Doofus Highway"
Asians were always there.. with the web its just easier to see now for most Americans....
Otaku craziness goes back to the 70s.

[Hamlet Au]

Actually, Iggy, along with being fun and wacky as hell, "Gangnam Style" is a pretty brilliant and subversive satire of consumerism and over-leveraged excess. Read this fascinating Atlantic Monthly article on it:

http://bit.ly/OXT26X

Of course, it's just a music video, and a silly one at that. Does it really have to be about anything more complicated? "If I hadn't seen that behind-the-scenes, I would have said he's just poking fun at himself," Hong said of the official making-of video, which is embedded at right. It's mostly of Park or Psy having fun on set, but at one point he pauses in filming. "Human society is so hollow, and even while filming I felt pathetic. Each frame by frame was hollow," he sighs, apparently deadly serious. It's a jarring moment to see the musician drop his clownish demeanor and reveal the darker feelings behind this lighthearted-seeming song. Although, Hong noted, "hollow" doesn't capture it: "It's a word that's a mixture or shallow or hollow or vain," he explained.

Kim seemed to feel the same way about the video, though it's so cheery on the surface. "He was satirizing more than just this one neighborhood," she told me. On her blog, she suggested the video portrayed the Gangnam area, a symbol of South Korea's national aspirations for prosperity and status, as "nothing but materialistic and about people who are chasing rainbows." Pretty heavy for a viral pop hit.

[colemarie]

fucking love this song lol