Singapore's "Infantile Blogosphere"

So, as I was planning my stunningly amusing blog entry for the day, I was reading the heavily plugged Tomorrow and found a link to Mr. Steven McDermott's entry labelling the Singapore Blogosphere "infantile"; he refers to a 1995 article written by a certain “Ann Tellman” (which he reproduces in his site) and pronounces the Singapore blogging community ‘infantile’. In a nutshell, this statement pisses me off. Seeing as to how Mr. McDermott is obviously a reasonable, intelligent man, I will pitch this entry to a reasonable, intelligent, educated audience. Sorry, no ‘fuck you, fuck me, fuck the world’ in this entry. You can read my previous entry for that. I just have a few things which I feel need to be said, and damn it, I’m going to say them. You know the drill; if this bores you, click on the title of this post, see the blog babe of the day, maybe leave a comment, and go on your way. But for now, let’s get down to business.

To be fair, Mr. McDermott agrees that his statement may have been a little harsh; his logic, if I interpret it correctly is as follows:

1) Mr. Brown and Xiaxue are popular; in fact, they are, in all likelihood, the most popular blogs in Singapore.

2) The most popular blogs are by definition the most accurate reflection of the Singaporean blogger mindset

3) Neither Xiaxue or Mr. Brown raise thought provoking, status-quo changing posts, or incisive social critique. This makes their content un-intellectual. Mr. Brown’s ability to keep a job in the local newspaper somehow casts doubt on the controversial nature of his blog.

4) The lack of social commentary reflects an unquestioning support of the government, and thus allows the government unbridled power, which they are free to abuse as they like.

5) Singaporeans have thus fallen prey to the government’s evil ploy to keep our bellies full and our heads empty; we only have ourselves to blame when the revolution comes and we are the first against the wall.

Naturally, it was not Mr. McDermott’s intention to be inflammatory. However, I really resent the implications of his argument. I have a lot of very liberal friends here in the states, and they often say things about Singapore as well; how we’re citizens of a draconian police state, how our laws are punitive and harsh, how we’re oppressed, the list goes on; I always tell them that it isn’t as bad as they think, that Singapore’s system isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be, and frankly, I’m tired of saying it.

Yes, it’s true that it’s kind of silly that there’s a law against chewing gum. Yes, it’s kind of silly that you get caned for vandalism. Yes, it’s kind of harsh that smuggling drugs gets you the death penalty, and yes, I do sympathize with Shanmugam Murugesu. I can accept it when people say Singapore isn’t the most liberal country in the world, and I can accept that sometimes, the government babies us a little bit. However, I really can’t stand the popular notion that it’s our national culture which is somehow to blame for this; I resent the portrayal of Singaporeans as unintelligent, unquestioning sheep who blindly follow the government’s autocratic doctrines and are, in some twisted way, responsible for their terrible state of affairs. I resent the implications that just because we love to eat and shop (believe me, I have a distinct passion for both these things) we are thus, by definition, purely consumers, and nothing more.

You see, Mr. McDermott, in my opinion, it’s not the Singapore blogging community that’s puerile. It’s the whole world; the internet in general. If you wanted to judge the state of the world from popular blogs, then, on the evidence of Maddox and Tucker Max, we’re all a little infantile. If you want to look closer to home, the ingenious folk at Rather Good and b3ta.com aren’t exactly paragons of maturity, either. As Shianux says in a comment on your post, blogs serve many purposes. One of these is entertainment. I would go so far as to say that the major purpose blogs serve is entertainment. As much as I hate to say it, the most popular use of the internet is not intellectual discussion, but entertainment. Given a choice, I will unwaveringly predict that the average male college student in America uses the internet more for downloading pornography than for debating politics. This does not make America a perverted, disgusting society (though some close-minded Singaporeans may have mentioned this off-hand, and hence propagated the image of the conservative Singaporean, opposed to ‘Western liberalism’); it merely reflects the fact that, most of the time, man kind in general is rather base. I’d love to say that the world is full of thoughtful, considerate, intellectual people, but it isn’t. In fact, I’ll even go a step further and confess that, more often than not, I am not a thoughtful, considerate, intellectual person.

Nonetheless, none of this implies that we’re infantile, either. Anthony, in reply to Mr. McDermott’s post, remarked how Singaporean websites like Talking Cock use humour to question the government; I feel this is one of the most striking pieces of evidence that we aren’t the sheep people make us out to be. While I can’t claim that the local film industry is regularly churning out stunning works of art, I like to think that it shows a lot of promise, and regularly churns out fairly good stuff, like Royston Tan’s fifteen, and Jacen Tan’s Tak Giu, which, if you think about it, is really not too shabby for a tiny little red dot.

Perhaps what really distresses Mr. McDermott is the fact that politically minded, mature blogs like his own or Shianux’s get so much less traffic than the blogs with less intellectual subject matter. Here’s a heads up, Mr. McDermott; as far as I’m concerned, intellectual blogs, in general, get less readers than the funny, irrelevant, irreverent ones. This is true all over the world. This is not necessarily because people are stupid; rather, it is due to the fact that the vast majority of people don’t have the energy to think about politics. Yes, political blogs in America and the UK have more readers; this is not because the people in these two countries are by default more intelligent. Rather, it is a direct result of the fact that there are more people in these countries.

So, in conclusion, please don’t say that our blogosphere is infantile. Please don’t insinuate that we are the unwilling perpetrators of our own allegedly unhappy existence. We like our food, and our shopping, and our trips to Malaysia, but this does not make us passive automatons. It just makes us normal people, who don’t like being called stupid.

Alright, sorry to all my regular readers for boring you with that rant. Here’s the blog babe you’ve all come for: All Things Oriental. Oh, I love the delicious irony of providing a blog babe today. No, she’s not a bimbo. In fact, she seems quite clever, even if she might like food.

technorati tags: singapore, blogosphere, singapore blogosphere