This reminds me so much of ‘1984′, where citizens of a cruel, oppressive regime are brainwashed to spy and report on one another, to spread a culture of fear and selfishness.

It’s like YouTube. Anything & everything is for view for everyone as long as they wish to view it. There is nothing wrong. The students were wrong in the 1st place. They are lucky that they did not get sacked from their school althogether.

I also remember a recent posting on STOMP, where it showed a lady pushing a shopping cart right back to her house.

The gist of the post says even with a deposit, people dont care and take away shopping carts.

Well, the picture doesnt tell the whole story. she may have struggled to carry all the groceries without the cart. For all you know, the lady could have sent it back immediately, or send it back the next day.

Who are we to judge a person from a snapshot?

Sadly, these days, because of the licence one gets from blogging, STOMP included, people just shoot from the hip.

STOMP is more dangerous than normal blogs. Their stuff get featured on MSM too. Anything scandalous you did and get caught, haunts you forever.

Its the evolution of tabloids

Thanks for writing about this.

We’d appreciate if you too could play your part in condemning this sort of citizen journalism by sending an e-mail to the relevant parties using the template we have designed.

If online, stay online. Problem wif stomp is it being the bedmate of msm. Online goes to print = problem.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

WHAT HAPPENS IF PEOPLE IN VIDEOS IN STOMP IS VIP WITH SO MUCH WEALTH THEY CAN HIRE THE VERY TOP LAWYERS IN THE WORLD ?
WHERE WOULD THEIR VIDEO BE?

THINK ABOUT IT.

Good point there by Wee.

I wonder how and I wonder why, like the lemon tree,
would stomp allow videos of some people doing their private thingies even in public like petting which I donche think is illegal in spore?

anyone knows the answer?

how about a VIP digging his nose?
or unitching is buttocks which holds underwear that costs very VIP prices?
or a VIP having an affair?
or a VIP quarelling in public with service personnel?

how about so-called celebrities of spore? can their videos be secretly or covertly filmed and uploaded free for stomp to use?

I ask readers, do you believe some people’s videos are more equal than others’ for exactly the same act that is filmed?

I agree that STOMP is nothing more than a cheap photo tabloid, an attempt from ST to make its mainstream more exciting and bold. It failed miserably. An irresponsible STOMPer would click away to cash in media publicity without knowing the repercussions of his/her actions.

But I have seen some teenagers in school uniforms behaving inappropriately in buses before and these actions can brand them in general as being loose individuals. When in school uniform, teens have the responsibility to project the good image of themselves, family and school. Sometimes they look innocent but then again looks can be deceiving too…

For this case, I believe they are not doing anything wrong at all and the principal acted hastily in trying to mett out punishment to restore perhaps the school’s rep (or maybe his?)

regards

Seriously this is madness. Where is the proof they were doing anyhing indecent? Just because they are in school uniforms with the girl lying on his shoulders warrants such hasty comments. My girlfriend lies on my shoulder when she sleep on the bus and we are working adults. Is some idiot going to take a photo us and say “Morals of Singaporean society degrading. Even Univerisity grads have no shame” and have a full commentary on us doing something we ain’t? Wth man.

To StompUsersDie:

Not exactly,since most of the “reports” are about uncles and aunties…but they too use STOMP to blam “youngsters with no upbringing”.

I suggest STOMP checks what people have been sending…..this isn’t news. It’s gossip.

I support STOMP in this case. By publishing the news the youth’d get a clearer message – you risk to become famed online if you do not behave yourself properly in public places. It is somehow unpleasant if you ever cnounters couple who kiss ‘fiercely’ in MRT or touching each other private parts openly in buses.

STOMP probably should have a registration system just like how they need Forum letter writers full details. So in the evnt of any dispute or if defamation suits need to be filed, the perps can be easily and quickly identified.

When you take away anonymity, a lot of heroes suddenly become cowards.

少见多怪。This is my first impression even without reading the entire article.

Hello there, you are living in the 21st century in a “FIRST WORLD DEVELOPED NATION”. No big deal to such decent scene. What’s the problem? Why can’t people leave them alone. When is this society going to grow up??

To lend someone a shoulder or give a consolation hug is not behaving indecently in public. We are living in modern era.

hongjun

Some people just don’t grow up and quit being busybodies. Trivial things also post. Not surprising stomp has too many PCWs (post-count whores). If the students were in any other JC, they would probably be just counseled to what underlying problems they may have e.g. depression, girl crying due to something, etc. I sense some lawsuits flying towards EnG.

these moral vigilante/police have not given much thought to the consequences of such “shaming tactics”

if youths can’t be free to express their lusts … honestly, they will do it…dishonestly.

at the end of the day, would suppression do more harm to society than free expression?

depending who answer the question, isn’t it?

This is an indecent act.This youngsters were not thoght what is immoral and moral behavior. Anyone will think ‘negative ‘with this kind of intimacy in the public.
Why do it anyway.If they want to do it ,go get married and do it in the privacy of their bedroom.

Moral,

Wow, that’s called being a victim of media framing and selective imagery. Pray tell, how much blind faith do you put in the words of a Stomper?

And what can you concretely assume from this poorly taken image?

The best lesson comes from…pain. Not from…hypocrites.

It’s not truly a “free press” if everything that goes through STOMP is vetted, and even so, what gives people the right to intrude and post – for all to see – what some people have done?

Stomp trivializes the entire definition of “news”, and is a key proponent of the “voyeur” culture”, diverting the people’s attention away from serious issues under the guise of being “hip” and encouraging “free speech”.

Take for example, these issues on STOMP.
” Who are cuter: Malaysian girls or Singaporean girls?”
“Would you consider joining the uniformed forces in this gloomy economy?”
“TPJC couple petting in bus back seat: ‘Girl moaned and screamed at times’”

What is the point of all this? (especially the third one)
Satisfy your secret urges?
Slam a random couple?
(more likely), Give yourself an ego boost?

If these are the reasons, how is STOMP a news portal?

It is therefore not, and should not be called an “online media portal”. Indeed, the word “chatroom” comes to mind.

Aiyo now better pet carefully if not appear for worldwide viewing.

Can get lawyer to sue STOMP for infringement of privacy?

Conservative Singapore will fail. Stick to your own way of life. Do not send your stick in the mud narrow minded scholars overseas. All they do is socialise within their own circles.

12) no harm on February 2nd, 2009 5.08 pm

I suspect freedom of privacy is reduced when people upload videos of someone whom they may not even know doing things that is perfectly legal like kissing in public or just a small kiss in public. If important people doing that tell me you dare to upload and I kudos to you. Say it man. tell me. of you choose your target?

Doesn’t the couple have the right to sit close to one another? What is sTOMP’s rules on videos? I wonder what happens to a stomp empployee or supporter if their own petting gets uploaded to youtube or stomp? To be fair, am i right to say they should approve and allow their petting to be seen by the world? can comfom comfom or not anyone from stomp? lets put it down in black and white.

or film you when you farting with all the sound effects ? erm, its definitely possible to catch such candid moments. everyone farts, even important people and beauties. they fart all the time. its inevitable.

so, what is the stand?

There is definitely basis for a defamation suit. The STOMP article alleges quite a bit. which may be false. And the identities of the parties are known from the picture. STOMP might kena intermediary liability and the post-maker definitely. Hope the two parties file a lawsuit if they were really innocent. Would set a warning for irresponsible liars.

STOMP

Straits Times Owns Mah Privacy

Remember the AIMS liberalisation drive.. about immunity from defamation to be extended to intermediaries like blogs/portals..

Hmm..

I remembered once there’s a photo of a beer can in a truck.

Does that mean the truck driver is drinking beer? Or is the truck driver merely using the can as an ashtray.

STOMP is just a place waiting for a lawsuit to happen. If the users are violating the law, e.g. defamation, STOMP has no option but to give in to the law and give up information on their users.

If my photos appear on STOMP and is labeled wrongly, I will sue. I will not even think twice.

bottomline is STOMP has become a sort of legalised citizen voyeurism and invasion of privacy

are there moderators in place to moderate of material the public puts on STOMP???

And what good did TOC do by publishing the pictures of the teens? Just leveraging for readership from another angle?

Better dun kena stomp yourself.

#10, hey,pls mind yr language! I’m an ahpek you know! You’re as bad as STOMP which you are condemning!

#27
Those intermediaries contemplated in the report are “passive”, i.e. they have no control over the content. At STOMP there is at least a minimal editorial process. And they came up with the headline. Note that the headline in the STOMP report only used quotation marks in the latter bit. They came up with the front part themselves. Furthermore, by leaving the article on their site for weeks ought to eradicate any passiveness on their part.

Well..I do not see anyone kena sack when prisoner escaped from prison..ths were the days where they said the focus shd be on catching the prisoner..so now why can’t they focus on educating our youths and just move on instead on dwelling on it..I mean even if the students are sacked..they can still pet on a bus..!
I suggest them to go see their highly paid MPs..

No smoke without fire, me thinks.

The schools, authorities, whatever, will not take action unnecessarily unless there is ample evidence or proof.

Anyway isn’t voyeurism supposed to be

‘the practice of obtaining sexual gratification by looking at sexual objects or acts, esp. secretively.’

Source: Dictionary.com

The parents should sue STOMP and the school and seek conpensation for durest and defamation

The issue is not whether teens are sexually liberal or behave badly in public without shame. The issue here is that a blog that is linked to MSM has published a photograph of two identifiable parties and then proceed to make unverified claims about what the parties were doing.

The claims have caused the parties much distress and inconvenience and cast aspersions on their moral character. Hence if they are untrue, there’s clearly defamation.

As an aside, I don’t see why STOMP thinks it’s in the public interest to publish such photographs with the accompanying story if the truth of the matter cannot be verified.

Of course, just to be fair, STOMP’s editorial process might have censored off the indecent bits…

This article demonstrates that unvetted citizen journalism is open to abuse. Not only by the untrained writer, who can post unsubstanciated claims, but by the media company which owns the property. STOMP’s sensationalism and controversy generates web traffic at the expense of a possibly innocent victim. And this traffic generates ad revenue. SPH is legally liable for the content it places, or allows to be placed on its website. It has a duty to verify the facts and ensure that content does not breach Singapore’s civil or criminal laws, including defamation or racial hatred. If I were the victim here, I’d sue the “journalist” and SPH for defamation.

Yes indeed, STOMP is a desperate tactic by the ST to arrest the slide in readership.

A proper system should include some sensible vetting/censoring process. Bu, t of course, we know too well that anything potentially anti-ruling party would have been removed!

I agree with the article. STOMP is like some gossip place, not fit for real discussion like TOC.

@35 a lawsuit is not enough, you need a class action by all the various affected people from years of irresponsible STOMP posting, and their related schools, companies, institutions, relatives and friends.

The couple in the photo is not as innocent as you may summise. As I recall my own testerone charged days in school uniform, it was easy (probably still is) to get into a compromising situation with a similarly developing female. The difference was that we never “did it” in a public place, and therefore run afoul of the law. Having said that, it was wrong for STOMP or any news hungry MSM to publish the picture – an outright invasion of privacy and testimony of journalistic voyeurism. Did they consider the damage done to two young lives? Did they consider taking it up privately with the school authorities so that both may receive suitable counselling? Whatever happened to education?

Wish STOMP can come out with some MPs ,,,some juicy news!

29) Parka on February 3rd, 2009 12.04 am
I remembered once there’s a photo of a beer can in a truck.

Does that mean the truck driver is drinking beer? Or is the truck driver merely using the can as an ashtray.

STOMP is just a place waiting for a lawsuit to happen.
===============================================

erm , you know who owns stooomp or not?

What’s more disturbing than STOMP publishing such “news” are narrow-minded folks who believed strongly in & agree with the negativity portrayed.

Such news have no credibility & STOMP has pretty low integrity to publish this. Even if it’s genuine, people has rights to do what they want & information about a horny teenage couple in a news column is silly. Imagine a post about horny teens in German or US papers. Gimme a break.

I remembered the big hoo-ha (somehow, this word means “vagina” in urban dictionary) in the past about Fann Wong wearing very short shorts at a prize ceremony or something. The media totally blew this piece of “news” outta proportion. I mean, c’mon!

One interesting characteristic of our society is that we tend to imitate others, especially from movies or news (as in the sex video case of the American actor).

I still remember when we ate “fish and chips”. It was so popular at one time.
Then somehow or the other we got spurned, it seemed. So back to eating rice. But this commodity was even manipulated !

Then now we try to eat “steaks”. But in this context, many senior citizens lost their hard-earned savings. Very sad, no collaterals provided yet products being sold !

It seems that up to this day, we still have not projected some of our own identities. The Koreans still maintain their culture and speak their own languages, eat kimchi, and have their Korean names. So do the Japanese.

But what about us ? Now in the US, the new President is Obama.
Will some locals quick to adopt similar names ? Easier to pronounce ?

Now newspapers reported that Michael Jackson is regretting his “whitening” skin treatment.

So any other couples ready to imitate the recent nude couple at Holland V ?

Presume we are constantly bombarded by rhetorics and propagandas, even about free markets and enterprises ! What is the West implying now ?

Sometime ago, our local newspapers also reported a Professor mentioning about stupidity and superiority.

Yes I am strongly against stomp for shaming the innocents without verifying the truth and had previously participate by commenting and going against those contributers who took photoes of strangers or their neighbours so as to shame them .

As I am strongly against these ‘big bully and cowardly act’,I had participate so actively that in the end ,without a warning or yellow card,they gave a red card suddenly and I was barred from participating.I believe it could be that they find my comments would only discourage their contributers from becoming their free reporters

PDA or having sex in public is intended for public viewing otherwise they shouldn’t be performed in public. The public has the right to censure if the scene offends and embarrasses .
I have seen youngsters having sex at HDB staircases . To some it may be a free porn show but to parents with young children this can send wrong signal.
Shaming these youngsters in Stomp would not deter them. Instead they are proud to receive publicity.
You can see people like jaime, so called celeb sharing her first sexual orgasm shamelessly in stomp. What was she up to? Seeking attention? or she thought something clever? Whatever ,she was sharing wrong values. Hope someone wouldn’t share that she had sex with her pet and expect claps, claps and approval for her act. Come on, we are Asians. We don’t want another Grace Quek or IIjima in our midst.

Ah the attempts by the mainstream media at relevance.. The issue here is not ‘citizen journalism’ but simply a case of our media blowing what would otherwise have been a salicious but useless bit of ‘news’ into a story that no one apart from the protagonists, their parents and their peers cared about in what seems to be a desperate attempt to be ‘cool’. Face it Straits Times, you will never be cool, no matter how much you pretend to be. STOMP is merely another failed attempt.

I hate stomp, there are many fake reports (esp. involving MRT seats) and many just take pics with a fake story and post it up on Stomp as a form of cheap vengeance.

An example would be this:
Fake accusation: http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/viewContent.jsp?id=53863

Rebuttal from innocent party: http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/viewContent.jsp?id=54703

btw regarding the issue of photos taken of MRT passengers ‘not giving up their seats’, the angle of the photos suggest that those pple taking the pictures were all standing-up without a seat.

I am willing to bet most of those Stomp reported cases of “ungracious commuters” are just a form of revenge from those who couldn’t get a seat.

Afterall I’m 100% certain that those who are already sitting down wouldn’t bother to take such photos anyway!

ac3knight.. the story of the pregnant is sad.. sad because if you read the comments, there are many fools who do not understand basic social responsibility nor have any common sense. they post what they feel from simply reading what others wrote.

In Japan, you’re not even suppose to sit on the seat even if the train is available as long as you’re neither handicap nor pregnant. Singapore should practice this basic social responsibility.

I don’t know who’s right or wrong but one thing for sure. On thing for sure though, this woman should not be sitting there when it is meant for people with needs.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that STOMP is helping to make our society worse. In fact, somehow I feel that Singaporeans are losing more and more of their grace, and I believe STOMP is to take at least some blame for this. By passing off such yellow journalism (read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism for an explanation of the term) as “news” is an insult to our intelligence, highly unprofessional, a serious breach of everyone’s privacy, and overall degrades society into a festering mess of moronic snobs who seem content with entertaining themselves with such garbage (“Fahrenheit 451″, anyone?).

Personally, I visit STOMP just to go there to point, and try my best to laugh at the “content” there before the massive facepalm sets in and drives me to somewhere else. Yes, there’s the rare gem (such as someone’s report of a sighting of a rather rare Peregrine Falcon in Sengkang), but these gems are always buried under tons after tons of raw sewage that is the “news” on STOMP.

A Singaporean I met over the IRC network once lamented at how STOMP is taking the privacy of Singaporeans away, and I must fully agree; nowadays, I don’t feel comfortable even in my own home, let alone when I’m outdoors, for I fear every single thing I do, be it playing music in my own home, (apparently) refusing to give up seats or taking the pirority seats on trains (which I avoid primarily because I know they are pirority seats, but also because this has become a favourite subject of many STOMPers). I’m lucky not to have tasted the power of STOMP yet; some of the things that I have done in public were almost more than sure to earn me a place on that site.

It’s extremely, extremely, extremely outrageous that a pair of students lost so much thanks to the simple actions of one barbaric Singaporean, who jumped to simplistic conclusions without even bothering to poke the surface of the situation, and a harmful web site that passes yellow journalism as real journalism, and that a junior colleage – supposedly THE kind of place for, among other things, integrity and intelligence, and the inparting of such on our future generation – could fall for such yellow journalism and respond with such simplistic, iron-fist tactics. I think this speaks a lot about the overall infantilsm, immaturity, moronism, childishness, idiocy, gracelessness, and stupidity of our society.

It does appear that Singapore is fast becoming like a twisted version of the society in George Orwell’s novel, “1984″ – instead of a all-knowing “Big Brother” government, however, it’s the people themselves, with the help of a web site, that is doing the dirty work.

The kind of content on STOMP is meant to be shared privately with family and friends, and not with the public; and even in the former case it’s not really morally right to gossip about complete strangers, even if it’s without our knowledge; it’s simply an excercise in degrading our morals.

STOMP is beginning to look like Singapore’s own thread of whining

well said!

stomp articles are like the gossip pages.

NON-CONSTRUCTIVE CRAP.

it is used to distract the citizens from looking into news that really matters! now tell us how much did we lose from the investments man!

[...] STOMP the biggest loser in TPJC controversy [...]

This is not even a citizen journalism to start with at the first place!

It’s citizen paparazzo they are creating.