Understanding Crowd Behaviour, Malaysian Politics using Japanese TV show

Summary of this article  can be found at my Tumblr http://beyondthispunkt.tumblr.com/post/58001220257/

This article/writing is Malaysian in nature.

 

During 2011/2012 (which year I’m not sure but it is within this period), I started started commenting in the comment section on blogs that I liked. Tehtarikgelasbesar.blogspot.com,  pseudosains.blogspot.com, terfaktab.blogspot.com (especially when Nami tehtarikgelasbesar posting at terfaktab) and few others which I couldn’t remember.

As time progresses, I realized that actually, the comments section is ruled by crowd behaviour and not so much on the content of the post. This crowd behaviour is much driven by the need of the individuality of each post reader to :-

1. express themselves
2. to communicate with others

If you’re Malaysian, go read hanis zalikha, blogserius, terfaktab and other “fun” blogs.

I once stated this point of view anonymously for reading at http://pseudosains.blogspot.com/2012/03/social-study-of-viewer-participation-in.html

I summarized my view as follows:-

The comment section in Malaysian blogs, if it reaches 7-8 comments within 24 hours after posting, that posting will receive more than 10 comments afterwards. If the post couldn’t receive more than 7-8 comments within the specified period,  only that much of comments will remain. It’s the speed of comments that will help increase numbers of comments.

I edited my view a little bit, previously I mentioned 15 comments per 6 hours, but then nowadays, 7-8 comments per day is still adequate to generate comments.

The whole exercise of thinking about this might be stupid , nevertheless, I think that this actually describes the fluidity of socio-behaviour in Malays in Malaysia. Crowd behaviour rules!

Actually I believe that even Malaysian Malay politics is much driven by crowd behaviour according to 4 things, which I will call as 3R+1E

Religion

Race

Royalty

Entertainment

I will use a vidclip from Okaashan to Isho, a Japanese TV Okaasan to Isho, featuring kids dancing according to the songs and dance by the facilitators. Watch below.

By the end of the show, the famous song “Tsupurapii Tsupurapaa” will be played.

It will start with a yellowish cute creature (makhluk kuning comel) saying something in Japanese, then he started blowing his trumpet, and walking to the back of the stage.

Notice that few kids automatically followed the creature, without instruction. The kids just followed on pure impulse.

The other kids just watch their friends with a blank face. By this time the four facilitators (usually 2 handsome guy (brother) and 2 cute lady (sister)) started singing and making certain act dance while singing.

Then one guy will scream “ikuzo!” (means let’s go!)

The 2 guys and the 2 ladies will start jumping with certain kids dance move, and the song goes into upbeat mode.

After a few seconds, the kids will naturally followed jumping together. With passion driven by watching cute sisters and brothers jumping while listening to the upbeat song.

After some moment, some kids will stop dancing and instead watch upwards or other friends.

By this time, the yellowish creature will scream “ikuzo!” (means let’s go!)

What happens then, 1 guy and 1 lady will form a rainbow, and one lady will slowly push a few kids to walk under the rainbow.

Notice that, the other kids will follow the “walk under the rainbow” act while listening to the “tsupurapii tsupurapaa tsupurapii puu uu”.

No need for instruction, the kids just followed by pure impulse.

And they followed happily.

If you ponder this in a sarcasm mode, you will realize that is actually how Malaysian politics works in Malaysia.

The 4 facillitators represent the four elements, race issues, religion issues, royalty issues and entertainment issues.

The political masters, who in this case represented by the yellowish creature (makhluk kuning comel), it will just play a tune and the other kids will just follow happily.

The four elements will have to play according to this tune, like the race issue for instance.

For royalty, I have no comments, because I think I’m a little bit pro-royalty. Actually, Royalty is not really an issue in Malaysia, but I suspect that sometimes certain people like to raise and provoke this issues, in order to make the four elements “dance” towards the tune so that the people could follow obediently and “happily”.

I will explain here also about my pro-royalist view.

In Malaysia, if you studied academically on Constitution, there’s a chapter called Check and Balance, where 3 elements, the Executive Power (Government), the Court of Law, and the Royalty, each with their power vested by the Constitution will do a check and balance on each other.

You see, if you want Malaysia to be a republic, that means you need to elect a President in Malaysia, with the same function and power., thru elections.

The problem that I see in Malaysia in terms of republic, is the election of President will be bias towards the party which has the most seats in the Parliament. Because the President will be chosen by a political party, instead of Royalty which practices succession of rulers by birth.

By then you will see, a President and a Prime Minister that come from the same party which have the strongest seat in Parliament.

If this happens, then there will be no check-and-balance towards the Executive Power (Government), because both belong to the same party.

Certain issues was raised by people about the Royalty, especially when money’s involved, nevertheless, I see a safe bet in pro-Royalty in terms of this check-and-balance view.

And I did see that the Royalty nowadays had a better education and point of view than their predecessors, some graduated from overseas.

Back to the story about crowd behaviour.

I think that, nowadays, the people didn’t find the “tune” played before to be as cute as it was.

This is because of economy, and most importantly, purchasing power.

You can sing whatever happy tune you like, put forth as many entertainment you want, but if the people started to feel less value in their money, then instead of a happy tune, you will hear sounds of discontent.

Because of corruption, people see that certain people acquire wealth thru less effort.

There’s no value-added in wealth then. Wealth can be purchased through connections.

People will start increasing prices so that they too can achieve the same wealth.

If you see the forest from the trees, you will find that this leads to inflation, because money is increased not thru value-addition effort, but through value manipulation and corruption,  the value of money will become lesser and lesser.

In Bangladesh, I learn that when they finally became independent from India during the 70’s, the value of Taka (Bangladesh currency) was 3 Taka equals to 1 USD.(much less the same value of Ringgit Malaysia in 2013)

By the time I got back from my project there in December 2012, one USD equals to 80 Taka.

Why?

No value addition effort, instead corruption and value manipulation ruled the economy.

People no longer cared about the happy tunes anymore. They migrate so they could walk happily under the rainbow, like those kids in Okaasan to Isho.