The Other Malaysia

Last year the hottest thing people were talking about was Second Life. Many of my clients and creative saw it as their mission to do some branding in that other dimension as well. But they failed to realize that the people there were not there to watch ads or buy products, but to live the life they couldn’t lead in real. Internet is the perfect medium to fulfill those needs.

And here in Malaysia it is playing a vital role in politics and popular culture. It is offering the venue for alternative thinking when it is impossible to cut through because of censorship or commercialism and pulp.

The first example is the www.othermalaysia.org website. This site was set up by Malaysian scholar-activists and volunteers with the aim of providing other sources of information of aspects of Malaysian history, politics and culture that have thus far been sidelined, marginalised or erased in the official historiography of the post-colonial state.
The Othermalaysia.org site describe their mission: “We aim to stir up debate on and about a variety of issues and themes, ranging from the politics of history to the workings of racialised capitalism in the country.” Asking around I realized that many people do visit the site to get a more rounded view on current affairs.

The second example is www.poptopus.net the blogsite for independent artists, free from the clutches of the big record companies and the grubby fingers of music financiers. The mission of this website is to put real music out there to fight against the tyranny of the really useless ‘pop’ that is replayed day in day out every time on the radio or MTV.