Last week I learned about "Gangnam Style" by PSY, a K-pop song/video that was well on its way to becoming an international hit (see the full video with English translation at the bottom of the post). It was written about by media outlets like the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal and forwarded to me by colleagues in the EdLab (I will let you guess who) and family members. It is currently even more popular than Justin Bieber's 'As Long as You Love Me' and Katy Perry's 'Wide Awake' (source: Music Fix).

I confess that I did not make it past the first few seconds of the video. I am not exactly a huge fan of K-pop (much to the disappointment of some) and the video just seemed like another example of popular culture gone awry (just look at the GIF above). But this piece from the Atlantic gave me pause. In short, the article claims that the song/video is a critique of materialism, consumerism, and the South Korean equivalent of the "one percent."

So I made myself watch the entire video in Vialogues and my take on the song is that ...