Stomping on STOMPers

Ah, STOMP, the Straits Times Interactive Online Portal. A wonderful innovation that has propeled mundane citizens like you and me to the pinnacle of stardom, giving us a creative outlet with which to vent our compulsive photo-taking disorders. It has bred a whole new generation of citizen journalists hell-bent on bringing run-of-the-mill stories into the limelight, resulting in a vibrant cornucopia of new stories that will surely saturate the mind with their wonders.

Take this scintillating little nugget I came across a few weeks back as the benchmark:


STOMPer *** was awed by the sight of the rainbow over ***** Interchange and told STOMP that this is the first time he has seen one with his own eyes.

The 19-year-old student was waiting for a friend there, when he saw the rainbow.

“This is such a rare sight! The rainbow is so breathtaking,” he said.


The sight must have evoked many an epiphany in the mind of our budding photojournalist. Many an abstract epiphany, considering that the photo provided didn't even show a rainbow. Hmm. SPH must have a limitless budget considering the kind of bandwidth it allots to entries like these. How about dipping into that budget to offset the increase in newspaper prices?

Such salient articles are all too commonly littered about the site. If memory serves, there was one debating the merits of allowing trucks to drive on expressways... along with an attached photo of a truck innocently cruising along an expressway. There must be some new technology I'm currently unaware of that allows heavy vehicles to mysteriously teleport, else they would never get anywhere if someone in power somewhere shares similar sentiments and somehow manages to ban such vehicles from traversing expressways.

And then we have a whole gamut of tirades against public affection. Such entries usually describe some event in which said aspiring photojournalist observed some couple or the other indulging in acts of affection, which subsequently served to provoke psychological trauma of some sort. Perhaps our aspiring photojournalist forgot that he or she has eyelids and may utilize them to obscure their field of vision? Or perhaps such sights are so abhorrent that they do not need to be seen to be harmful? So abhorrent that they cause our aspiring photojournalist to freeze on the spot and whip out some sort of camera device to further burn such sights into his/her mind, and the minds of everyone else who might lay eyes on the following offending photo? I wonder.

These millions of entries lambasting public affection might actually be better served without accompanying imagery, which may be evocative of Freudian reaction-formation/repression defense mechanisms in which the photo-taker attempts to deny his/her own hidden desires and inferiority complexes stemming from the fact that he/she cannot have as meaningful a relationship. That actually sounded academic.

Or perhaps all this belies an underlying Stalinist revival blossoming in the hearts of young, aspiring photojournalists. Down with affection! Down with any sort of emotion! Down I say! Let us all be perfectly civil and robotic! Doublegoodspeak and all that jazz, you know. Orwell would be proud. Sounds like a movement I can get behind.

So, anyway, the underlying premise behind STOMP seems to be sound, even benign. Unfortunately the execution seems a little lacking. More stringent criteria in weeding out the chaff might be appropriate. It would also save bandwidth. Subsidies for our fishing newspaper price hikes, please!

And that's all for today. I have a feeling some disgruntled STOMPer might snap a picture of this and upload it on everyone's favorite interactive online portal in an attempt to rouse mob fury against the heretic. Repress free speech! Hail Stalin!