Are troublemakers worth our attention?

Their rhetoric will die out if we stop believing in their power to grab our attention

COMMENT

If news reports are any indication, there’s lately been a lot of tension in Malaysian life. Most recently, it’s the old chestnut about how non-Muslims don’t respect their Muslim brothers and sisters and vice versa. The issue gets resurrected by opportunist politicians every time a religious occasion comes around and, like the suckers we are, we fall for it every single time.

This is because, for some reason, Malaysians just love to argue. Everybody has an opinion. Every issue has to be black and white, us versus the religious hardliners/disgusting anti-religion liberals.

Granted, it’s hard to maintain disinterest when some troublemaker says something controversial and you know that the aim is to rile you up. You don’t want to fall for it, but you do. It’s the political version of clickbait – hatred, condensed into bite-sized, share-worthy nuggets for all of us to froth at the mouth over.

For example, there’s the dress code controversy still playing on today in the media, where a number of women (and one man) were barred from entering public and government institutions because, as we know, shorts are the devil.

Then there’s the matter of the schoolteacher in Kedah and his ill-advised urine joke. He told non-Muslim students that they weren’t allowed to drink in front of their fasting Muslim friends, and could drink tap water or their own urine in the toilets.

Facebook, of course, exploded. Suddenly, everyone became an expert on social issues.

My Facebook feed was filled with posts slamming the idiocy and oppressiveness of the government and the supposed religious blindness of the majority. Half of the time, the unsavoury way that they are written is in itself an argument for how we should not be Facebook friends with our parents. The other half of the time, it is our parents writing the posts, which makes me wonder sometimes if crankiness and lack of tact comes with age.

On that note, the response Malaysians had to the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriages was off the charts. Never mind the fact that it was an American ruling which in no way affects our country; we really love controversy, and we’re damn well going to milk it for all we can get.

The direction our rhetoric is taking would suggest that our country is moving towards the kind of polarisation that has beset the United States for the past few decades. And that’s not a direction that we want to take.

People like Ridhuan Tee and Alvin Tan are especially guilty of perpetrating this idiocy. They take advantage of every little controversy, and their primary goal is to get their name in the papers. I’m probably playing right into their hands right now by pointing this out.

But there has to be a point where we stop paying attention to the troublemakers. There has to be a point when we decide to ignore them because, like Peter Pan’s fairies (or Justin Bieber), they subsist on belief, and their rhetoric will die out sooner or later if we stop believing in their power to grab our attention.

There has to be a point where we actually take action on the issues that worry us, instead of just talking about them on Facebook and reacting to every Upworthy or Elite Daily story that comes our way.

Of course, that would mean actually giving a crap, wouldn’t it?