On Monday, October 12th at 6:00 pm fellow AAC intern Ming and I’s official event was held. It was the first event I organized with the Asian American Center, so I wanted to start it off with one of my favorite ways to spend time with my friends: jopping. If you haven’t already read one of my past blogs called “A Little Dive into my Freshman Year at the AAC,” where I explain what exactly jopping is, you should go check it out!
Basically, over the summer, I figured out ways to jop virtually: through a combination of zoom and a relatively new website known as Metastream. Zoom allows everyone to view each other freaking out while Metastream is a chrome extension that allows the videos to be queued and played at the same time. I wanted to reunite with friends I haven’t really talked to in a while and celebrate the release of a new music video. The music video in question was “Make a Wish” by NCT U, a subunit of NCT who I have been a huge fan of since 2018.
The day of the event, the Facebook page was made and I promoted it to different groupchats, groups and told people I saw during the day such as my roommates and a few friends. I didn’t really expect a huge turnout since the event itself seemed very sudden and it was possible people were enjoying Indigenous People’s Day by going out instead of staying indoors.
Ming and I ended up making the Zoom call and the Metastream session around 10 minutes before the official time in preparation. Around 6:05 was when most people started to pull up, and we waited a few more minutes before we queued the first song, which was of course Jopping by SuperM. After a few awkward minutes of everyone getting used to seeing each other again, everything soon fell into place and we began having conversations inside the chat and queuing all of our favorite music videos and live performances.
Around 14 people ended up showing up and we even got a few people who weren’t huge fans of Kpop to join us and watch. Even though it was pretty much just a bunch of my friends and people I knew who were at the event, I still had a lot of fun talking with everyone and sharing the excitement of new music. I’ll definitely try to host the event again sometime in the future so that hopefully some freshmen can make some new upperclassmen friends.
