The seedier side of the Malaysian Internet

FMT discovers a prostitution community and their secret world.

PETALING JAYA: Earlier this year, it was revealed that prostitution services were being offered through popular messaging platform WeChat. A cursory examination of the platform revealed dozens of accounts dedicated to the promotion of prostitution both male and female, with plenty more offering products that purportedly enhance the sexual experience. However, many questions were left unanswered in regards to the patrons of these services.

Investigations by FMT have revealed the existence of a community of “cheongsters” who congregate in forums to discuss and review the various prostitution services in Malaysia. The forum discovered by FMT, Decent Playboy, is a colourful one. Banner ads litter the interface, each leading to the forum page or website of that particular service. There are sub-forums for the different regions of Malaysia, as well as states and cities, though there is a noticeable glut of services being offered in the Klang Valley.

It is in these sub-forums that cheongsters discuss and review their sexual escapades, giving detailed “FRs” (field reports) of their experience with women in spas, massage parlours, and the like. The women are rated on several factors, ranging from their looks to the quality of their genitalia, as well as “GFE”, or “girl friend experience”, and many users describe in lurid detail the experience from start to finish before concluding on whether or not they would return for the services offered by the women in question.

A colourful vocabulary has sprung up around these FRs, such as referring to the ethnicities of the prostitutes according to foods related to their home countries. For example, a Vietnamese prostitute is referred to as a “popiah” while a Malay prostitute is called a “nasi lemak”. Additionally, certain sexual acts have code names of their own, like “BBBJ” for oral sex without a condom, or “1 Dragon” for a “special, cannot miss” service that seems exclusive to certain Chinese prostitutes.

The lurid FRs have led to what amount to fan followings for women with outstanding performance in various spas and massage parlours, with many opting to write FRs on the same women. Known as “ang pais”, these women are often the star attractions of their respective services. They are highly sought after, as evidenced by a user’s comment on a prostitute called “Diamond”, who he estimated served an average of five customers per day.

Interestingly enough, the forum users will often defend a prostitute in a show of being “gentlemen” should the girls be attacked or derided by other users.

The cheongsters also arrange “TTs”, which are informal meetings to exchange information and foster a sense of community among the users. These are often concluded with a visit to a prostitution service together. They have also established a hierarchy based on the forum’s seniority system, with certain super users seen as authoritative not only in administrative matters on the site but also in their knowledge of the services. These super users enforce the forum rules, but are also seen as mentors to newer users.

In fact, it appears that TTs function as both a chance for those with common interests to socialise and for the super users to introduce newcomers into their world. New users are often encouraged to come to these TTs to glean information on the best places to “cheong” and to learn the unspoken rules of the community.

Pimps, or “OKTs” (to use forum parlance), also use the forum to keep the community informed on their stock of girls, and it appears that they often monitor feedback to keep track of the performance of their workers. A negative review can lead to girls being penalised, often with a monetary fine, and thus users often warn each other that they are not the only ones watching the FRs.

There is no way to determine if the site is dominated by any particular ethnicity, but perusing the forums reveal that the site is for some part multi-racial, although some services cater only to Chinese customers, and there is a separate forum exclusively in Chinese. Services which cater to all ethnicities are deemed “1Malaysia”, although some users occasionally recommend that a non-Chinese cheongster can enter certain premises with a Chinese companion to ensure that there is no rejection. Overall, it is safe to assume that the cheongster community is a multi-ethnic one.

It has proven hard to estimate the average age of the users or whether the typical user is single or married. Some mention taking “clients” to enjoy these services, indicating that these particular cheongsters could be sales executives in corporations.

Given that there are years’ worth of posts on the forum, it appears that the seedy side of the Malaysian Internet has been chugging away quite happily without harassment by law enforcers. The world’s oldest profession is alive and well in Malaysia, and perhaps our authorities should refocus their efforts on addressing the moral problems in our society before policing dissent on social media.