Got into a little facebook tussle + rant

Pretty common for me to pick fights on the internet =(

Protip: don't fight on facebook. It can be nearly as bad as having sex with the other guy in public.

I don't really have anything against the YOG, honest. I don't have too much interest in the politics at the moment, because my own life is a sinking ship. But once in a while I can't resist playing devil's advocate. The perverseness of going against the flow... it gets me hard!

So anyway I don't know either of these people, or indeed many people at all on FB, so I decide what the hell I'll just go bomb something off the top of my head. I thought the miss Tan up was just making a throwaway comment like me, but nooooo, she starts naming names. Everybody in Singapore knows that one person is just a dangerous detractor, but two people is a mob and you should call the police so they can bring in the riot vans and tear gas.

Anyway yeah, small beans, wouldn't even call it mudslinging (though I probably sound harsh for a Singaporean). The surprise is when I realize that Estell IS ON MY FRIENDS LIST LOL WAT. I keep a fairly tight friends list and never add anyone I don't know, and I have never known anyone by this name. I check the profile, and it's my junior in Mass Communication. She changed her name to this weird thing.

*headslap* Of course. It's the goddamn internet.

I guess it looks like I've lost another of my precious few media contacts, not to mention one of links back to my old life in secondary school and the Drama Club. I shall strive to be less snide on Facebook. *sigh* Miss Tan there added me as a friend though, lol. She appears to be a 20+ politically-minded girl, judging from her profile. I was hoping she'd be younger, hehehe.

Rant time. Why are Singaporeans so adverse to passionate debate and argument? It gets on my tits how many people keep interjecting variations of "OMG I HAZ MY OWN OPINION OKEY" and "agree 2 disagree can???" Those phrases have nothing inherently wrong about them - when an argument persists as a stalemate, you can talk about common ground and difference of opinion to bring things back to earth. But it has been feeling to me for a very long time that too many Singaporeans spam these lines at the first sign of tension, throwing a blanket on the debate the moment things get interesting.

Singaporeans like us loooooove the status quo. It terrifies us that our opinions may be OMG WRONG, it terrifies us that because Person A has different values from Person B, a fight might break out OMG! Or they won't be friends anymore. No, we just want everyone to keep quiet except when they're agreeing with each other. After all, we wouldn't want a repeat of the racial riots from 1962 now would we?

We're so fucking pampered, not just in the material sense, but in the social sense. In May last year or the year before, a Singaporean teacher went to lecture at New York. There, she taught that homosexuality was bad, which made the liberals there flare up and start up a little campaign against her. Did she stand up for what she believed in? Fuck no. She turned tail and ran for home. I'm pro-gay marriage myself, but that's not the point. The point is that Singaporeans shit their pants at the first sign of conflict, they either run away spouting "BUT IT JUZ MAI OPINON", or they get really defensive (see LKY's lawsuits).

It's probably the reason Singaporeans venture little into the international stage beyond business. One of the few reasons I would not migrate west is because I'm pretty sure I'm mollycoddled too. Wouldn't fit in.