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!”

The Great Affective Divide has made inroads online, threatening to render the governors and the governed even further apart. Not only has the Government consistently practiced selective hearing, in responding only to what it thinks worth responding to, it has maintained its heavy-handed approach to micromanagement. In its way it is learning - long ago the official stance was that blogs were “online diaries” too insignificant to be worth monitoring. Now the name of the game seems to be “watch and monitor”. At least they’re paying attention now - rumors even have it that certain persons on government payroll are paid to do nothing other than read blogs and write reports about them!

Singapore political parties and politicians are finally waking up to the potential of the blogosphere for civil debate, and some have enthusiastically jumped into the foray. NMP Siew Kum Hong is perhaps the best example of an independent establishing an online soapbox, and has provided us, in his typical candid manner, a rare insight into what exactly it is that MPs do for a living. The established PAP has continued to build political beachheads on online terra incognita - witness the onset of p65.sg and the Young PAP blog. Posts on these blogs, such as the curiously titled post “Bill Gates+George Soros+Mother Theresa - How Much $$” by Elaina Olivia Chong of March 24, are an unprecedented window into the inner thoughts of the next generation of PAP politicians and of the new cadre members who will support them into a murky future. But others are quick to prevent a monopoly of PAP partisan voiced online. In particular, the Workers’ Party has been aggressively expanding its online activities through operating a significant number of personal party members’ blogs. WP members have also started their own unofficial initiatives, such as The Hammer Sphere and the The Online Citizen, the latter ostensibly operating in a nonpartisan manner. At the same time, Ephraim Loy’s brave experiment to share his blog with MP George Yeo seems to have gone nowhere, owing to enthusiasm giving way to lackluster posts about nothing particularly interesting.

Paradoxically, as nonpartisan blogs representing the citizenry continue on their downward decline in quality and number, the number of blogs belonging to politicians, prominent civil servants, and political parties seem to be on the rise. This is perhaps not particularly surprising, since the latter is starting from practically nothing; on the other hand, it is of genuine concern that prominent bloggers are bowing out. Are there enough of them to form a pattern? I certainly think so - many of those who’ve moved on have either stepped on some Higher Up’s toes or decided that it is not worth the trouble of updating their blogs. I think it’s symptomatic of a general weltschmerz, some dulling mix of despair mixed with weariness. It speaks of how even the most optimistic hopes have faltered in the post-Bhavani era; that no matter how well-intentioned, it is difficult to blog in a climate of FUD where one’s legal rights and knowhow to avoid getting arrested or slapped with a lawsuit override the calling to speak out. Sooner or later, it seems, the unruly, nonpartisan, nonaligned bloggers find better things to do with their time than engage in an increasingly risky pastime which necessitates dodging both trolls and legal minefields.

To be fair, not everyone has thrown in the towel. Alex Au gamely treads on at Yawning Bread, as does Chemical Generation and the ever-enigmatic Xenoboy, to mention but a few of the community who are still around, but tend to be underappreciated in recent days. Trowa Evans (The Police State) is finally back after a half-year hiatus. Insane Polygons has found new life as a cartoonist with his popular Elite Girl series still going strong, joining Sei-ji rakugaki as the only two regular political cartoonists that . Two (relative) newcomers - Intelligent Singaporean and SingaporeSurf - and their regulars, are the only aggregators worth anything these days. And the karmic cycle of online reincarnation may very well bring back some of the Old Masters. We also welcome new bloggers into the fold, such as Charissa, who is beginning to establish her voice online as a little fish finding her way into the world. Speranza Nuova has done well in his new blogger identity. And of course Lao Zha Bor (老查某) deserves special mention for her meteoritic rise to fame following positive coverage in the MSM.

But will this influx of new development be sufficient to rescue the Singapore blogosphere from its moribund state? Find out in the next SotSB.

Footnotes
  1. Rumor has it that Molly Meek is really written by a he, but I will reference only the gender of the persona to avoid semantic complications.↩