The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| Social media to decide Election 2013 Posted: 20 Mar 2013 05:05 PM PDT
MARCH 21 — "Social media has limited impact in this election." Been reading a lot of that lately... and usually on my timeline — the irony of it. But having my staff tell me to my face yesterday that all the LIKEs in a POST can never win you more votes than a healthy number of posters on a lamp post did it for me! I'll tell it to all the local naysayers — including my finance graduate from Pahang — so that they can be in the know, social media has monumentally shifted life, let alone elections in Malaysia. So as a personal policy, I am going to UNFRIEND every person who deplores social media over the next two months. I can always keep tabs on them via Twitter, check their Klout every other week hoping their influence is reducing despite the memes I put out about them. I am not deluded. Nothing has complete reach, but the questions on social media and its impact on Election 2013 are misguided because while the answers are responding to the extent of the weapon, it excludes the terrain in which the weapon is asked to operate in and the mindset of the combatants. In short, the answers exclude Malaysia, the derivations from the questions are suspect, for they are badly constructed. Let's reconstruct it. That which no one knows In the motorcycle-infested UKM (Universiti Kebangsaaan Malaysia or National University of Malaysia) Bangi campus of 1993, the student union lobby is laden with the usual mid-morning suspects. There is a copy of all the largely circulated newspapers. One copy only, but no one has to wait too long, the anti-reading culture has been around a long time. Anwar Ibrahim is about to become deputy prime minister because the Umno divisions were failing to give the deputy president Ghafar Baba enough nominations to even make it to the general assembly. Not many on campus cared or worse could be bothered to debate the issue. And it was not because the students did not have "WhatsApp" to organise coffee discussions at the only cake-shop. (Back then you drop notes to friends at their pigeonholes at the dormitories, and the queue for the two public telephones to call home went all the way around the common hall.) Getting together was not the real problem, getting any real information on the whole development was. The papers didn't explain the dynamics and plots, because they have to explain the edging of a party veteran by a rising star without making anyone look bad. They had to explain a power struggle within the ruling party without divulging any acrimony. We were to know but not understand, and everyone on campus was only influenced otherwise by actual friends. (You could only find out what an avatar was if you walked up four flights of the library steps to the encyclopaedia section and looked for book two!) The whole country was a puzzle to most Malaysians without free speech. TV backed the papers, and the radios echoed the papers and the lecturers reminded us to be grateful that the only thing we were aware was that we were grateful. The young chief minister of Penang, Koh Tsu Koon, was not universally pilloried for being weak and letting Umno run roughshod over him. He unexpectedly rose to the position because Gerakan's rock Lim Chong Eu was shockingly defeated in Election 1990. Nor were there open rumblings in the small law faculty over the erosion of the judiciary, since Mahathir sacked a whole bunch of judges a while back. No one from Semangat 46, Indian Progressive Front (IPF) or Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) did the regular press conferences which are common sights today, because mainstream media wouldn't show up. They do encircle when there are squabbles within the opposition parties of course. The keen observer had to glean ideas of the Aliran magazine which appeared monthly. So many of us have forgotten how it was, how horrible the void was. To stare across the plain, try to figure out the country but frustrated no end by being blocked from the information and others who wanted to speak. Our ground zero and "a whole new world" Many parts of the world pre-Information Revolution had a free press to rely on. For every Guardian there was The Telegraph. The Washington Post went after President Richard Nixon over Watergate, and the reports over the Iran-Contra arm deals kept President Ronald Reagan under siege at the end of his two terms. The arrival of the Internet was akin to Commander Matthew Perry forcing feudal Japan which consciously closed up its borders from ideas to open up. In a Malaysia clamped down with media shut, universities sterile and government offices obedient for a decade, dial-ups were manna from heaven. The change is unrelenting Not all Malaysians are online, even today, but no one in Malaysia is disconnected to everyone online. Not knowing a dial-up from broadband does not stop you from buying a DVD of your favourite Hollywood flick without censorship. It is uncensored because the "merchants" are downloading the copies and burning them to the discs. (Unsure, they can always look at the online advisory and user reviews for these new discs from Vietnam rather than depending on China.) You get the racy, rowdy and irreverent, and that is just a short walk to the vendor outside your neighbourhood 7-Eleven. The liberation it brings despite the copyrights it infringes is a good case study for humanism over capitalism. All phones you buy today can store data, and rarely do literate people fail to comprehend enough to transfer images. The source of information is there, it is possible for those who can to pass to those who did not realise they can dare to dream. The state is persona non grata in the exchanges because as the duplications, shares and infusions grow the depth of deceit involved in not wanting Malaysians to know has become a common consciousness. The language to explain may be absent, but the universal mistrust Malaysians have of their government tells us that cognitively many realise they have been force-fed the red pill by the Internet. There are so many shortcomings, incomplete discussions and jagged conclusions, but with online content everyone has enough Cliff notes to argue through the night. Why else have mainstays like Utusan Malaysia and TV3 seen their base shrinking by the month? So many are still unconnected, but those who are have been strewing their ideas — round, square and triangular — all over our life paths. Having seen diversity and gladdening contradictions, mind-numbing conditioning on the telly is not entertainment anymore. But even if you going to hold on to the main mast of the RMS Titanic, there are three million new voters, almost exclusively below 40 since Election 2008. It is unlikely they'll unplug their laptops and build their worldview based on a magic 8 ball and then vote. Our terrain was drained of information and our people — our combatants — have been flummoxed consistently to believe they can't think out their reality. The terrain and combatants, which is why the Internet's massive. A river runs through our river and our people are at least learning to swim again, and for Barisan Nasional to believe all they have to do is to stay the same but spend more money on Facebook ads is as arrogant as it is demeaning to the people. Which is why Mahathir Mohamad may have a blog, but does not get social media. Which is why spend they may taxpayers' money to defeat taxpayers, BN won't win back ground from Election 2008. Social media is David's slingshot. It is not in Goliath's nature to fear a slingshot, let alone trade his shiny non-IKEA-designed sword for one. We are fearful as ever, but the fear is also in their house. I like my odds now. So BN, how do you LIKE them apples? * This is the personal opinion of the columnist. | |
| This balancing act called writing Posted: 20 Mar 2013 04:31 PM PDT
MARCH 21 — Sometimes I feel that writers should have their own personality disorder classification, because writers live with a split personality. And every writer has a split personality. On one side, he is confident and self-assured with a dash of arrogance. On the other side he is cautious, perhaps even paranoid and full of self-doubt. One needs courage and self-confidence to stand before an audience and make a statement, fully aware that there will be disagreements and perhaps even negative remarks in reply. At the same time, one also needs a sense of caution — checking facts, and even spelling and grammar, lest he makes a fool of himself before that audience. Each writer will have traits from both ends of the spectrum in different measures; one writer may be more confident than another, or more paranoid. What is certain is that in all writers, this contradiction of traits exists. Author Nathan Bransford perhaps summarised it best: "Terror and joy. Confidence and self-doubt. The best artists live right in that uncomfortable middle." But writers do not simply exist in the middle. It is really a step further: writers not only live in the middle of opposite traits, but they constantly hold the handles of two opposite doors. And they can only open one at a time, unleashing one trait while keeping the other in check. The trick is in knowing when to tap into which part of himself at any given time. Good writing is not a straightforward process (all you impossibly gifted writing prodigies stay out of this). Often a writer undertakes a lot of research before the first word is even typed out. Then there is the first draft, almost always terrible. Which is why it will almost always be followed by the revision process, during which we chop and change and rewrite until terrible turns to OK and eventually becomes good enough to our eyes. Through these different stages we wear different hats as required, alternating between confidence and paranoia. As we do research we need to be careful, making sure we get correct facts and validate them. When the writing starts we need to switch to our confident selves, bordering on arrogance so that we will be able to get the words down fast without constantly interrupting ourselves thanks to self-doubt. And as we revise our first draft the cocksure arrogance needs to make way for paranoia, so that we can spot our mistakes and fix our phrasing and check again and again for errors. Lastly we fill ourselves with realism and accept that it can never be completely perfect, only as close to perfection as we can make it, and we then we let it go to our editors. As we go through the writing process, we are not always the same person. We open each door at different times to allow different traits to hold the steering wheel, because the different stages require different traits in order to get the best results. It sounds simple, but not everyone gets it right. What happens when we let the wrong traits out the door too soon or too late? Not enough caution in research? You end up with careless errors, misquotes and wrong facts. What if we're not confident enough when writing that first draft? It takes forever to finish, and you can't seem to write a whole paragraph without re-writing it. Too confident or arrogant to revise your first draft? Then you'll be turning in sub-standard work as you never take the time to improve and push your work to a higher standard. Too obsessed with perfection when revising? Then you won't be able to let it go when deadline comes, always changing and revising without realising you're no longer improving anything but just changing the clothes on the same mannequin. As Stephen King puts it: "Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open." It's important to be able to close the door of paranoia and doubt as we write that first draft, close it tight and then open it wide as we revise and edit. It's about finding balance, and then knowing when to disrupt the balance and in what direction. Alas, I'm still learning the art. Alas, I fear the balancing part may take a lifetime to perfect. If ever. * This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
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