ScopeY: Okay, let’s kick this off with something simple to get in the groove of things; if you flip a flipped pancake is the pancake then an unflipped pancake, a double flipped pancake, or still just a regularly flipped pancake?

Ssaa10dec: I don’t like pancakes 😂😂😂😂 sorry but really I don’t like pancakes so I have never done that but if I did, I would say its now a double flipped pancake.

ScopeY: Damn, not liking pancakes is a pretty big red flag, but double-flipped is the correct answer, so I’ll allow it. Now that the most important question is out of the way, we can move on with the interview. What first brought you to Genius and what is it that made you want to stick around?

Ssaa10dec: That was staggered. I first found Genius trying to find the lyrics to Demi Lovato’s "Heart Attack" cause they played that on the radio and everyone used to sing along except me. Then in 2016, Sia released This Is Acting, and one of the song’s lyrics was completely off so I decided to make an account and work on it. And then I sort of just stuck around. Genius became like another social media platform I would check every day lol

ScopeY: Very cool. I listened to This Is Acting quite a few times back then, and it’s a pretty good album. So, you spend most of your time on Korean pages – what is it exactly about Korean music that draws your attention?

Ssaa10dec: Korean music is a whole package. With a song, you get the visuals, the choreography, the sound, the lyrics, the performance. Everything and more. And this is something we haven’t seen in western pop music besides someone like Lady Gaga or Katy Perry and especially not with male artists.

The thing that attracts me to Korean music is that an artist can make a very articulate song with symbolism, depth, and meaningful lyrics and still go out and perform an attractive choreography to it while having pink hair but not take anything away from the core meaning of the song. It shows that you can have the glitz and glam and still be a serious artist.

ScopeY: Amazing answer. If any of our readers are on the fence about K-Pop, this should be enough to convince them to give it a chance. You’re also spearheading Genius Korea, which is a huge responsibility. How has your experience been with that so far, and how do you plan on growing the Korean community?

Ssaa10dec: The experience has been amazing. It’s been a long time coming. It is a bit tiring to manage all the moving parts but whenever I see that one fan comment or a retweet saying how awesome all this is, it just makes it all worth it. We are trying out different things with the forums, creating new initiatives and thread series. My biggest challenge with Genius Korea is that even though we get a lot of traffic on Korean pages, we can’t make the users stay on the website and continue to work and create annotations. So my main focus with the forum and our social media accounts is to attract users and get them to stay.

ScopeY: Ah, yeah, that is the biggest challenge. Perhaps something could be included about Genius Korea in the Q&A or something. I wish you many lucks in your wonderful journey. What are some of your passions and interests outside of music?

Ssaa10dec: While I take pride in writing about music and Genius helps me with that a lot, I also like to draw. I usually sketch when I am bored. I also recently bought a camera. So, I take photos when I go out and visit places. I am an introvert lol so I also watch a lot of Korean dramas and anime. I used to watch a lot of anime but I have slowed down these days. I am also a big Pokémon fan especially the games. Not super interesting but those are my interests outside of music.

ScopeY: This is all very interesting, don’t worry about it. I’m also an introvert so I feel you. What shows would you recommend for people who would like to get into anime?

Ssaa10dec: I think it really depends on the kinds of stories you like since anime is such a vast and rich medium. Some of the anime that were memorable for me were The Blue Exorcist, Nobunaga The Fool, The Asterisk War, Attack On Titan, Black Butler, Noragami. Black Butler was the one that got me into anime.
ScopeY: Many cool titles for people to dig into here. How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your day-to-day life? In what ways has it influenced how you consume media?

Ssaa10dec: Not by much lol. I didn’t use to go out that much anyway. I did have to stop working because of the lockdown. so that was kind of sad.

ScopeY: Yeah, more or less the same for me. What was your work?

Ssaa10dec: I am a Pharmacy student. So, I worked as a Pharmacy Assistant at a Safeway.

ScopeY: Ah, nice. That’s very cool. How far along are you into your education and do you have any plans for what you wanna do once you complete your degree?

Ssaa10dec: I am a brand new student lol. It’s my 3rd week of Pharm school. XD I want to work in Public Health and more on the administration side of healthcare.

ScopeY: o dang lmao I thought maybe you had done it for a while. Well, sounds like you have many hours of fun ahead of you. Speaking of fun, what’s a fun fact about yourself that you’d like to share with the viewers at home?

Ssaa10dec: I worked in undergrad as well so I have been working for a while but I just recently became a student.

A fun fact that I would like to share with my fans and viewers at home XD would be that I run 3 social media accounts on Twitter and Instagram, so 6 total. I also host a K-Pop/K-Drama Award show on Kakao (South Korean social media platform). The award show thing started out as a silly thing 4 years ago. But then it started getting more fun and more and more people started joining and voting so it became serious. But now I am in Grad school and I don’t know if I will have time to do it this year. But we’ll see. People from Kakao, Facebook, and Instagram vote on it. And they look forward to it so I don’t want to disappoint them either.

ScopeY: ahah damn yep that is a crazy fact for sure. Looks like you’re really keeping yourself busy. What keeps you motivated?

Ssaa10dec: Just people. You know. When I am in the Pharmacy I get motivated by seeing my team work. Here on Genius I see all these awesome users doing great things and engaging in conversations and working hard to improve themselves. On a gloomy day when I am lazy to do anything, I’ll get a DM from a user saying if these annotations are good and I see them working hard at it and that motivates me. In my personal life I see my cousins as motivation. I am an only child so I never had to compete with anyone for anything, so my cousins are a very important part of my life and personal growth.

ScopeY: That’s awesome. Very inspiring, much wholesome. How did your cousins contribute to your personal growth?

Ssaa10dec: You know usually when you have siblings, you get competitive. If you are the older one, you wanna be better so your sibling is proud of you and looks up to you. If you are the younger one, you wanna be as good as your older sibling to show everyone that you are amazing as well. But when you are an only child, you don’t have that in your life. So my cousins do that. I see them excelling in their professional lives and that motivates. On the flip side if they are socially distant or cold or rude, then I strive to never be like that.
ScopeY: Yep, I feel that. That makes a lot of sense. My little sister and I are close in height so she never looks up to me. Now that we’ve gone introspective and reflective, it feels appropriate to throw a few softballs; what is your favorite ice cream flavor?

Ssaa10dec: oh love butter pecan and chocolate brownie. I like crunchy or gooey things in my ice-cream. Like if i am having a simple vanilla ice-cream, i’ll sprinkle something on it. lol

ScopeY: I’m so glad you gave a good answer. I was slightly worried you were gonna say you didn’t like ice cream or something. To be honest, I haven’t fully recovered from learning that you don’t like pancakes. What are your favorite type of healthy snacks?

Ssaa10dec: Healthy? I don’t know what that is? XD Lol, My doctor has told me eat healthy too. I like, this is a weird combination but Cucumber and carrots with Hummus. I use the hummus as a dip. I also really like nuts like walnuts, peanuts, pistachios, cashews, etc.

ScopeY: haha I figured I should switch it so that we’re not talking about sweets too much. Your choice of snacks are pretty nuts though, not bad. Where in the world would you like to travel?

Ssaa10dec: The obvious one is South Korea. I would also like to go to France, New Zealand, Italy, Greece, Japan.

ScopeY: These are all great vacation spots. I’d personally love to visit Japan one day. When you draw, what do you like to draw?

Ssaa10dec: I like to draw animated things. I used to draw cartoon characters, anime character, Disney, Pokemon, Digimon. I suck at drawing real things lol especially mouth and nose and fingers. lol

ScopeY: haha maybe you could share some of your drawings on Genius, if you’d be comfortable with that. And you can just create original characters that don’t have mouth and fingers. Would you rather be chased down the street by hungry hippos or angry K-pop fans?

Ssaa10dec: I have been chased down by angry K-Pop fans on Twitter XD quite a few times actually lol. But hippos aren’t fast right? lol I think I can outrun/out-smart hippos.

ScopeY: hahah yeah I don’t even follow anything related to K-pop on Twitter, and I still come across angry K-pop fans sometimes. After a quick Google search I learned that hippos can run at 30 km/h (19 mph) so you’d have to be a pretty fast runner to outrun them. To bring it back to Genius, what is the best thing about the Genius community?

Ssaa10dec: side note: I shared the previous question in my kpop group chat on Kakao and everyone is like we’ll take the hippos XD

Best thing about Genius. wow. It really is a community. No matter what is going on at the company level, you can rest assured that the Genius community has got each others back. No matter if users disagree on things, at the end of the day, they can come together and bond over their shared love of music. The way I have seen people defend each other and support each other on this site, is unlike any other. The best example was when Ewok was forced out. That happened a while ago and yet we still have users with EwokMatters in their bios, handles, names.
ScopeY: Your K-pop chat knows what’s up.

That’s beautiful about the community. Totally agree. I don’t really contribute to the site anymore, so I’m still around pretty much because of my connection to the community. This is probably something I should’ve asked earlier in the community, but what is the meaning of your name? It feels rather cryptic.

Ssaa10dec: the four letters are the initials of my full name and the 10dec is my birth date.

ScopeY: Okay, that was a little less complicated than what I assumed it would be, but it’s very personal, so very cool. Well, this feels like a nice place to end this wonderful interview; do you have any final words you would like to add to the fine people in the audience?

Ssaa10dec: Thank you so much for this interview. It was lovely. I got to share a lot about myself. This year has been very special for me on Genius and in my life. I hope to end this year on a strong note and move on to 2021. I wanna thank everyone who I have interacted with on this website, my peers, my editors, my contributors.

Also, gotta shamelessly self-promote, Follow Genius Korea on Twitter and Instagram.

ScopeY: The pleasure is all mine! I had a good time getting to know you better; thank you for taking the time. Looking forward to following your growth on Genius, and I wish you the best in your personal life.