02.Jul.2009 Born to be Wild

Boy oh boy has it been an eventful week so far.

The most shocking thing (so far) that everyone knows and is still talking about would be the death of Michael Jackson, our dearly beloved King of Pop. I woke up on Thursday morning, stumbled out of my bed only to hear that MJ was dead. It’s really sad.

Taken from Final Photos of Michael Jackson

And soon after that we get a flurry of news articles from everyone and everywhere, paying tributes to him or writing up articles about his (failed) life or speculating on the cause of his death. It ranges from him already sickened by a lung disease with only 6 months left to live (thus the masks and wheelchair) to overdosing accidentally while trying to get out of the 50-date concert tour that was supposed to have happened this July to underlying psychological trauma and having not ‘outed’ himself from the closet. And then we get news of at least a dozen of MJ’s fans reportedly killing themselves.

It just makes me go a little boggle eyed. o.O

And on the blogosphere radar, a trashy gossip blog popped up a little over a week ago, proclaiming herself as the Gossip Girl of my school. (I’m not linking the site. You can go google if you really, really want to read it.)

My school’s abuzzing with this site: People are slamming the blog for her atrocious use of the English language, incredibly hurtful information about sexual activities between parties who were eventually identified (!!! I just checked and there are no more names, must have been edited !!!), and the principle of the blog in general.

All I can think is: You’re screwed, dude.

Speaking from personal experience, I’ve sort of been through this as well. On a really small scale of just ONE post. A long long time ago, when I was still young and naive and measured happiness by the amount of page view sites on my blog, I blogged about the backstabbing issues between two parties (in my defense, I really did hear them hypocrites backstab and then act nice in front of one another but it’s over now so lalala) and, well… They ganged up and went to the teacher-in-charge of the Student Council and tried to get me kicked out of running for President. They even printed out the damned blog post to show it to Mr TT. Thankfully, though, they forgot about it after I apologised and I was elected as President.

Point is: Back then I thought I knew what I was doing and I remembered the thrill that rushed through me. I sucked at social interaction and I thought Xiaxue (XX) was cool. I thought that following XX’s example would, somehow, make me cooler. I was pretty desperate in wanting to be known/remembered; I wanted to matter, I wanted to be someone of importance and all that, someone whom people follow and all that. I thought there might be consequences, but I thought I was making a point about hypocrisy, as well as doing the public a service in pointing out their character flaws.

See? Thinking wasn’t really my forte back then. Hindsight is really 20-20.

But speaking seriously. Who likes having their dirty laundry aired in public? Not me, that’s for sure. And most definitely them, either. I’ve learnt from it now, though. Whatever thoughts I have now, I keep them in my head. No point blogging out all those incidences and secrets that might hurt or harm people. Plus, the fact that there were plenty of newspaper articles popping up then about secondary school students who bitched about their teachers and got punished (or something), further cemented my decision. Not to talk bad about others, that is.

So… In general, it’s pure stupidity. From the posts so far, I’m assuming whomever this person is, they know what they are doing, but they’re not realising fully the consequences of their actions. I have to admit though, that the blog sure as hell is like a guilty pleasure. It’s like watching a train wreck. It’s awful, bad, but you can’t take your eyes off it.

There are plenty of consequences with regards to her posts. Eventually, she (since it is gossip girl and not gossip boy) will be found out. The Internet is awesome, but I’m quite certain that everything you do can be tracked down, unless you have extremely advanced technology like the Autobots and the Decepticons.

1. First and most obviously, is the possible threat of expulsion that will probably ensue in non-admission into other polytechnics. I’m not certain about this, but I’ve heard that once you’ve been kicked out of poly, pretty much every other polytechnic is closed to you.
2. Secondly, with names identified as subjects of gossip in particular posts, Gossip Girl (GG) can be sued for libel. That’s incredibly stupid because now that you’ve published information about the subjects, regardless of the veracity of the information, their reputations have been affected. Even if the information is proven false, you’ve already casted aspersions on their characters.
3. Thirdly, it is literally social suicide. Everyone will shun you, spit at you, kick you while you’re down on your knees because what you’ve done has managed to anger almost all of the students in our school. (Can’t say all, since I wouldn’t know.) We are a pretty small group of media students, as compared to other schools like business or engineering.

Not only that, let’s say for example, most of us end up becoming media practitioners in Singapore since we are media students in training. We’ll all probably end working with one another. With a black mark on your name, how could people trust you with any sort of secrets and believe that you would not go back to your old ways?

So, GG, stop what you’re doing! The bloodhounds are baying, can you hear ‘em? There are people out there who are beyond pissed with the events so far, and they are chanting for your blood. This has escalated into a pretty serious issue, I’d say. If it were me, I’d shut down the blog, wipe clean the digital footsteps and hope to God or some higher power that they don’t trace me.

And finally. Did you know that two days ago, the entire floor of the HDB I stayed in was swarmed with bees? It was horrifying. Horrible, I say, horrible. And damn bloody gross. I took a video with my lovely new Canon HF S200 camera, so here’s the video.

That was around 5pm. I took another video at around 8, 9pm, and there were even more bees. It’s really gross. Do not watch while you’re eating, or be prepared to feel nauseous. I’ll upload the other video later, so that’s it for now and I’ll be back soon! Have fun and be nice.