Kim Yeji of South Korea.
Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
Contemporary pop culture is obsessed with the tech dystopia: cult anime classics like AKIRA; the popularity of fantasy video games like Destiny 2: The Final Shape and the Marathon series; films and TV shows based on dystopian games like The Last of Us and Fallout. There’s Balenciaga’s recent fashion campaigns featuring A.I.-generated images and video games, timed to the lead-up to their headline-making A/W 2024 cyberpunk collection, a weird reflection of an era in which haute couture is trying to attract gamers with structured looks that can be described as simple, monochromatic casual.
All of this has led to an online landscape ruled by the aesthetics of subversive ‘90s sci-fi movies. We’ve turned back to The Fifth Element and The Matrix, which deal with timeless humanist themes that resonate with current anti-capitalist sentiment – while looking effortlessly cool in the process. There’s an air of rebellious hacker-turned-hitman vibes, set against a mix of post-apocalyptic cityscapes, Frankensteined rigs, and state-of-the-art gadgetry. And so it makes sense, then, that Olympic sports shooting is having a moment, courtesy of several tweets featuring a now-viral video of South Korean shooter Kim Yeji from a qualifier event this past May. Donning a backwards cap and an eyepiece fit for a cyborg optometrist, thousands of people marveled at her stone-cold technique, commenting on her seemingly laid back stance and “INSANE FIT,” worn with the attitude of an anime “super villain.”
The clip resurfaced shortly after Kim won the silver medal in the women’s 10m air pistol in Paris this past weekend, leading to a collective online revelation: Olympic sports shooting is for the kind of baddies you’d expect to see in a cyberpunk anime. And what’s ensued over the past few days is an all-out frenzy over Kim’s hardcore “vigilante anti-hero” vibes, with people stitching together fancams, cracking jokes, and posting more clips to TikTok, some of which feature Kim’s gold medalist teammate, Oh Ye Jin, who’s helped inspire “Oh Yejin/Kim Yeji-core” and numerous “me and my friends” memes.
In a world inundated with people who make over-the-top statements through their social interactions and so-called “aesthetic,” the fact that people are freaking out over a woman in a Fila windbreaker is proof that performative attention-grabbing will never match the cool of someone who gives no fucks. These people already know they’re the Main Character, yet you can’t even tell that Kim just broke the women’s world record for the 25m event by her could-care-less demeanor or qualified for the world’s most prominent and prestigious sporting event. All you notice is her focus and intensity, her stoic attitude, aided by a humble toughness and what looks like a fancy, retro-futurist eyepiece you can get as an add-on from the revamped Cyberpunk 2077, which has experienced an aesthetic-based resurgence that emphasizes fashion and function.
Admittedly, it took me a while to figure out why I was also on the “desperately wanting to be IRL friends” bandwagon. I agreed she looked badass, and that I really wanted to be her friend. But I wondered why everyone was seemingly fixated on her steampunk-looking eyepiece, which is a relatively low-tech and extremely practical combination of lens and blinders.
So I texted my friend Sam Rolfes, a VR artist and performer who’s been dealing with these kinds of aesthetics since way before the internet took over every single facet of our lives. In their opinion, the dystopian tech look could be a byproduct of our insatiable hunger for new tech, and the subsequent urge to collect “a million physical things for different tasks,” while citing multi-task items like iPhones, Google’s smart-glasses, and Microsoft’s HoloLens VR headset. That said, these new tech innovations are mostly seen as yet another “screen slab [to] stare at,” perceived as “boring” in comparison to “fiddly physical pieces of tech that do interesting things,” which Rolfes attributes to our “yearn for gadgets.” More specifically, “specialized physical devices versus a couple standardized screens used for everything.”
Something clicked when they said that, and I began wondering whether I’d also fallen for the illusion of novelty tech created by Kim’s eyepiece, and maybe the actual reason I was drawn to Kim was her attitude of indifference amid the noise and bluster of the internet in 2024. Like everyone else, I’d initially assumed it was the eyepiece that made her cool, when it was actually just Kim’s quiet and composed demeanor. She is “confident all the time,” according to AFP, who she told, understatedly: “I think I have become a bit famous now.” she said in that same article. She’s proof that Main Character energy is lived, not projected through a tweetstorm or thirst trap. It’s about being able to realize a hard-earned dream and just walk away, unbothered by anyone else’s opinion, except her own.
