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January 9, 2013 1:00 PM   Subscribe

North Korea follows only three people on Twitter. One of them, for some reason, is 25-year-old Coldplay superfan Jimmy "Jammy" Dushku.
posted by davidjmcgee (30 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Do we know for a fact that Kim Jong Un isn't a fellow Coldplay fan? Because, honestly, that would be one of the least weird things about the DPRK.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:09 PM on January 9, 2013 [8 favorites]


4chan comes across as being more evil than North Korea, which is hard to do.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:13 PM on January 9, 2013 [3 favorites]


I think he's more of an Owl City guy.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:14 PM on January 9, 2013


Dennis Quaid looks deathly hungover there, like he's about to puke on Jammy any second.
posted by mannequito at 1:14 PM on January 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


I don't do the Twitter-ness yet, but this may push me over the edge.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 1:17 PM on January 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


4chan comes across as being more evil than North Korea, which is hard to do.

Really? I mean, I suppose in a context where the reader has no idea which entity is responsible for starving people and concentration camps...
posted by brennen at 1:18 PM on January 9, 2013 [6 favorites]


mannequito: "Dennis Quaid looks deathly hungover there, like he's about to puke on Jammy any second."

He probably listened to the band's latest album....
posted by zarq at 1:18 PM on January 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


I heard that they're negotiating with Aziz Ansari to play Jammy in the sitcom based on this story.
posted by found missing at 1:20 PM on January 9, 2013


4chan comes across as being more evil than North Korea

North Korea is lawful evil. 4chan is chaotic neutral.
posted by Blue Meanie at 1:21 PM on January 9, 2013 [30 favorites]


You know, all the peoples of Earth should live in harmony, and it's lovely that North Korea is following--

"Coldplay"

Nuke them. From orbit.
posted by brundlefly at 1:23 PM on January 9, 2013 [4 favorites]


(Not related to the other Dushku)

That's a shame, because this would make more sense if it turned out that Kim Jong-Il, in his waning years, became obsessed with filming an alternate-reality Buffy with Faith at its center.
posted by Panjandrum at 1:23 PM on January 9, 2013 [4 favorites]


I imagine Jimmy might be getting followed by @theCIA pretty soon
posted by stargell at 1:29 PM on January 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Panjandrum: "That's a shame, because this would make more sense if it turned out that Kim Jong-Il, in his waning years, became obsessed with filming an alternate-reality Buffy with Faith at its center."

I would watch Faith v. Pulgasari.
posted by brundlefly at 1:30 PM on January 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Fantastic story. Love everything about it.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:35 PM on January 9, 2013


This story was hilarious - thanks for sharing.
posted by wolfdreams01 at 1:37 PM on January 9, 2013


In related news: Eric Schmidt's North Korea Show-And-Tell: One Strange Photo Op -- "With handlers in tow, US delegation visits Pyongyang computer lab for a demonstration in state-sponsored Googling."
posted by ericb at 1:44 PM on January 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


4chan comes across as being more evil than North Korea

4chan and the guy mentioned in this article are assholes we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. North Korea is a horrible, secluded, fantasy-evil dictatorship that has induced a horrible amount of human suffering in order to prop up a regime that is heading straight towards being a nuclear power at the cost of countless human lives, whose consistent demonstration of its calculated psychopathy and its by-now obvious knowledge of its impending dissolution as a state should terrify you every night, before you fall sleep. Whose political machinations has basically allowed larger, more-developed states to excuse themselves for their own runaway defense budgets. Whose continual existence as a boogeyman in our culture necessitates this weird talking-down of it as a problem, like parents casually mentioning that no, there really isn't a monster under the bed and hey isn't the DPRK subreddit kind of funny and hey, here's a cute story about how even an asshole can link up with them on a social media platform, haha, it's no big deal, you have a Twitter too, right?

Because hey, it's easier than stomaching the stories coming out of North Korea as the kind of truth that millions of people face every morning when they wake up. There's no real boogeyman because how could a boogeyman be as petty and dumb as to have a Twitter account or care about this Coldplay superfan?
posted by dubusadus at 1:44 PM on January 9, 2013 [5 favorites]


dubusadus: There's no real boogeyman because how could a boogeyman be as petty and dumb as to have a Twitter account or care about this Coldplay superfan?

Actually makes me wonder for a second if these "whacky North Korea" stories that come out every so often aren't carefully crafted to make the country seem less threatening and to deflect attention away from the real issues. Hmm.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:48 PM on January 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


Dushku, who goes by the nicknames "Jimmer" and "Jammy" (for his love of Jammie Dodgers biscuits), is a 25-year-old independently wealthy investor from Austin, Texas, who projects an online image of himself that is, shall we say, larger-than-life. Having started a website development business at age 14, Dushku now has his money in construction projects in Europe, residential properties in Texas, and mining and agriculture in Brazil and Peru. When he's not globetrotting on Falcon 50s or other private jets, you can find him playing Rachmaninoff on his piano, riding his Ducati Monster, giving marketing tips to friends, and swinging by charity events.

Oh, I get it. This kid's an exceptionally intelligent super-villain who's in league with the North Koreans and secretly financing their space program so that he and a select group of genetically superior Coldplay fans can safely flee into outer space for the duration of World War III, then casually return to repopulate the planet in their own image.

I say we stop him while he's still on Phase 1 of his plan and before he can steal the necessary antimatter crystals from the Large Hadron Collider.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:00 PM on January 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


"On the other hand, the most entertaining messages I've received have been from Australians. They always send such cheerful messages and it's a nice change from the negative ones."
'Nuff said.
posted by ericb at 2:01 PM on January 9, 2013


Wow, uh, from the comments on that article, this other thing I somehow missed hearing about: an email from Saddam Hussein.
posted by adamdschneider at 2:13 PM on January 9, 2013 [4 favorites]


Receiving death threat because DRNK decided, seemingly at random, to follow him on Twitter? What the hell is wrong with people?

I'd probably follow them back too, if they followed me, if only out of morbid curiosity.

Of course, I wouldn't be sending them messages telling them to have a nice day. I can see why people might think Dushku is a bit of an asshole for doing that. But, still, death threats and a 4chan attack?
posted by asnider at 2:31 PM on January 9, 2013


... I'm usually enjoying the world class entertainment of Coldplay.

No actual human being talks like that. Except perhaps Donald Trump. And even he may be nothing more than the worlds first cyber-robotic asshole.
posted by benito.strauss at 3:03 PM on January 9, 2013


asnider, he didn't just follow the account back, he tweet-messaged things like the post title ("have a good day, friend") and was generally pleasant and friendly to the public-relations face of a psychopathic dictatorship. I can completely understand how that would have pissed off some people who, who according to the Mother Jones article, were mostly not the usual 4chan crowd but "South Koreans and Korean-Americans".

On the other hand Korean "netizens" sending death threats to mostly-innocent people who happen to fall on the wrong side of SK social issues is also sadly par for the course.
posted by subdee at 3:37 PM on January 9, 2013 [3 favorites]


Kid who's a wheeler and dealer on an international level, up to his eyebrows in big money construction projects... and the NK regime follows his twitter account at random. OK, sure.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:03 PM on January 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


asnider, he didn't just follow the account back, he tweet-messaged things like the post title ("have a good day, friend") and was generally pleasant and friendly to the public-relations face of a psychopathic dictatorship.

I acknowledged that. I still think sending him death threats is fucked up.
posted by asnider at 5:29 PM on January 9, 2013


Because hey, it's easier than stomaching the stories coming out of North Korea as the kind of truth that millions of people face every morning when they wake up.
You're right.
posted by Evernix at 6:04 PM on January 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


Weird story.

(Can someone tell me what the hip-hop song is that they turn to from Coldplay in the video of Jimmy? I know it's something really popular and recent and it's driving me crazy.)
posted by threeants at 6:48 PM on January 9, 2013


It's all well and good to have joy in your life. Happiness is an important thing! But the treatment North Korea gets in this article is sort of appalling. You don't have to care about North Korea or human suffering every waking moment of your life but to deride Schmidt's efforts at opening up communications with a really terrifying nation state by choosing to publish a ZANY N. KOREA AT IT AGAIN, THIS TIME WITH SOMETHING REALLY RELEVANT TO YOU TECHNOCRATI leaves a bit of a bad taste.

It's as if the writer is saying that any attempt at dealing with the state is asinine and that it's okay to laugh at the people who are actually trying to do good in the world. It treats human rights as a zero-sum game and anything that isn't points towards isn't worth the attention.

On top of that, it's a pretty obvious link bait, isn't it? Joss Whedon? WOW MAYBE? 4chan? UGH EW AMIRITE? Vin Diesel SLYT? YES PLZ! The author ignores the point of why North Korea gets as much coverage as it does in the media. It's like North Korea is only in the article because it's a hot button search term in contrast to the way every other reputable news outlet covers it, as a kind of existential Cold War terror that still continues to impact your daily life by way of domestic policy decisions. The editorial gears that must've turned when this was presented as a scoop.
posted by dubusadus at 7:07 PM on January 9, 2013


I acknowledged that. I still think sending him death threats is fucked up.

Agreed...in fact, I'd go as far as to say that it's probably never sensible to send anybody death threats for any reason.

...to deride Schmidt's efforts at opening up communications with a really terrifying nation state...

I didn't see any derision of Schmidt in this article. If, as you say, I "...don't have to care about North Korea or human suffering every waking moment of your life...", then what is wrong with the occasion zany human interest story about North Korea? I hate that nation's regime more than any other political entity on Earth, so this doesn't really distract me from that.
posted by Edgewise at 11:13 PM on January 9, 2013


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