Daphne Teo

Daphne Teo, better known by her online persona pinkshoefetish, owner of the (now defunct) famous blog http://pinkshoefetish.blogspot.com in which she details and photos of her extravagant and hedonistic lifestyle. It was first featured in the Singapore Blog portal in July, tomorrow.sg, for an entry featuring her then boyfriend apologising to her in a unique and novel way. In its heyday it averaged about 3000-4000 hits a day, particularly attracting young impressionable Singaporean girls who dream of emulating her lifestyle.

In September/October 2005 she had an argument with her boyfriend Zhuang which resulted in their breakup. The unfolding drama was widely publicised in her blog whereby Zhuang was portrayed as an abusive, controlling boyfriend. This created a huge uproar in the Singapore blogosphere in which many people sympathised with Daphne and saw Zhuang in a bad light.

In response, the blog The Purdue Diaries, http://thepurduediaries.blogspot.com, was set up where Zhuang's friends offered an alternative view of the story. In this blog Zhuang was cast in a favourable light as a near perfect boyfriend. In contrast, Daphne was portrayed as a frivolous, selfish girlfriend who took Zhuang for granted.

This created an even greater uproar and this real life unfolding drama captivated many readers who were now split between Daphne's side and Zhuang's side. Under pressure, Daphne took down the controversial posts depicting Zhuang in a negative light. Closing that chapter in her life, she decided to close down her blog at
http://pinkshoefetish.blogspot.com, linking and creating a new blog in its place,
http://bleedingblackbutterflies.blogspot.com.

This blog was in very similar vein to its predecessor but it attracted more anonymous trolls and flamers than before. Very soon after, Daphne announced that she was now attached to Erik, little more than a month after breaking up with her ex boyfriend of several years, Zhuang. This created a huge outcry and huge resentment against her. While her blogging content had hardly changed, the comments and readership apparently did. Many took offence to the lifestyle portrayed in her blog and culminated in the creation of her satirical hate site, http://pinkblackbullcrap.blogspot.com.

Acceding to pressure, Daphne finally caved in and announced the closure of her blog, which was promptly 'tomorrowed'. Coming right on heels of the Dawn Yang saga, this saga resulted in Daphne Teo peaking as the #1 search in Technorati, equalising Dawn Yang just the week before. In response to her sudden infamity she posted a defiant final message exhorting her achievements and slamming her critics, which includes the now quotable and infamous line ‘Everything I touch turns into gold’ and a new novel way to bid farewell (‘Bubbai’). During this period, she created a short-lived 3rd blog, http://bleedingbutterfly.blogspot.com, created and linked amazingly right after her declaration of her closure of the 2nd. This led to accusations of her threatening closure to attract more attention to her blog.

It is certain from this saga (and the Dawn Yang saga before this) about the power of the mob effect in cyberspace. In cyberspace it is all too easy for words and intentions to be misconstrued and for malicious attacks to be anonymously used to attack a persona. This can spiral out of control and in a closed, collectivist society such as Singapore it is easy to dig up dirt and make slanderous remarks behind a veil of anonymity. Such negative abuse of the freedom of speech only serves to reinforce the government's position that Singaporeans are not ready or responsible to exercise the right to free speech. This is evidenced by the proportion of ad-hominem, spiteful comments over constructive criticism.
Technorati tags: Daphne Teo

Dawn Yang

Dawn Yang, better known by her online persona ClapBangKiss, owner of the popular blog www.xanga.com/clapbangkiss, in which she details and photos of her extravagant and hedonistic lifestyle, was first featured in Hottest Blogger, www.hottestblogger.com and then the Singaporean tabloid The New Paper, in which she was supposedly spotted and recruited by a talent agency to be groomed to a star, in part due to her pan-asian bloodline and looks.

In November 2005, a furore started when renowned Singapore blogger Agagooga started an expose on Dawn Yang, stating that Dawn Yang may have been hypocritical in denying her involvement with plastic alterations to her physical features. Dredging up and comparing photos of her past photos and current photos, ample evidence was offered for the possibility that Dawn Yang may have been rather economical with the truth.

This sparked off furious debate especially in the Singapore blogosphere, whereby the issue fissioned into 2 distinct but reconcilable issues, (i)whether Dawn Yang was a hypocrite (for denying having undergoing plastic surgery AND criticising those who did, (ii)whether Dawn Yang actually underwent plastic surgery; and if so, the extent of her surgery.

Although the original provocateur Agagooga and others stoically insisted that the critical issue was with (i), the bulk of contention was with (ii) as many gave their opinions on the issue of plastic surgery. In Singapore, explicit plastic surgery was not commonplace and many bloggers and forummers offered their opinion on Dawn’s supposed surgery. While most were of the opinion that she did indeed undergo plastic surgery, the ethics of plastic surgery came into question. Also coming into question was the issue of beauty and the media and whether it was ‘fair’ for ‘artificial’ beauty to be rewarded (eg, with a talent agency contract). This situation was also exploited by her antagonists to dredge up her past and accuse and berate her character. Meanwhile ‘Dawn Yang’ peaked at #1 in the Technorati top searches and also in the Singapore Yahoo Portals. In response Dawn posted a carefully worded message on her blog which neither confirmed nor denied the rumours (with regards to her purported plastic surgery).

An ancillary issue was her perceived disavowment of her heritage, in which her proclaimed non-Asian roots was contradicted by evidence of her Chinese parentage by her critics. In response she clarified by citing her limited non-Asian roots. An interesting point would be the seeming slant towards perception of the ‘Pan Asian beauty’ as the essence of ‘beauty’ as highly favoured in the Singapore media, but is this the case for the general Singaporean population? Did Dawn Yang claim ‘pan-asian’ heritage so as to fit into the image the media was portraying?

This saga exposed the hunger of the masses upon celebrated figures and natural human pre obsession with the success of another individual. The ugly side of human nature is unveiled as well, by the usual ad-hominem critics who take the opportunity to put down people who are successful. A useful depiction would be crabs in a pail waiting to be slaughtered. The reason no crab will ever escape from the pail is because once one almost manages to get out, the other crabs reach out and pull it down.

In more positive light lessons can be learnt. It is certain that there are many differing opinions and perceptions towards beauty and ‘artificial beauty’, and the moralistic value of plastic surgery. It also reveals in stark detail the pressures of the public eye. A notable point raised is the issue of privacy for a celebrity. Many were of the opinion that a celebrity has less recourse to privacy than a normal person simply because they were in the limelight.


Technorati tags: Dawn Yang