But as we all know (and some refuse to admit), Twitter is dead, no one reads my blog anymore and my column is retired.

So, I decided to write this post for three reasons: 1. I’ve been messing around with the back-end of my website and have been thinking about this blog a lot; 2. I kind of made a pledge to write more last month and 3. I actually have a lot to be grateful for and I wanted to end the year with some positivity to propel me into what I expect to be the toughest year yet in my PhD journey in 2018.

Here goes, in no particular order:

1. I, umm, published a book! Who would have thought? Many thanks to Sze Mei and her team at MPH for the opportunity, and Yuen and the Kakiseni team for making it happen. Now, stop asking me about the second book until I’ve submitted my PhD okay?

2. First time ever playing hockey while it was snowing! Yes, I still can’t believe I’m playing hockey after all these years. But snow. SNOW! (Sorry, I come from the tropics).

3. I ran the fastest 10k ever! This year has been great for me fitness wise. I’m regularly at the gym, and playing more sports than I have in years, But the milestone has to be that run I did in May where i not only raised over £500 for Cancer Research, but also ran my personal best ever after recovering my a ligament tear. Many thanks to Tom for helping me get there!

4. Expanded my academic family! Two highlights of my academic career moving forward will surely be having these people in my life – the SuSo family I met at the ECREA Summer School 2017 in Milan, Italy, and my Aussie academic family I met in Finland at the Affective Politics of Social Media conference (big thanks to Amelia for getting me there in the first place!). Academia has also allowed me to visit places I’ve never been before, the same way journalism did in the past).

5. Surprised mum! It was mum’s 70th birthday this year, so my sisters and I plotted to get her siblings across the border and lots of family and some friends to celebrate the occasion. Really pleased I was back in KL around that time to be able to help make this happen. With some of my immediate family members in the picture below.

6. My annual story-collecting project turned 5! Each year, I collaborate with some of my creative friends to collect Malaysian stories to commemorate Hari Merdeka and Malaysia Day. This year was the fifth installment of the project, and we marked it with a major retrospective of the numerous projects I have worked since 2013.

7(ish). Bring on 2018. Hopefully I’ll have more than just one entry next year (which is basically: 1. Handed in dissertation). Actually, I take that back. That’s the only entry I want to make sure is in that list!

p/s I lied. While scrolling back through Facebook, it reminded me that I did write a post reflecting on 2016 as a self-reminder to be grateful for all the good in my life despite the bad.

Last Sunday, I was invited to speak at the MSD Blogger’s Workshop on the issue of cancer awareness. Other than myself, Dr Tho Lye Mun was also on hand to share a bit about cancer to eight bloggers and social media personalities who attended.

Those of you who have followed my blog and column over the years will know that cancer is a cause very close to my heart. In the past, I have been involved with Dato’ Yasmin Yusuff’s Relay for Life Celebrity contingent (alongside actress Sharifah Sofia – far right in the image above) to fundraise for the National Cancer Society of Malaysia. Earlier this year, I ran my first 10k run in a couple of years in aid of Cancer Research UK.

While Dr Tho spoke a lot about cancer in general from a medical perspective, focusing specifically on lung cancer, melanoma and the newish treatment known as immunotherapy, I spoke from a more emotional perspective.

Not many people know but I had a cancer scare myself many years ago, when I had just entered my young adulthood. It turned out to be something else which was sorted quickly, but that time between it being suspected as cancer – and the surgery I underwent to do a biopsy, and the eventual fixing of the condition – was scary.

However, that incident had made me extra sensitive to people I knew who had been affected by the disease. During my session, I shared the stories of three people who were affected differently.

One of my aunts only discovered cancer very late because she was afraid of visiting the doctor. And while she lived for a few years after being initially diagnosed, she eventually succumbed. Another aunt had successfully battled breast cancer and had an extended life, until it returned many years later and took her in 2016. The last story I shared was that of my father’s who was cancer-free when he passed away last year, but was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years ago.

The reason I shared those stories was to emphasise the importance of cancer awareness and early detection – my father discovered his really early on and as such, a surgery to remove his prostate was successful. To our knowledge, the cancer never spread.

I was very surprised to discover through Dr Tho’s session that 1 in 6 Malaysian is bound to have cancer in their lifetime. While that number was so jarring, the bigger revelation was that it was worse in other more developed countries.

I just can’t imagine it being worse anywhere else – after all, I’ve had so many people in my life who are battling, succumbed to and beaten the disease. I mentioned in my talk that very few of us these days can say that we don’t know someone who has cancer or whose life has been impacted by it.

But that point was also to emphasise that cancer also affects the people around those with the disease.

In the past year and a half alone, I have lost several friends to the many different types of cancer and it has been heartbreaking to say the least.

I’m glad that I got the opportunity to share my stories, and for the other bloggers to be able to share it with their readers as well. But it really wasn’t my stories that are important – most of us have one or two to share and there was even a blogger at the workshop who was the primary caregiver of her mother who had cancer.

It really is about getting the word out there – that cancer may be part of our modern day lives, but that early detection can really save lives and advancement in medicine – such as with immunotherapy – can not just extend lives but also improve quality of lives so that we all have many more memories to create with our loved ones.

Dear friends,

Over 10 years ago, I was given a unique platform in form of The Bangsar Boy column, to share stories from the lens of a young, progressive urban Malaysian. This year, I mark a major milestone in my career and personal life with the launch of Growing Up In KL: 10 years of The Bangsar Boy, my first published book.

Growing Up In KL features a collection of my columns from the past decade, told in four parts – focussing on my family and the values I grew up with; the neighbourhood I’ve lived in all my life and the people that make it what it is; Kuala Lumpur – my favourite city in the world – and finally, my reflections on Malaysia.

I have also invited friends and colleagues – including Dato’ Yasmin Yusuff, Elaine Daly, Ivy Josiah, Dato’ Zahim Albakri, YAM Tengku Zatashah binti Sultan Sharafudin Idris Shah, Davina Goh, Kuah Jenhan, Hansen Lee, Jo Kukathas and many more – to share their musings and thoughts about my selected pieces.

The book has been available at selected stores from Jan 7, 2017, and will roll out after that over the next few months to major bookstores nationwide (and in Singapore!).

The publication of Growing Up In KL has been a dream come true for me; it speaks to the boy who started writing at a very young age. He took up many hobbies over the years but writing is the only thing he has stuck to. Reaching this 10 year milestone, and to publish a book to mark the occasion, is both a privilege and an honour he never imagined he’d have.

I hope you’ll get a copy of the book and that you’ll enjoy it enough to want to share your own stories and photographs of #GrowingUpInKL, via platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Niki

This picture was posted on the Nikon Facebook page (since removed) having won a amateur photography competition. The prize, I believe, is just a camera bag).

Those of us who don’t think too much of what flows through our timelines might just gasp in awe, and then move on. But if you read further, you’ll learn that there was much more to the picture than meets the eye.

I came across the image on Facebook first, and was lured into reading more about it through captions asking me (and other friends, I assume) to check out the comments to the post.

So, I did exactly as I was told. In the comments, I saw many variations of that image; Internet users had taken it upon themselves to “meme-fy” that original photo, putting such characters as Godzilla, Ultraman and James Bond, among others in place of the aeroplane.

It was at that point that I realised that this was a response to a much bigger issue and not just the casual birth of a new meme. These posts alluded to the fact that the aeroplane in the winning picture was not actually in the original shot.

The post has since gone ‘viral’ – for lack of a better term – including over 4,000 comments, almost 33,000 likes and almost 24,000 shares when this post was first written. The winner has taken to Instagram to apologise for what he called a joke entry, and Nikon has responded officially as well, including the decision to remove the picture from its page.

Personally, I was much less interested in the ethics of submitting a manipulated image for a “casual photo contest” (in Nikon’s words), or the standards of judging by a camera company.

Instead, I was rather fascinated with all the people responding to the incident and original post on the Nikon Facebook page asking others to “Look at the comments”.

This has made me think about commenting as a form of performance – do we post to respond, or do we post to perform?

I ask this because the meme-fication of the original post allude to the latter. Add to this a couple of posts I saw – one friend who had created one of the memes boasting about the number of likes his comment got, another chose to link to the that meme comment instead of the original post – which seemed to be calling for an audience.

Indeed, unlike many of the memes were are familiar with on the Internet – some we consume, some we create and some with modifications – these ones shared on the Facebook post is not anonymous and therefore, brings attention to oneself as much as the content of the meme.

It would appear that social media can then be a platform for performance. This reminds me of an article in The Guardian recently reporting on the backlash Burberry seems to be facing from professional photographers for hiring Brooklyn – the eldest son of David and Victoria Beckham – to shoot one of its campaigns.

Never mind that Brooklyn is a teenager; what he is not is a professional photographer. But the job is his, and social media is where it will all happen – audiences have been told to check out the #THISISBRIT hashtag on Instagram and Snapchat to follow the shoot live.

By tapping into huge audience – 5.9million Instagram users – and live-“Gramming” and “Snapping” the occasion, this comes across as a digital performance of sorts.

Add to that the suggestion in the The Guardian article by photographer Jon Gorrigan that it was likely that the whole shoot would be set up for Brooklyn to just click the shutter button, then it is even more of a performance if true.

In the case with Burberry and Beckham, this is clearly a strategy. I can imagine how both the two B’s will benefit from this experience solely on numbers – both will have access to each other’s over-5mil Instagram followers. Being associated with a luxury brand like Burberry (Brooklyn’s younger brother Romeo once modelled for them) would no doubt add value to Beckham’s profile, while Brooklyn will introduce Burberry to a younger fan base.

This has made me think about the Nikon incident and what that can teach us about strategy.

The meme-fication of the original post seems to have been done quite organically by photographers and fan of photography to mock the original picture. It would appear that the memes – in becoming memes in the first place – has distracted from the main issue at hand.

Many people are more entertained by the funny memes that have emerged from the incident more than being upset that a young amateur photographer had cheated to win a camera bag.

At the rate it’s going, I don’t think Nikon has lost much in this situation – in fact, if they wanted to be more manipulative, they’d continue feeding the meme-madness.

Already, I have seen posts of clever and witty replies by the Nikon account to the meme pictures in the comments section of that post (although, with the picture being removed, I cannot verify if those in itself is a meme or if they are authentic).

I am seeing posts on my Timeline featuring only the meme (either just the steps or the aeroplane) without a reference to Nikon. Then, Canon in Canada has jumped in on the bandwagon as well.

It would appear that this issue has taken a life of its own and moved in a very different direction.

In fact, this method of distraction as a strategy is not an uncommon practice. In an interview famed artist Ai Weiwei conducted with a member of China’s 50 Cent Party, the latter mentioned that the role of an “Internet commentator” isn’t always about manipulating information, spreading disinformation or fighting back with people who are criticising the Government.

Sometimes, he said, his role is just to do enough to distract from the issue at hand – including being so obnoxious that the whole conversation becomes an attack on him. It’s not nice having people spew hate at you, but his job is done.

This invokes the kind of behaviour we have come to expect from online trolls and flamers on various Internet sites – blogs, news sites, forums and social media.

Maybe they are all just performances after all. What motivates the performances, however, is more telling about how insidious this manipulation can be on the Internet and something we must all consider in our every day use of these platforms.

11.47pm Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

Dad was not my husband, but I am an adult son. I am also the most tech-savvy of my family members so I have taken the most interest (or remembered best) in dad’s digital life.

The article was poignant, not only because of how close to home it has hit – losing someone you love so much – but also in terms of asking the question that has been going around for years: what happens to our virtual lives, digital footprints and data we’ve collected or created when we die?

I’ve been taking my time clearing his things – to be honest, some days I walk around still in disbelief that he’s not been around for almost a month – but I still haven’t yet decided what to do with his technological legacy.

Dad was never on any social media, so there is nothing to memorialise per se. His blog will remain online for as long as Blogger runs, I suspect, although I have been wondering if I should archive it in some way in case it does.

The family tree he’s worked on for four decades lives on – I have been paying the cost of maintaining it over the past couple of years as his dementia hit and he forgot about it – and my oldest sister has said she wants to keep it going.

I also have access to his emails, and I’ve been torn between deleting the newer spam or letting his old stuff drown. As a researcher, part of me really wants to keep the authenticity of his email habits, but as his son, I feel like I should freeze everything at the point of his death.

The official stuff is less complicated. Before the dementia got worse, we managed to convince him to cancel all his credit cards and sort out his banking issues.

Then there are the physical items which rely on technology. I can finally throw away a few of the old CPUs, scanners and printers he’s been hoarding all these years. The fact is, they are obsolete. But then there are the hard drives, DVD/CDs and floppy disks that will all slowly become obsolete too (I will need to buy a floppy disc drive if I want to go through his stuff).

Which leaves me at the toughest question of all. Yes, dad trusted me with all these considering he left me all his passwords. But I don’t know if I should be reading any of the emails, looking into any of the disks.

So, for now, I’ve thrown away some things which I don’t imagine has useful data on them. Everything else is in one drawer. I think they’ll all remain there until we – my family – figure out what to do.

1.18pm Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

For a second, I thought — wow, positivity on Twitter? That’s a novelty!

Turns out, it was mostly a lot of negative reaction to Twitter’s replacing of the ‘star’ button (favourites) with a heart.

Admittedly, I also shared a bit of concern (and really enjoyed re-tweeting some of the funnier responses, including the few graphics from BuzzFeedUK).

For one, why change something that already works? Secondly, amid all the other issues with Twitter, this is what the company chooses to roll out?

Turns out that I quickly felt differently, especially what was troubling most people. The general feel that I got was that people felt that a ‘heart’ (equivalent to a social media ‘Like’) would be seen as an endorsement. A ‘star’ (or favourite), for them, doesn’t.

On the surface, this seems like an issue of semantics. After all, the above argument about favourites only holds from one interpretation of the word — i.e. “This tweet, for whatever reasons, is interesting enough for me to want to save it”.

But there is also another way of interpreting the term ‘favourite’ — “I like this tweet”. Which, essentially, can be seen as an endorsement.

The latter was how I used to view the ‘star’. In fact, I was so adamant about not using it because it would be seen as an endorsement that I kept sending tweets I wanted to save to an Evernote account for a very long time.

But when the new culture became accepted — that a ‘star’ was not necessarily an endorsement, but a bookmarking tool — I was ready to change my habits.

For me, then, and I suspect for many people, the issue isn’t one of semantics but in fact, one of implementation.

The button is, and can be, whatever you want to make of it.

Granted, I understand that there might be complexities in the issue. Someone on Twitter, for example, mentioned (joked?) that all his ‘stars’ on terrorist-related tweets might make him a suspect now that he is seen to have ‘heart’ those tweets. But I hope (optimistically) policy, and the law, would be sophisticated enough to understand and consider the complexities of online behaviour.

Across a variety of social platforms, we have empowered ourselves as users to use functionalities offered to us by these networks in our own way — some of which have marked significant cultural change (the RT function, to use as an example, was completely user devised).

Take our Facebook behaviour into consideration — we all use the Like button differently, in different contexts. At times, it is used to endorse a post, and other times, such as when you get tons of birthday wishes, we use it merely to acknowledge sight of the wishes (Facebook noticed this behaviour enough to let us post a huge thumbs up in chat, which many people now use it to end FB chats with).

Then, there are post which are more solemn, like deaths to which people also click on the ‘Like’ button sometimes to show that they are keeping the mourner in their thoughts — hardly to endorse the fact that someone is mourning a death.

The same way we collectively made the ‘star’ button a bookmarking tool, we can also put our own value into what the heart can mean.

I don’t necessarily agree with the change — I like things the way it used to be — but I’m sure that Twitter had their reasons for doing this. The way the heart is not now working for many people, perhaps the star wasn’t working very well for Twitter as well.

An article Mic Wright, from The Next Web, wrote in July has been making rounds again today because he suggested then that Twitter copy Slack’s ability to let people choose emojis to indicate how they felt about a post (thus, allowing the star or whatever icon exists to remain used for bookmarking).

While it’s not necessarily a bad idea, it reminds me of the fallout at rumours that Facebook were going to introduce the Dislike button (although, many people have noted many instances where a button like that would be useful). Too much work.

I think with Twitter, it is the simplicity of the platform that makes it easy to use and one of the most convenient ways for me to engage with people. Having too many icons or options will interfere with that.

I still don’t necessarily like the ‘heart’, but I’m hoping that users will once again wield the power they hold to shape the platform in ways they know best. And if this means that we have to ‘own’ the meaning of the ‘heart’ icon, then so be it.

> This article was first published in The Niki Cheong Fortnightly (which you can sign up for here).

11.10am GMT

#GOPdebate pic.twitter.com/rBT90JvCmM

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 29, 2015

The fact that it was still on my timeline indicates to a certain extent that the tweet had gone viral, and it’s not hard to understand why – in many cases, it is the perfect response from a competitor. It was also extremely clever, considering that the GIF that was used to make her point, was from an very recent event that was extremely high profile. Those of you who follow American politics will recognise that shot from the Benghazi hearing where Hillary was questioned for 11 hours just last week. It is also another example of the sophistication of Hillary’s social media campaign this time round, as compared to 2008. I am reminded of this post on her Facebook page last night as well, while the Republican debate was happening. Tapping into the popularity of the ‘Text from Hillary‘ Tumblr page that made its rounds a couple of years ago (and not, to my knowledge at least, crafted by her team), her campaign allowed people to ‘text’ Hillary and get her reaction on the debate. The fact that her team used that image which became a meme says it all.

But it did make me wonder if all this is just more than a great ‘social media strategy’? I am seeing these posts at a time when I am diving deep into books on spin and manipulation in politics.

It reminds me of The GIF bite election I read following the end of the 11-hour hearing referring to the ‘GIF bite election’, noting:

 Theory: while Republicans were playing for the sound bite, Hillary was playing to the gif, perhaps the first politician in history to consciously do so.

In the article, Matt Bors even questioned if that moment was a “Casual, common brushing of the shoulder? Or calculated media strat cooked up by Hillary’s yet-unkown Lead GIF Advisor?”

As with many things in a political campaign, there will be things we never find out. Yes, that theory is extremely plausible. It does, at the very least, come across as extremely too convenient.

It’ll be interesting to see what else comes from political campaigns in the future. It’s not just GIF’s that we should be looking out for, but also the current trend of Vine mash-ups we are seeing used in popular culture (see the current one of Drake’s latest music video making the rounds below). I’d be very keen to see how it’s weaved into politics.

Besides, it’s not really a new concept – the idea of the soundbite has long existed. And many politicians, including Hillary this time round, have been snipping up video footage of each other to make their cases or respond to competitors.

But while I am interested in this from an academic perspective, as voters, we need to be all the more eagled-eyed about how we are being manipulated. Because this isn’t about Hillary being ‘cool’ and ‘with the times’, this is very much about her team – and anyone else’s for that matter – making her (or them) come across that way.

10.08am GMT

Many people don’t know but for many years growing up, I identified as half-Singaporean (I know, I know …). These days, I say it in jest.

I grew up not understanding why we would call a language our mother-tongue but I needed to take a separate identity from my mother who was born in Singapore.

Mum’s journey is probably not unique too many who grew up “back then” but she was raised equally both in Malacca and Singapore (pre-Merdeka, pre-Malaysia and pre-separation) off and on. So although she has roots in both countries, she ended up being “Singaporean” although her father is Malacca-born and mother is China-born.

So as we celebrate 50 years of Singapore independence, I also want to mark 50 years of separation. I don’t know what both countries would have been like if we never separated then (or would we have at a later point?). But should have, would have, could have.

I’m just grateful that even with that bitter divorce back in 1965, my mum and dad were able to find a way to come together (they met in Malacca a few years after) and have me (okay, fine, and my two pesky siblings).

Mum has spent more than two-thirds of her life in Malaysia but remains proud to be a Singaporean. I’m sure that this is more to do with her identity of choice, than just about her cross-border roots (and passport which doesn’t need a visa to go into many countries). So in my own universe, I too will mark the occasion today because my heart belongs to mum, and so, I’m still very much half-Singaporean.

I took the picture above during the 5th year anniversary reunion of the Asian Journalism Fellowship in 2013. I was part of the programme in 2011, and the only “real” time I lived in Singapore.

11.33am Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

Perhaps it’s the people I follow on social media, or are friends with, but I haven’t seen any negative comments about the results yet – other than a retweet of Donald Trump and Jeb Bush’s tweets.

“They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right … It is so ordered.”

On a day when hate has hit at least three continents – terrorist attacks in France, Kuwait and Tunisia – it was amazing that at least in one country (among some others), #LoveWins.

What I didn’t expect however was to see a post on my Facebook from someone I’ve known since I was 16 years old. He too invoked the #LoveWins hashtag, accompanying a screenshot of US President Barack Obama’s celebratory tweet on the issue.

That moment I read his post was bigger than the US Supreme Court judgement.

You see, 16 years ago, this person – who was in his 20s then – told other people not to mind me because I was “just a faggot”. I’m not sure if he ever meant for me to hear it, but that comment – from someone I had then considered a friend – hurt.

I have been called many things in my life since then, so I’m pretty blase about these things, but a 16-year-old never forgets moments like those. Until today, whenever I bump into him – and I do occasionally – that word comes to my mind first as we exchange pleasantries and I walk away. I always walk away.

I don’t hold any grudges, but it has obviously affected me for many years. I once wondered, when he became a father, how he would react if one of his children were gay.

Today, seeing his post, I think his children would be okay.

And I’m glad. I don’t need an apology, and he doesn’t need my forgiveness, but today, I am reminded that there is always hope.

Picture credit: Texas Leftist

Whether people change culture or culture changes them, the fact is that I am certain he is not the same person now close to 40 as he was in his early 20s.

And this gives me great joy because it affirms my faith in hope. The United States has come a long way on this issue but there were dark days (and let’s face it, the battle against discrimination is far from over).

I think about the issues we are dealing in Malaysia – not just among politicians or the authorities – but also the often disappointing way in which we treat each other on a daily basis. There really appears to be a lack of respect, understanding and compassion with regards to so many issues.

But at the same time, I know so many people who are totally unlike those we have come to dislike and disagree with, who are putting so much time and effort into changing things. It can get tiring sometimes, and it’s difficult to stay motivated and energised to deal with it all.

But days like today – not just the US results but also this one small gesture from an old acquaintance – I am reminded that things can change, and they often do. We need to keep the pressure up to make sure that these changes are for the better.

If we don’t, then we have already lost the battle.

Tonight, before I head to bed, I remind myself that #LoveWins. We cannot let those operating on hate get in our way.

11.26pm Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

This film is not only about rape. It is about what it means to be a man, and what it means to be a woman. It shows what it means to have nothing, and to have everything.

It is about love and hope. It is about poverty and what poverty means in a world where someone has something and you have nothing. It is about what it means to be a parent, and a child. It is about what a parent can do for a child, and what a child can in return.

It is not just about India. It is about our society. It is about our collective histories. It is about our future.