Tuesday 6 December 2016

Reality TV, haters and social media

Let's talk about an incident which has left me with mixed feelings recently - my regular readers will know that I review each episode of The Amazing Race Asia and I have been quite critical of one of the contestants: JK of team JK and Mike of Singapore. Basically, I thought he was a total hypocrite because he keeps claiming that he is missing his pregnant wife, but the moment one of the other female contestants shows up in a swimsuit, he would shamelessly gawk and perv at them. It just so happens that four beauty queens were cast in this season's race (Yvonne & Chloe from Malaysia, Parul & Maggie from the Philippines), there's plenty of eye candy for the male viewers to say the least.
I don't like JK's actions but admire his reaction.

When I gloated that JK was finally eliminated in the last episode, he simply posted a link on my blog to him posing in a swimming pool with the four beauty queens. Now I'm not quite sure how to react as I have mixed feelings: on one hand, yeah I think it's pretty cool to react to one's haters like that with a, "say what you want, I'm happy and can't be bothered with what you think." Even I have to admit that's a pretty neat way to deal with the haters online because you really don't want to be sucked into an online argument with your haters. Ironically, I posted negative comments about one of the American teams on TAR US S28 (the Instagram Models Brittany & Jessica) on a Facebook group and one of them got so angry with what I said that she went apeshit on Facebook and posted really long and angry replies. Imagine how surprised I was that she actually cared what I said - like why should she? I didn't even expect the actual contestants on an American reality TV programme to respond to my comments like that on Facebook, but what can I say? If you respond to each and every hater online who says something negative about you, then you choose to fill your life with negativity and anger. By that token, JK's reaction was pretty cool indeed.

I wonder how JK's wife would react when she saw him gawking openly at beautiful ladies in bikinis in the show? I can't assume how she would feel - maybe she's totally okay with it, maybe she's not, maybe she will laugh it off, maybe she will be upset. I do note that on the race, there's a married couple Eric & Rona from the Philippines and Eric always treats his wife with so much respect on the race, I just can't imagine him ever gawking at one of the beauty queens quite the same way that JK did. But then again, some straight men (married or not) do treat women like that - president elect Trump's comment "grab them by the pussy" went viral overnight and it didn't affect his popularity in the run up to the elections. Heck, in the UK, we have newspapers with soft core porn objectifying the female body with topless page 3 models.We do live in a world where some men have no qualms about objectifying the female body.
I suppose there must be an element of JK thinking, "you can say what you want on your blog but I'm the one in the pool with these four smoking hot beauty queens." If it was an attempt to make me jealous, then it failed because I'm gay and would much rather get into the pool with the muscle brothers from Malaysia Alex and Will. But despite the fact that I thought that JK had embarrassed himself at every opportunity by behaving in a crass manner on this show (such is the unforgiving nature of reality TV), well, I think his reaction to my blog posts was pretty good. After all, we can spend so many hours of our lives worrying about what people think of us - there are children who are desperately seeking approval from their parents or workers who are desperately trying to be popular in the office, but at the end of the day, it can be immensely liberating to just say, "you know what? I really don't care what you think as long as I am happy with what I do. If you don't like me, then that's just too bad because I'm not going to change for you."

Should we engage people who are critical of us? Well, there is no easy answer - on one hand, one should always be careful whose advice to take: if someone you trust and respect offers you constructive criticism, then you should take heed. But if someone is clearly saying something just to impose his/her opinion on you, then you have the right to choose not to listen to that person by simply declaring, "I don't care what you think. You can say all you want to anyone you want, it doesn't matter to me." Whom you then choose to trust and listen to and whom you choose to ignore is down to your judgment: are you a good judge of human character?  I'm not saying that we should never care about what others think about us - for example, I do care what my boss thinks about me but then again, I have good reason for that: he's paying me to work for him and it is important that he is happy with my work. If there's someone offering you some form of criticism, think about it: are they making a valid point? Do you have a reason to take them seriously? If not, can you quite happily ignore them? Given the nature of our interactions on social media these days, it is often so much easier just to ignore the haters who simply do not have enough reason to make us want to listen to them.
How do we deal with the haters online?

As for JK's behaviour, well, I can bitch all I want about the way he conducted himself in this series but ultimately, the one person who matters is JK's wife. There's a Mrs Ko somewhere out there in Singapore whose feelings matter and if she's okay with JK behaving like that in a reality TV programme, then well that's all that matters I suppose. Having spoken to a few married women about the issue (hey I've done my research), they all said they would not be okay with their husbands openly flirting with other women (especially beauty queens in bikinis) on national TV but if Mrs Ko begs to differ, then that's her prerogative. Nonetheless, I do stand by my point about being a lot more classy when it comes to paying a lady a compliment - you can either be the predatory Ah Beng who shouts, "Oi! Chio Bu!" and blows a wolf whistle (which will probably lead to the lady turning around and giving you the third finger) or you could tell her how special she is in a flattering yet subtle way whilst expressing interest in her, like, "I love your bracelet, it's so stylish - you have good taste. Where do you get your accessories?" You see, that may lead to her telling you how she got that bracelet whilst on holiday in Morocco and the start of a very long and interesting conversation. JK's approach however, is anything but subtle but oh well, he is married after all - he's not in the market to find a girlfriend anymore, so when you don't need the skills to subtly compliment a beautiful lady and chat her up, he reverts to a more "Oi! Chio Bu!" approach. If anything, that reflects on his social class and background - if that's the segment of society he comes from, then this kind of behaviour is the norm. Sorry, I'm British and we're obsessed with class identity.

But it is JK's choice to ignore my take on his behaviour and given his limited options when it comes to responding, I say that's a better response than getting into an argument with me like the two American models from TAR S28. So that's it from me on this issue. What do you think? How should we respond to haters on social media? What do you make of JK's behaviour on TARA S5 and his response? Leave a comment below please, many thanks for reading.

5 comments:

  1. Why bother responding and extending their 15min of fame. Once TARA ends JK would be consigned to oblivion and no one will care or even remember his antics. He probably subscribes to the "no publicity is bad publicity" school of thought which is why he wants as many 15 mins as possible.

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    1. As a DJ, is he a local 'celebrity'? After all, who listens to the radio these days given that people tend to do their own playlists through spotify or youtube?

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    2. Never heard of him. Apart from drivers and older generation almost no one listens to the radio nowadays so it's a dying medium. He is probably as big a celebrity as a mediacorp artiste, which is not saying much.

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    3. Well that's what I thought. I do remember listening to perfect 10 98.7 fm back in the day when I was growing up in S'pore. The DJs were so much more popular back then.

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  2. https://postimg.org/image/bbte88eix/

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