 Terima kasih kerana menikmati tepung kamu. Nix Talk is an interesting one by Kenneth Lee who writes at 5meanders.com, Daily Vanity and Avenue One Magazine. He specialises in creating provocative content that touches on hot button social issues. Today he will share with us about creating blog posts that get people talking on social media without getting into trouble. Let's welcome Kenneth to the stage. Selamat pagi. Okey, so she did a really fantastic introduction. My name is Kenneth. By training, I am a branding communication consultant. So yeah, it's actually what I do for all my clients in the past and now I am actually in-house. I work with Shopping Mall, my village at Serangun Gardens in the day. But at night a large amount of my life is spent on 5meanders writing for the site as well as for Daily Vanity, City Nomads, Avenue One, which is Travel Magazine. So I just want to share with you today what I care about and what I believe in. And before I continue, I just want to say that to me what's important is that every one of us reclaim a bit of our own voice. You know, like as children, we tend to have this say anything we want, do anything we want, kind of a behavior. And as we grow a little bit older, we tend to suppress that, we tend to push it back. But our opinions and our thoughts are as valuable and valid as the next person as long as we put some effort to think things through. And so that's what I believe in. So let me tell you what I care about. So what I care about is exactly where all the controversial topics come from. I care about great food. I care about society. I care about people. Okay, alright. So I care about food, society, people. So I share about good places to eat and I talk about social issues. And I just need to call a pause at this moment because beyond this point, everything I'm saying is not like a skating indictment on anyone, any country, any person. It's a reflection of what's happening and it is my approach to hot button topics. So to have in your head and to know what's important to you, it can be the pronunciation of gif or gif. Like, yeah, he chuckled. There is a huge debate over gif or gif. But or it could be why a certain coding language is important to you. Or it could be, like for me, it could be really, really social issues. So why and how and what is what you have to zoom in on first. Without the writing first. Go in, read, find out a lot more about that and these are your building blocks. So when I, about a year ago, I started five meanders about 18 months ago and about a year ago, I saw this show up on my feet and basically what happened was that this woman was taken, I think this happened in China, this woman was drugged in a nightclub and actually someone took off clothes and snap photos of her and shared it with her friends. And what shocked me wasn't the content but what people were talking about. You know, if you look at, if you go on Facebook and you look at the comments, this is what people were talking about and that shocked me. I realised that social media, especially Facebook, is an echo chamber and so when you go in and you look at the comment section and find out what other people think, you realise that online, people actually, like for some reason, irrationally brave. So what do others irrationally brave? So what do other people, you know, think about this and there are a lot of people who basically said, you know, this girl is, it's her fault, she deserves it and they were really, really rude about it. And I think this is the point I want to emphasise, you may be emotional about it, you may hate it, you may dislike it but read the feedback, no matter how ugly it is, if you disagree with your majority stance that's perfect, that's your controversy right there. It gives you a very clear perspective on what the other side thinks and it helps you build on your nuances. So after you, you know, get to that, or after I went through all that and it was pretty horrible. Then I ask myself, what are my values? Or what do I stand for? What do I think about this situation? Because everyone has a stand about that and the other side, on the flip side of the coin, some people will say, you know, she deserves it. Well, you better have a damn good reason why, buddy, because that's exactly what people are going to ask you if you write something and hit the post button. So for me, because social media is such an echo chamber, you know, someone was talking about having to pay Facebook to get the shares and get the likes, right? For me, you know, it's about breaking the echo chamber. It's about breaking away from and not having to pay Facebook, basically. So, okay. So this happened on the backs of this case and this case. And if you notice, there were a lot of op-eds, a lot of blogs about it. So I read all of it and I found an opinion about it and basically what I was trying, what I realized was that, okay, this is what I think about it, right? No matter whether they put themselves in their position or not, you don't blame someone for that happening to them. And this was the call message of my blog post. But if this was a title, you wouldn't read it, right? Let's be honest, you wouldn't even click on it. So, nobody would care. And what I realized this was actually my very first viral post. So what I realized was that a lot of the good, the viral post that were happening then and even now depended on 2 hours, temporal relevance and like relative comparison. So the engaging content needs these 2 hours. What I meant to say was that, okay, so we are coming off the back of these 2 cases. This new piece of news happened. It's temporally relevant now. You have to link everything up. And relative, it's a comparison. It's something is, something happening right here is actually pretty crazy, crazier than what's happening somewhere else. So you have to have that comparative quality first. And finally, the last R is reaction, right? You you want to provoke or I want to provoke a bit of an instant reaction. You are going to piss people off, so don't worry about it. So after a long time and ping ponging with a few friends, I spoke to some of the other bloggers. I spoke to my university schoolmates. I spoke to my colleagues. And actually we all came up with this title. And isn't this like this? If you're Singaporean, this hits you right. Right in the gut, right? This hits you right there. Because let's face it, right? Singaporeans, we're always talking shit about other people online. But and when we get called out and we're not happy about it. So this is your be direct, be honest moment. Your title hits your audience hard, but your content needs to say how you feel and what you think about it. And when you put a fully formed opinion online and you press the post button, you are going to get like a crapload of backlash. So that's when you realise that oh okay, we might be in a bit of a deep water now. So once I I hit the post, I think I posted it at 11 o'clock at night. So I think 11 o'clock at night it's probably a very good time to post stuff on Facebook because a lot of people will read it. And it actually went it just shot really, really fast up. So I was getting a lot of feedback like and not just on Facebook but direct on the comment section of the blog because that's where you're anonymous. Ah, you know, you're just another social role justice warrior in action. And so you could see the traffic going, going. This is the first day we posted it by hour. And then after that you're just trying to get get internet famous. And it's like it keeps going and going. So some people will argue with you and you respond to your comments, right? So the other thing that needs to be done is whether it's on Facebook, whether people call you WhatsApp. So I receive all of that. The news was calling me. My my response would be to actually engage with this audience but in a very non-emotional way. So don't get into the don't don't don't get dragged into name calling. Don't get dragged into the you are wrong, you are right. Just make your stance and stand firm. And eventually just that five day period there were about 22,000 hits. Today after about a year and a half it's doubled it's we are about 50, you know, 40,000 almost 50 hits. So it's five days of really going viral and then very, very long tails the content. And so especially when you write this kind of content if you are if you have haters you are hitting home. You're making them very uneasy but you stick to your stance and you keep replying because you're creating a sort of a dissonance in your head and you know, hopefully what you're trying to do is to make them introspect make them think. And I have other controversial post that have gone viral. So whether it's racism whether it's the internet making fun of a guy who just can't get a date it's really, really interesting to see the reactions and see that that frustration and then being able to explain yourself it's really, really interesting. Just go take a look take a look at the post if you have time read the comment section and then you you get what I'm trying to say. So let's let's wrap it up. So remember the following ask yourself is this important to me make sure you care about the issue. Then ask what do other people think? Figure out the majority figure out the minority positions recognize that it's not either or it's a range it's a spectrum and then you find your color in the spectrum and then you go at it. So form a logical stand find your anchors so you gotta go and do your research right Google read more pick up few books just go pick it up figure it out figure out the issues first and then you can connect emotionally be emotive be opinionated have a stand don't be afraid to piss a few people off and accept backlash because that's where you know you're getting through and I think the key thing about this is that a lot of us are conditioned to think in right and wrong black and white yes and no but the truth of the matter is that there is a spectrum of views on any single controversial topic whether it's gay marriage, religion body image issues it doesn't matter what we need to do is to look at the rainbow look at the spectrum and pick out a colour that's ours and then reclaim your voice and this is what I genuinely will leave one from you so if you want to like get hungry then instagram will be my instagram will be where I put all my food for pose controversial stuff get on 5menders.com and then of course for everything else I'm on facebook as well yep I think my talk is a little bit of like principles and guidelines I think if you have questions, shoot and then we can like have to and fro and it'll be easier to figure everything out Stan, you want to go in to ask a question for Kenneth? Hi I think we all agree that when you put out something that you want viral it has to be very genuine well thought out and all that but stepping back from just like talking about issue talking about like vloggers in general do you have to be someone who loves a limelight to be a vlogger? because you have to stand behind what we say and you know like sometimes if you don't review yourself then of course people don't know who is behind there and whether that's better or not than that I think as a vlogger you have to enjoy getting your butt kicked a bit um okay but seriously uh yeah you gotta enjoy not being in the limelight but you gotta enjoy having your opinions really cast like have a light thrown on your opinion and then if and when you have that moment where you come under scrutiny that's when you gotta enjoy being told that you are wrong and then be able to have that self-awarness to to adjust so it for me it probably didn't start on the internet it probably started at home my mother's a teacher so 99% of the time I'm told I'm wrong um and that helped me figure out where I stood on things and once I figured that out then on a larger scale with that exposure your opinions start to matter and then it's easier for me to have that self-repudiation so uh isn't just about having other people scrutinize you it's about being able to scrutinize yourself first that's that's what I think thank you is there anybody else with questions? okay if you are too shy to ask you can always approach Kenneth later alright thank you okay so thank you so much Kenneth