who's your daddy

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

I know this is really belated, as usual, but I want to say something about the whole Wee Shu Min debacle. And since I'm a late entrant into the market I shall take a different approach - and admit to being one of the probably five people in Singapore who sympathises with the girl.

She's only 18 years old, after all, and when I myself was 18 - a good lifetime or so ago - I may very well have blogged about the same thing. In fact, it's not out of the question for me to blog about it even now, although I've since learned enough not to do so in such "brutal" language.

Here I should probably say that I honestly don't think I'm elitist. While I quite candidly confess that I avoid people whose intelligence I consider subpar (let's not argue about this again, philip), this isn't because I think I'm better than them, but simply because they don't interest me a whole lot. Much like the news that Stikfas is going to make Neon Genesis Evangelion figures doesn't interest people who grew up in the 1970s. (Heh heh, generational qie.)

But I completely understand how someone like Wee Shu Min would arrive at that line of thinking on her own and feel strongly enough about it to use such emotive words. I attended a number of so-called elite schools in my time, I suppose, and I do dimly remember some people impressing on us the fact that we were the future leaders of the country - at times, depending on the school, the world - and that we earned this role by besting our peers in a supposedly status-blind system of meritocracy (this deserves a whole other blog post on its own later). This came garnished by some sort of implication that everyone else simply wasn't good enough. Probably this was told to us with the intention of conveying that with great power comes great responsibility, but like all ADD-ed kids, we may have stopped listening after "great power".

So Wee Shu Min - in my opinion - over-villified. What I think really lies at the heart of the problem is her dad, who was clearly on MC the day they conducted "PR 101: What Not To Say To The Press". In what I (not grudgingly at all) concede was a great story, Wee Siew Kim did a Really Stupid Thing and stood by his daughter's "basic point". And then apologised for any discomfort that may have been caused by his apology, which seems to be the blanket strategy adopted by the MIW, likely explained at length in "PR 102: How To Apologise Without Really Being Sorry".

In any case, the whole episode throws up another interesting dimension: how liable, really, are we for what we say on our blogs? Everyone tells me bloggers who don't realise that everything they blog about is public are just stupid. But these people typically aren't bloggers themselves. The truth is, the process of blogging lends you the illusion of invulnerability. You're just typing words on a keyboard! You don't have an agenda! The screen doesn't react to your sentences! And when real live people respond to your posts, they usually do it via comments or email, which not only dulls the impact of the replies but allows you the convenience of deleting them.

Like most bloggers, I write for an audience. I don't know every single person who reads my blog by name and face, but I do have a general good idea of who my readers are. I know my blog is, by definition, public. But that doesn't mean that I have to stand by everything I say, especially if it was a long time ago and circumstances have changed since then. It also doesn't mean that I should re-edit all my entries once I no longer feel the same way about what I may have previously said. It's nice, sometimes, to make mistakes and say stupid things and be able to record it all down so you can look back ten years down the road and chuckle fondly and self-indulgently at your misconceptions.

Of course, every time I give out my URL to a new person, or my blog is linked by Tomorrow or another portal, I go back and read old entries to make sure I'm "safe", because something that may have been written in the heat of the moment months ago may now take on a totally different shine when lifted out of its original context. I may not necessarily change things, but it gives me a new perspective on what I wrote before and, in some way, helps make me more tolerant because it forces me to see my own point of view from someone else's eyes.

Answers to questions that usually come up at this point: yes, I could write a private diary instead, but I often air my opinions in public (and make them more extreme than they really are) so that someone can argue with me about them and better my understanding of the issues. Yes, complete freedom of speech - even in a blog - isn't desirable when it crosses the line and could potentially incite social instability (MIW's favourite phrase), but why is it that we're guilty of possible incitement until proven innocent, rather than the other way around?

Speaking of favourite phrases, c. was just remarking the other day that this has been a good year for political buzzphrases. "Get out of my elite uncaring face" has now joined the hallowed ranks of "mee siam mai ham", "bak chor mee", and "fix the opposition", among others.

And all this would never have come about without the Internet. Technology is slowly eroding our privacy, and Facebook and MySpace and Flickr have made it possible for photos of a bikini-clad Wee Shu Min to spark off the next round of bashing. Perhaps in the end technology is the great power, and we all need to learn how to use it more responsibly.

Okay lah all this was really just so I could plug this awesome video, made by my equally awesome friend, the brilliant and talented han. Which, I conclude, is the trick to quashing any elitist tendencies you have - just surround yourself with brilliant and talented friends.

 posted by zyn :: 1:02 AM :: 9 Comments :: permalink


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