The end of The Online Citizen

If I am asked. What’s really the site that started it all in Singapore, it wouldn’t be Mr Brown. To me, he accomplished something very remarkable by adding an absolutely perfect zero to the Singaporean social political landscape. The premier social political site that single handedly defined the social political blogging scene nearly 20 odd years ago and had the biggest impact in shaping the Singaporean digital consciousness was undoubtedly TOC. The Online Citizen was jump started by Andrew Loh and Remy Choo sixteen years ago. They pioneered many innovations that had the effect of consolidating all the far flung voices in the digital wilderness to create a one stop venue. Before TOC, most of the content creators were at best hobbyist who were just writing and stuffing them into a bottle only to throw them out into the infinity of space. TOC was the first online platform that brought some measure of coherence and structure and professionalism to the social political blogging scene. Not only did it churn out regular social political reads from it’s stable of resident writers. The editorial team also featured many pieces from guest writers and it had a very vibrant chat forum that was able to converge all the noise in the Internet and give it some measure of meaningful expression to those who were interested in where power and politics was going in Singapore. To be fair. No one knew exactly how to handle the new media back in 2006 least of all the government of the day. It had nothing to do with ineptitude or lack of foresight. The Internet was simply a very new medium and it was very hard to plot where all this would go. Eventually an overgrown kid like myself had to learn the realities of being a responsible daddy and paying the bills. I went to Malaysia to pursue commercial farmng and as time went by the whole idea of a better Singapore just seemed to grow fainter till it faded entirely away. I would like to take this opportunity to apologies to anyone that I called unflattering names in TOC. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but we all knew that we were in the same boat. I think that sums up the sentiment. You will never be crushed by time. We will always remember you. Thanks for all the fish TOC and travel well.

My name is Darkness 2021, 1st Class Interspacing Guild Navigator of the Brotherhood.