Alay (or 4L4Y, Anak Layangan or Anak Lebay) is a pop culture phenomenon in Indonesia. It is a stereotype describing something “tacky” and “cheesy” (norak or kampungan, in Indonesian). The Alay culture phenomena spans over a wide array of styles in music, dress, and messaging. It has often been compared to that of the Jejemon phenomenon originating from the Philippines and Harajuku from Japan. Although the former emerged much later and the latter admired in the west.
The word alay has no exact meaning or obvious derivation. Various definitions of alay are offered when one types it on a search engine. One theory that is widely accepted is that "alay" is a portmanteau of the term "Anak Layangan" (Indonesian: Children playing Kites), a pejorative describing someone having certain physical attributes from spending most of their time outside and getting sunburnt. Another suggests that the term originates from "Malay" as alay is unique to Southeast Asian countries.
Due to the very low significance of the alay phenomenon in the Indonesian society (considered to be a minor social change) very little documentation of its emergence exists. According to alay today, alay originated from the social networking site friendster. As early as 2004, Indonesians, regardless of their social background, decorated their friendster profile with leet texts, glitter banners and close-up profile pictures. This social networking trend would later on be "condemned" by many towards the end of the decade when Facebook overpowered friendster.
Many contemporary pop rock Indonesian music are considered to be alay music. Either because the artistes are the trend setters for alay or their fandom consists of alays. Jazz, punk rock, reggae, urban, religious and other genres including dangdut are not considered to be alay. Musicians who fall into any of the genres above usually has a fandom spanning various social strata and enjoy elite celebrity status. Alay fashion stands out in everyday life as they are donned by a collective of teenagers hanging out in various spots of Indonesian cities. Particularly from the middle-lower income class who are only able to afford cheap but stylish apparels. The most common attributes are tight jeans, boxer, T-shirt beneath a plaid jacket and a cap.
Writing alay (Indonesian: Alay text) is a form of the Indonesian language that has undergone "excessive leet transformation". Contrary to the popular belief that it is "destroying" the national language, grammatical standards are met in contrast to the modern Indonesian slang language. Similar to the jejebets, alay texts offer an alternative in compressing words so that they are under the 160 character-limit in text messages, often to the point that they are impossible to read. Rules in capitalization are mostly ignored.
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