3 May 2007

State of the Singapore Blogosphere, May 2007

I think my original rant was that there had yet to be a 'golden age' of the Sg blogosphere, not that there used to be. As for the infants now winning I agree, however I see it in a different light, it is those who argue for 'objectivity, fairness, unbiased and personal accounts' of their lives that are winning. In a regime that prides itself in de-politicisation of the polity then yes there has been a shift towards non-political narratives. But surely this is an acceptance of the Singaporean hegemony, so while the political blogs and aggregator blogs continue to be busy building resistance identities rather than project identities, the Singapore blogosphere is nothing other than a bunch of predominantly middle-class, university educated males constructing a space for self-referential echo chambers - myself included.


By Elia Diodati
Authoritarian, yes. But transparent nonetheless. - Kitana, b.Itter s.Weet sym.Phony, The Final Post, April 17 2007.

Back on April Fools’ Day, I wrote about how the Singapore blogosphere is losing its vitality; now akikonomu, the former high priestess of Ise, has already written its epitaph, an ode to rampaging infants. Even back when I started blogging, there were whispers that things weren’t as good as they used to me. Soci, then Steven McDermott, famously ranted long and hard about the “infantile sub-intelligentsia nonsense” permeating the ether.

But now the infants are winning. The great practitioners of online political discourse have declined into moribund obscurity, or sought out other, more rewarding, pursuits. Singabloodypore itself has degenerated into a post-and-boast groupblog. The old Singapore Angle is busy with his second child (congratulations!), while the new Singapore Angle is trapped in its self-pleasing, obsessive groupthink over academic rigor as applied to things that really don’t deserve such standards. Molly Meek’s feline invective somehow seems less vituperative of current affairs and has taken on the tone of self-indugent mockery, in exasperation over her1 inability to satirize the absurd truth. Even Mr Wang has tired of his self-effusing posts on how stupid the Singapore government can be at times, and has made a subtle shift toward “a new thematic focus” as announced on March 30. And in the past six months there has been a noticeable string of prominent self-imposed rigors mortis: Yuen Chung Kwong (December 1), Gayle Goh (January 28), Kitana (April 13), Zyberzitizen (April 18), and now sieteocho (May 1). Vox Leo, by my measure, has joined the ranks of the officially moribund, having last posted on August 22 2006. En & Hou (of Students’ Sketchpad fame) have yet to make good on their promise to “see you after the ‘A’ levels“. And Kway Teow Man’s personal blog seems to have been abandoned since sometime in March.

Unlike the L’Enfant that built the great architectural masterpieces of Washington DC’s National Mall, the infants now overrunning the Singapore blogosphere are killing it through apathetic karma. Sure, it’s not like the infants are engaging in wanton destruction, but on the rare occasions they leave their self-enraptured bubble of photos, linkwhoring ^o^~~~ posts to various offline friends and their pink Comic Sans CSS stylesheets, they tend to form the incessant, one-dimensional chorus of “cannot lah!”

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