Hyped & Hated – How Naomi Neo became Singapore’s Lana Del Rey, and why you should care

Posted by Andric on Feb 3, 2012 in Opinion

A blog post writ­ten at length with the dom­in­ant sen­ti­ment of being “hated” cir­cu­lates online, and within minutes every­body is talk­ing about it. Except which, the sen­ti­ment is lost on such innu­mer­able cur­at­ors, and when all’s said and done, you’re look­ing at super­fi­cial hype.

That’s a scen­ario all too famil­iar to us. You’ve seen it: the rise and fall of indi­vidu­als and top­ics, repeatedly reb­logged, retweeted, and repur­posed. Hyped or hated, trend­ing on Twitter is now the new paparazzi cover – a schaden­freude extra­vag­anza that seeks only to glor­ify and/or vil­ify someone or some­thing for hedonic pleasure.

By now, you should already be aware of Naomi Neo, a self-purported Internet blog­ger that shot to fame after a mis­guided, laden rant on her blog about “haters”.

If one is mis­in­formed, he or she might even think Naomi was maligned, as it were.

Anyone who keeps abreast of music and Internet trends would have likely con­nec­ted the dots by now: Naomi Neo is Singapore’s very own Lana Del Rey. Lana, an indie musi­cian who trended on Twitter and blogs some time in late 2011 and early 2012, was the single most hyped – and later, hated – indi­vidual the Internet has seen since Rebecca Black.

[What’s up with Lana Del Rey? Thought Catalog and MTHRFNKER explains the hype and hate.]

Naomi Neo’s not the first “less-than-pretty” fash­ionista blog­ger to walk the Earth – now, there are tons of them. What sep­ar­ates her isn’t her, per se. It’s the Internet’s sud­den obses­sion with hyp­ing and hat­ing any­thing and everything, any­one and every­one. I call it the Lana Del Rey effect, the cluster­fuck of Internet and paparazzi cul­ture that has reached crit­ical mass.

Why is this rel­ev­ant, and why should you even care?

For a while, Singapore’s been known for hyp­ing schizo­phrenic indi­vidu­als like Steven Lim and Aaron Tan, pro­pelling them to a high ped­es­tal of infamy. So why are we put­ting Naomi Neo up for dis­cus­sion in a dif­fer­ent vein?

It’s because Naomi’s inch­ing us closer to the Internet’s main­stream. Naomi Neo is Lana Del Rey, not that she’s a fallen-from-grace musi­cian, not that she has collagen-enhanced lips, and cer­tainly not that she’s attract­ive, even. Sure, Naomi is attract­ive, by some stand­ards. But what puts her in the same vein as Lana is her alleged inau­thenti­city, some­thing we should not endorse, but should no less pay atten­tion to.

That, and the sen­ti­ment of being “hated”, which para­dox­ic­ally draws more hate from spec­tat­ors.

I say this, not with expli­cit intent to fuel the hype/hate for Naomi, but to note that as far as Internet cul­ture goes, the Lana Del Rey effect has now per­vaded far bey­ond its con­fines, burst­ing at the seams that should rep­res­ent our all but invis­ible geo­graph­ical divides. The Internet is, after all, international.

Why should you care, really? The pop­u­lar opin­ion is that should some­body be shamed pub­licly, com­mit a social faux pas, or incite back­lash; he or she bears weight of the con­sequence. Everything that comes after, everything as a res­ult is this person’s fault.

That pop­u­lar opin­ion is also not entirely truthful.

The reason why Naomi Neo is trend­ing isn’t because it was a cal­cu­lated, delib­er­ate mar­ket­ing effort. It wasn’t because Naomi wanted to become infam­ous overnight. No, rather, it was the col­lect­ive effort of thou­sands of Singaporeans who have chosen to talk about her, react to her, and share it with friends. She was hyped, trend­ing only because you chose to repur­pose someone else’s reac­tion to it, or react in your own way to fuel the flames.

It was because of you that sud­denly, Naomi Neo is now the talk of the Twitterverse, in Singapore any­way. You should care because it isn’t Naomi who per­petu­ated the hype, the hate, or even the super­fi­ci­al­ity or inau­thenti­city she was accused of. She may have star­ted it, but it was you who shared it.

You per­petu­ated it.

You per­petu­ated it when you asked, “Who is Naomi Neo?” and decided to con­cern your­self with her, and that is why you should care about this blog post. I ask of you to stop. Immediately, stop talk­ing about Naomi Neo, whether or not you feel you should defend her or single her out. Don’t tweet about her, don’t blog about her, don’t share her blog link.

There’s really noth­ing that inter­est­ing about her “haters” rant, now that you think about it, huh?

Great. Now share this blog post, and pray that this will be the last thing about Naomi Neo or Lana Del Rey you’ll ever have to share – even after you real­ise the sheer irony of this post, which quite unfor­tu­nately isn’t capped off with super­fi­cial pho­tos that prove con­trary to my point.