What Ephraim Spells For The Singaporean Blogsphere and Political Discourse

this has got to be the most classic moment in the history of the singaporean blogsphere. an amazingly hilarious episode that underscores the power and pervasiveness of blogs as the defining alternative medium in singapore.

it all started when this guy with a weird name ephraim wrote a somewhat ill-conceived and sparsely argued letter to the straits times forum complaining about how he was outraged at the use of expletives on rockson's blog after he decided to check it out upon reading a feature on some teen magazine which described rockson's blog as 'hilarious'. (the very fact that a 20+y/o post NS male would actually still read teen magazines is in my opinion, far more disturbing). *update: it appears that the magazine at question was Lime , i guess that makes it marginally less disturbing than if it was Teens or Teenage.* whether or not his argument was indeed cogent is really beside the point considering what happened later.

rockson then put up a post in response to this ephraim's letter which gave a tinge of suggestion that he might '..not blog so much now, wait kena more people complain'. that pissed the hell outta the teeming legions of rockson's readers and the subsequent furor was phenomenal, and perhaps even unprecedented to say the least.

within a day, there was an overwhelming outpour of comments in support of rockson on his blog either pleading him to continue blogging, flamming that ephraim fellow and it didn't stop at that. it was an amazing case of uncoordinated mass flamming with supporters of rockson like bengue fever setting up a new blog just to flame the ephraim fellow and some others even searching the entire internet just to find out the url of ephraim's blog to post on rockson's comments board, encouraging people to go flame his blog. one guy even went as far as to find out ephraim's friendster profile:

24 SLK said...

ATTENTION EVERYONE!! IVE FOUND EPHRAIM'S FRENSTER!! ITS THIS ADDRESS!! GO KAN HIS NA BEI CHAO CHEE BYE EVERI1!!!

http://www.friendster.com/user.php?uid=2966696

in less than half a day, ephraim's tag board was spammed entirely with rockson's ginna flamming him. the tags are fucking hilarious, and following it throughout the day in the accursed comp lab really cracked me up making my mugging day alot less torturous for me.

the tags ranged from the Rational...

anonymous: ur blog is doing way more damage to young people with its inaneness, its "celebrities are gods" mode of thinking & its utter egoistical & boring writing style & its totla lack of social conscience.

Lalaland: Perhaps it was not wise to write such a holier-than-thou letter to the press was it? We dont begrudge you your views, but perhaps the medium through which you expressed them.

...to the Cryptic

phua bye: u think u sibeh zai, report the blog to ST is sibeh hiong, lim peh tell u, u wrong liao.. u go out arh, really becareful leh, if not better wear a mask, or not confirm sure kana whack by rockson's fanclub de. retard. trust urself to get involve in this.

anonymous you are a dead man, ephraim. Rest in peace...

...to those that question him on his sexuality and NS credentials (it's unbelievable how rockson's fans will go to great lengths, sieving ephraim's entire archive just to find flame fodder)

Ephraim is a Sissy: Hey sissy E-Frame Who kena BMT recourse, when are you going to write to the Straits Times again to complain about people "spamming" your tagboard ? Oooohhh, I'm sooo scared. Whatcha gonna do ? Set your Mediacorpse and PAP friends upon us, call the ISD ?

fucking cheebye: lancheow la fucker. serve NS they dont scold cheebye like puncutations arh? which unit were u in? music and dance company? fuck you ok cheebye kia. self denial, self righteous piece of shit. lancheow face

....and to the downright HILARIOUSLY inane!

24 slk: eh fcuk face.. wah lan eh.. ur face sibeh er xin leh.. if u go out people nvr whack u, sun will rise from ur mothers chee bye. bastard u are.

my personal favourite -

anonymous: your blog is as boring as your stupid articles. U will never be Rockson type blogger because you suck your cock too much. Take $50 put in left hand. Masturbate with right hand. Then pay yourself ok!


somewhere along the line, a certain tagger LeNN went against the flow and defended ephraim using -wait for this- the very vulgarities which ephraim found offensive. a sharp eyed rockson's ginna discovered that the IP addresses of ephraim and LeNN were identical, so it must have been that ephraim fellow defending himself with a pseudonym. to be fair, ephraim might have had a legitimate reason as to why he was so peeved at seeing expletives (maybe the expletives reminded him of a ___ (insert random physical/sexual abuse) he suffered during his traumatic childhood, we'll never know). but the pseudonym tagging was just a blantant act of cowardice and it destroyed whatever credibility in defending his POV. and as i type, the flamming continues.

it seems apparant that ephraim is pretty comfortable and perhaps rejoicing at his new found notoriety. in that aspect at least, Ephraim has made his first giant step towards achieving his dream of becoming some journalist/singer/actor/random celebrity - having subscribed himself to the quinessential media-whore belief that negative publicity, is better than no publicity at all.

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Yet beyond the sheer humour of the whole shebang, there are some pretty plausible negative repurcussions on the singaporean cyber community.

Firstly, as evident in the militant fanfare surrounding xiaxue and rockson (though unlike the former, i just can't see how anyone can possibly dislike good o' rockson), it makes us wonder if the singaporean blogsphere is moving in a direction that is intolerant to alternative points of views. as described in my previous post, the advent of idiotic and unconstructive anonymous flammers on 武则天 's blog makes the whole point of using blogs as a means of discourse, a much less interesting affair when one is constantly spammed wif ridiculous comments.

Secondly, and more pertinently, i'm rather concerned the demonstration of the media prowess of blogs through the ephraim affair might actually invite unwanted attention or perhaps even intervention upon the singapore cyber community.

in the light of how singapore's media coverage is disproportionately skewed against opposition politic parties, several moderate opposition politicians such as Goh Meng Seng of the Worker's Party or perhaps Malaysia's Lim Kit Siang have been quick to exploit the growing popularity of blogs as an avenue of political expression and jumped on the bandwagon. Bearing in mind that the Singapore General Election is due in less than a year, the advent of political blogs has become a considerably effective tool for political publicity.

moreover, since whether or not an individual's weblog is a 'political website' or more importantly whether the Singapore Broadcasting Authority has jurisdiction over singaporean webpages which are hosted on foreign domains is still essentially a legal grey area. it may even allow opposition politicians to circumvent the various institutional limitations on political discourse over the internet, such as the 2001 amendment to the Parlimentary Elections Act , or the legislation requiring all 'political websites' to register themselves with the SBA.

so how does ephraim fit into the equation? a common theme evident in quite a few pro-rockson flammers tags was that ephraim has almost become a euphemism for the catch-all determinant of discontent brewing in the lives of the flammers. ephraim simply offered himself as a convenient face and name for the singapore's anonynmous bogeyman, a focal point of singaporean subdued frustration. these tags on ephraim's tagboard would give u a good illustration:

Ephraim is a Sissy: Hey sissy E-Frame Who kena BMT recourse, when are you going to write to the Straits Times again to complain about people "spamming" your tagboard ? Oooohhh, I'm sooo scared. Whatcha gonna do ? Set your Mediacorpse and PAP friends upon us, call the ISD ?

jay christ: Confirm liao, Diaphram Loy is a PAP bootlicker and sycophant. Better dun let me see you outside hor...

And of course, the anti-PAP sentiment comes as no surprise considering that some of these flammers were also directed from sammyboy.com. But considering that beyond the bengish language, the content in the majority of Rockson's posts actually bears some political undertone and satirical criticisms on the ruling government, the sheer scale of the demonstration of popular support for the views which Rockson stands for, underlines the fact that the Rockson has become a personification of the heartland discontentment. And for the first time, the teeming Singaporean masses has had not only a folklore anti-hero, but also express issues close to the heart of the average singaporean in a very palatable way. Rockson has certainly come a long way since he was first featured on 武则天's blog . And ironically, the Rockson phenomena is somewhat the creation of the Singaporean Bureaucracy ever since he was featured on the Straits Times during the NKF scandal.

if past records are anything to go by, as evident in the past implementations of legislations such as the Political Films Act. The PAP government has had a rather effective knack at implementing measures that limit political publicity. And should the increasing pervasiveness of political blogging be deemed as threading the periphery of the OB markers, we may be staring at a less optimistic future for political discourse on the Singaporean blogsphere. It is perhaps for this very reason, to avoid the roving eye of the OB patrols, that tomorrow.sg actively chose not to feature the juicy details of the Rockson/Ephraim affair and opting in favour of the mundane, OB friendly tags. no one know how exactly any limitations on political blogging can be done, but with the will, there probably is gonna be a way.