Three Things That Actually Matter Right Now: Virtual Idols, a Russian Teacher’s War, and James Acaster

I’ve been sitting on this for a while, but the MIT Tech Review’s “3 things” column by Mat Honan (I think? The byline wasn’t clear) hit on three genuinely interesting things this month. Not the usual tech-bro gadget fluff. Let’s dig in.

Isegye Idol: K-pop, but make it anonymous and weird

You think K-pop is overproduced? Wait until you meet virtual idols. These are real humans performing as anime-style digital characters via motion capture, and the whole thing is somehow more honest than anything BTS ever put out.

My current obsession is Isegye Idol, a six-member girl group created by Woowakgood, a Korean VTuber. The members are completely anonymous. No real names, no Instagram accounts, no parasocial drama. And that anonymity lets them do something rare: be genuinely funny and honest. They play League of Legends, Go, Minecraft. They chitchat. They perform this kitschy music that sits somewhere between anime opening and video game soundtrack.

It’s DIY as hell. And it’s intimate in a way that mainstream K-pop can’t touch.

The group’s popularity tells you something about Gen Z South Koreans. They’re famously lonely, culturally adrift, struggling to find work, giving up on dating. They’re building friendships online because reality stopped working for them. Isegye Idol is what happens when you let people build a magical universe because the real one is a letdown.

Mr. Nobody Against Putin

Pavel Talankin was a schoolteacher in Karabash, Russia. UNESCO once called it the most toxic place on Earth—a copper-smelting town where the air tastes like metal. Talankin shot video, partially in secret, of his life there. The smokestacks. The cold. The ice mustache he’d get walking outside. And his students, bright-eyed kids who clearly adored him.

Then the war happened. State propaganda seeped into everything. A new patriotic curriculum. Mandatory parades. Visits from mercenaries. Talankin, an antiwar progressive with a democracy flag in his classroom, watched the creative space he’d built with his students get dismantled piece by piece.

David Borenstein’s Oscar-winning documentary tells Talankin’s story through his own footage. What struck me most isn’t the politics—it’s how strange it is being an adult around kids. We shape them in ways we don’t recognize. Talankin loved those kids, and the system crushed that love.

Repertoire by James Acaster

I’m the kind of idiot who pays $150 to watch a comedian in a smelly San Francisco theater that charges $20 for a can of water. Because I’m crazy enough to hope standup won’t die. In February, I saw British comedian James Acaster live. It was mediocre.

But Repertoire, his 2018 Netflix miniseries, is gold. Four parts, shot right after a breakup. He plays a cop who goes undercover as a standup comedian, forgets who he is, and gets divorced. Then things get weird.

“What if every relationship you’ve ever been in,” Acaster asks, “is somebody slowly figuring out they didn’t like you as much as they hoped they would?”

That line hits like a truck. The best comedy comes from paying attention to the hellhole you’re in. I wish Acaster many more pitfalls.