??: “The streets are littered with corpses. People freeze to death, get shot, or are beaten to death with clubs, house after house. How can you all be so indifferent?”


    A user on Failnet was taking a jab at us.@@@@


    But no one on our board paid them any mind.


    Anonymous 1311: “Today’s snowman.”


    Anonymous 458: “Snowman ver. 3.1.”


    rokaGG: “Snowman!”


    Anonymous 853: “I made a snowman too.”


    Berkut_break: “I don’t usually follow trends, but this vibe got me making a snowman.”


    mmmmmmmmm: “The Hope Palace—made of snow: ‘SNOW PALACE.’”


    ...


    Even new users, obscure ones, and those with poor reputations were all talking about snowmen.


    Preppers were treated like fools, seen as immature, maladjusted individuals.


    In the Joseon era, an unmarried man wearing braided hair would have faced less ridicule than a modern South Korean prepper.


    There was even a comedian, Hwang Dae-seop, who built his entire career mocking preppers on TV.


    Even someone like me, who rarely watched television, learned about his show through YouTube.


    One episode sticks with me:


    A skinny, disheveled man with sunken eyes (played by Hwang Dae-seop) hoards meat at a grocery store, preparing for doomsday. But the apocalypse never comes. Time passes peacefully, symbolized by a rapidly spinning clock and a backdrop showing days and nights blurring together.


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