By Marc Bakker
Marketing Director of Right Hook Communications Pte Ltd
Hawkers have been a hot topic in 2018. The attention is showing no signs of fading with experts coming forward regularly to add their insights, which is healthy and informative when dealing with a complicated topic, especially one which touches on sensitive issues like people’s livelihood, affordable food, nutrition, exploitative contracts, etc.
Unfortunately, as with most heated issues, this is an environment that also attracts trolls and agitators, often anonymous, who muddy the waters either intentionally or by accident. This is much less healthy and with fake news also being a hot topic in 2018, this is a good time to take a closer look at the real damage that these kinds of agents can cause. In particular let’s shine the light on an incident that happened just this week that involved my business partner and exposes a U-turn of breath-taking proportions.
In the Defense of Hawkers
Last week KF Seetoh of Makan Sutra fame, made the headlines by exposing what appear to be exploitative contracts from Social Enterprise Hawker Centres (SEHC) that unfairly penalise hawkers. KF Seetoh is a long-time and vocal defender of hawkers and hawker culture. This is pretty much public knowledge, so his contribution to the debate was no surprise.
What was surprising was a post, now deleted, by the folks at SMRT Feedback by the Vigilanteh accusing KF Seetoh of being a hypocrite since he also runs a hawker centre.
This was out of character for the well-known troll page that over the years built up a reputation for sticking up for the little guy and speaking truth to power. Needless to say, the backlash was swift and brutal, as is often the case on social media. What happened next is very much a perfect example of what not to do when you mess up online.
How not to Internet
The main gist of the backlash was that the group was comparing publicly funded SEHCs with a for profit organisation. My business partner was one of the many critics. Ultimately the group took the post down, replaced it with a half apology then edited that post and yesterday took it down again as if the entire sorry saga never happened. There’s too much to go into in terms of the specifics, but for those who want to know more, this is a pretty good summary of what went down (http://theindependent.sg/smrt-feedback-recoils-backlash-deletes-post-criticising-food-guru-k-f-seetoh-evokes-lky-to-apologise-clears-post-and-throws-previous-admin-under-the-bus/).
In a nutshell, things went off the rails very quickly. Let’s have a quick look at some of the communications/PR sins committed:
1. Personal attacks: rather than address the criticism head on and defend their position, the first response was to personally attack the critics. For example, in the case of my business partner, they belittled him as a failed business person, which isn’t even true. We’re doing quite well thank you very much. Another critic was lambasted for being the ex-founder of the Middle Ground, an online media outlet that closed its doors this year.
2. I’m right because I make more money than you: the group then took things a step further and started boasting about their financial backing as if being wealthy is the same thing as being right.
3. Deleting posts: deleting posts from people who disagree with you is a pretty basic mistake and for a group that, in their own words, has “regular client work in the marcomm field” it’s particularly puzzling.
4. Banning readers: Full disclosure, I was one of the people banned from their page, which is puzzling because I hadn’t contributed to the discussion beyond liking a few posts. I have no issue with banning abusive profiles, but when you insult someone’s company and then ban them before they have a chance to defend themselves, that’s weak.
5. Appropriating content: The only post remaining on their Facebook page on this whole saga is basically coming full circle and, like KF Seetoh did, expose a seemingly abusive contract that they “received today”. The problem? The exact same document was already exposed by All Singapore Stuff in 2016. Maybe someone did send it to them that day, but even the most basic google search would immediately tell them that this was old news and hardly a scoop.
The U-turn
To add insult to injury, soon after the original post was deleted, the group did a complete 180 and put out a post which basically mirrored KF Seetoh’s suggestions. With the sordid history deleted, media outlets like Yahoo News and Coconuts even covered the story as if SMRT Feedback and KF Seetoh had been on the same side all along.
Where it gets Sinister
So how does a legendary troll site end up not only get on the wrong side of the “little guy”, but mess up so badly in handling the predictable backlash to the point where they need to pretend it never happened?
Well, as it turns out the Vigilanteh isn’t the Vigilanteh anymore. The original owner sold the site to a nameless company some time in 2016. So all those feel-good “little guy sticks it to the man” stories? That’s the old guard. These are not the same fellas, they’re usurpers using the good name and reputation of a genuine folk hero for purposes that are not altogether clear.
There is a deeper issue coming out of this minor Internet squabble and that is the question of responsibility and accountability. There’s nothing wrong with being a troll site and we all love our edutainment, our memes, our snarky posts and clap backs. It’s all fun and games until suddenly it isn’t. Sites like SMRT Feedback walk a tight rope between fun and entertainment and getting involved with serious public discourse. Currently these agents are not accountable to anyone. And what happens, like in this case, when the ownership of a site changes hands and the Robin Hood turns out to be in cahoots with the Sheriff of Nottingham?
It’s like Johnny Depp’s Ichabod Crane said in Sleepy Hollow: “Villainy wears many masks, but none so evil as that of virtue”.
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