94 Time November 25, 2019
FAST FACTS
HOMETOWN
SALZBURG,
AUSTRIA
BEST
KNOWN FOR
FILING
STRATEGIC
COMPLAINTS
AGAINST
TECH GIANTS
ON THE ASCENT
BLACKPINK
Blackpink’s star may still be rising
in the U.S., but on YouTube, it
reigns supreme: the foursome—
a.k.a. Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé and
Lisa—has 31 million subscribers,
more than any other music group
in the world. This year, Blackpink
also became the first K-pop girl
group to perform at Coachella,
heralding a new era of Korean acts
stepping past language barriers
to play global stages. Blackpink’s
success has been powered in part
by a devoted legion of digitally
savvy fans—in this case, Blinks—
who, among other things, helped
its flashy “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” music
video reach 1 billion streams. The
group’s goal, they say, is to make
music that helps listeners gain
“confidence and boldness.”
ÑKat MoonPRIVACY CRUSADER
MAX SCHREMS | 32
If you’re a big tech company in Europe,
chances are you don’t want to hear from
Max Schrems. The lawyer and founder of
NOYB (None of Your Business)—a Vienna-
based privacy- rights nonprofit—has
made it his life’s mission to ensure that
companies like Google and Facebook don’t
exploit user data, often by filing complaints
with European regulators. In 2015, he
famously helped to overturn Safe Harbor,
a major trade agreement that permitted
companies like Facebook to transfer
Europeans’ personal data to the U.S.
NOYB has since filed complaints against
companies from Apple to Amazon. In
January, a French data- protection regulator
fined Google €50 million (or about
$57 million) for a breach of a European
Union data- privacy law—thanks in part to
complaints submitted by NOYB and the
advocacy group La Quadrature du Net.
—Tara LawCAPTURING
CHARACTER
SALLY ROONEY | 28
By Meg WolitzerSally Rooney has a presence. I
was reading Normal People in a
café in Sydney last spring, and
the waitress came bounding up
to me, wanting to talk about the
book. There I was: an Ameri-
can writer in Australia, talking
about this young Irish novelist.
In this chaotic moment in
time, whenever people want to
talk about a writer of good, in-
teresting fiction, it always gives
me hope. Good fiction shows us
how people live, how they feel
and think, how they navigate the
world. It gives a sense of lives
lived.
Conversations With Friends
and Normal People are such
lived and lively books at
the same time. There’s no
preamble—right away, Rooney
marinates us in the world of
Frances and Bobbi, of Connell
and Marianne. She makes us
willing to follow them immedi-
ately. I love hearing that Rooney
was this champion debater, be-
cause the novels are not polem-
ics. They’re not trying to reach
a point. When I started reading
her, I was startled by how little
description there was, but the
starkness leaves room for im-
pressions, for the reader to pro-
cess everything.
Some writing can be intru-
sive, as if the writer is suggest-
ing you don’t know enough to
navigate her world on your own.
But in her novels, Rooney lets
her characters talk. Sometimes,
because her writing is so spare
but has such an effect, you won-
der, What just happened there?
With Rooney, I don’t mind not
knowing. That’s art.Wolitzer is a New York Times
best-selling author