Singaporeans love to complain so much that there are 2 Complain Singapore Facebook groups

Teo Kai Hsiang
The Straits Times
December 14, 2024

If there is a national pastime in Singapore other than queuing for food and making deals, he complains.

Few places reflect this national penchant for airing daily grievances more than a popular Facebook group COMPLAINT Singaporewhich has amassed over 230,000 members since its inception in 2017.

One user’s Dec. 8 post, which has more than 400 “likes,” includes an image of “worst carrot cake I’ve ever had in my life“.

Others chime in, commiserating, “I’ve never seen a carrot cake look like this before.”

Trivial complaints about small portions of food from hawkers, rude private drivers and misleading advertisements are common on the platform, though these are not just minor irritants.

A small number of posts are about complaints, such as insurance companies refusing to settle claims, disputes between neighbors and negative interactions with businesses.

The group’s anonymous moderators told The Straits Times that the Facebook page was launched “because a few founding members found that there was almost no online platform in Singapore for complainants or victims to voice their genuine grievances”.

Today, the group receives between 30 and 100 messages a day, although most are rejected by moderators for not meeting basic requirements, such as providing evidence or avoiding hate speech. About 10 volunteers take turns moderating the comments.

However, the group, created as an outlet for venting, has itself become divisive, even among its users.

Commercial manager Alaric Ng, 33, says he is not a fan of the Facebook group, condemning its users for “posting nonsense and whining about everything in the world” without a filter, and referring to those posting complaints who are openly hateful and xenophobic.

Meanwhile, 29-year-old photographer Ken Chiang says: “I think a culture of complaining is sometimes only necessary if it’s really justified. And these groups are sometimes really effective in getting the message across to the right parties.

“However, many users in such groups abuse the platform and treat it as their own space to express overly trivial matters that sometimes violate the privacy of others.”

Increase in appetite for grumbling

Online communication is only a small part of Singaporeans’ many daily complaints.

According to the Ministry of National Development, in 2023, Singaporeans will file 1.7 million complaints through the OneService app every year.

COMPLAINT Singapore is not the only online community where complaints and protests are the bread and butter.

A group of imitators, Complaint Singapore – with the word “complaint” in lower case – was launched in 2018 and has over 230,000 members.

Another Facebook group, SG Road Vigilantehas over 270,000 members. His publications consist mostly of the indignation of netizens due to bad behavior on the road, mainly by naming and shaming motorists through dash cam recordings.

Even lifestyle-oriented Instagram accounts @sgfollowsallwhich has nearly 200,000 followers, is rife with complaints about the weather, bad behavior and road manners.

While it would be easy to dismiss these groups as echo chambers for petty whining, these groups are hugely influential in shaping Singapore’s online discourse.

Many companies – from insurance company Great Eastern to food court operator Koufu – are active in Complaint Singapore, using their social media accounts to directly respond to customer complaints.

Posts in these groups also regularly appear in the news.

In November alone, posts from both Complaint Singapore Facebook groups were cited in 12 articles on Mothership.

During the same period, videos or posts from SG Road Vigilante were cited in nine articles in The Straits Times.

COMPLAINT Singaporean moderators say they have also used the group’s social influence to do something good. They say the group has partnered with Singapore police in its 2022 and 2023 crime prevention campaigns to spread awareness of online fraud.

In defense of “whining”

Like gossip, complaints have a social function.

Dr. Jonathan Sim, a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore, says that in its simplest form, a complaint is an expression that something is wrong.

Thus, such dissatisfaction can become an impetus to correct the wrong.

“Take traffic complaints, for example,” he says. “Complaints are a signal that the number of reckless drivers on the road has increased. When people complain, it makes them feel like they care. They may be imprecise in their formulation of the problem, but that’s a signal that they’re worried about something that’s wrong.”

The republic’s penchant for whining is something Dr Sim admires, who says Singapore’s traditional Asian and Confucian culture, which emphasizes shame as a regulatory force, plays a role in how people here behave on social media.

However, he also believes that the country’s culture of complaints can be a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, Singaporeans have a critical outlook and high standards of service and quality, which can be a positive trait in the workplace and in social life.

On the other hand, indiscriminately voicing complaints about any complaint – no matter how minor – can sometimes make it difficult for those making those complaints to distinguish between legitimate and minor issues.

“In that sense, we’ve normalized a culture where people think it’s okay to voice petty complaints online. You lose your perspective. If you go to other countries and complain like that, they will say: “What gives?” This is a very unique cultural thing,” he says.

This perspective is often lost in Singapore’s complaint-oriented online communities.

The most banal complaints take on a networked and social dimension as users find solidarity in others who agree with and complement their mostly negative evaluations.

But as Dr George Wong, a senior lecturer in sociology at the Singapore Management University, says: “Online complaint culture can be a force for good when stakeholders and the public realize how they can use engagement for their own purposes.”

When a critical mass of interest and attention accumulates from a mass of similarly aggrieved users, the complaint cuts through the noise and demands the attention of media organizations and the subjects themselves.

For example, some users have successfully resolved failed orders after their complaints went viral online. In one 2019 case involving Lazada, a user received a refund and a call from the e-commerce company’s CEO after a Facebook post about an order gone wrong garnered more than 1,000 likes.

In another case, a Complaint Singapore user who posted in 2021 about being overcharged for a water heater by a plumbing company received $2,700 refund after her post attracted the attention of the authorities.

According to Dr Natalie Pang, an associate professor at NUS who researches new media, the strength of these groups is how they give users the freedom to express themselves, something they might not do when reporting an incident to the authorities.

“In other words, these groups are popular not just because they’re accessible, but because they provide a platform for freer expression and a sense of community in some cases, even though many of them may be anonymous,” she says.

In this sense, these complaining communities are not uniquely Singaporean.

Dr. Howard Lee, a lecturer in the School of Media and Communication at Murdoch University in Australia, notes that such online communities exist anywhere there is an Internet connection.

What may differ is the follow-up. In some societies, online outrage is fueling large-scale social movements, such as the #MeToo movement or Black Lives Matter. In Singapore, the chain reaction tends to stay online.

“It’s not a slouch,” says Dr. Lee. “This is just an assumption about the state of Singapore’s civic space.

“We shouldn’t forget that the idea of ​​citizen journalism was fostered by the Internet, so it’s really no surprise that viral content becomes news.”

Thus, media articles citing groups such as Complaint Singapore and SG Road Vigilante use them not only as a source of stories and images, but also as a gauge of public opinion.

However, Dr Lee points out that these sites are not a substitute for traditional journalism.

“While such online sources may provide a smorgasbord of raw content, it is the job of journalists to filter, fact-check, verify, investigate or debunk such online content.”

Apart from minor irritants

This is not to say that there is no difference between good and bad complaints.

“We tend to think of anger as bad,” says Dr. Sim. “But there are some who know how to use anger strategically to get a message across. There is a certain skill in this.”

For example, groups can also be a source of intense and inappropriate online noise, inciting witch hunts that can lead to death threats, job loss, and other real-world consequences, sometimes through misunderstandings or cases of mistaken identity.

In 2018, a a misunderstanding at a Caltex gas station has gone viraland the driver claimed he only asked for $10 worth of gas, while the attendant filled his tank.

More than 1,000 netizens joined the Facebook page to teach the driver a ‘snarky lesson’ after he refused to pay for a full tank of petrol.

His personal details, including his phone number, place of work and family photos, were shared online. Caltex later clarified that the attendant should not have made up the difference in cost, and the driver filed a police report because of the harassment he faced.

Concerns about such consequences have led some groups to erect fences.

For example, COMPLAINT Singapore has turned complaining into something of an art form with its community rules aimed at filtering out certain comments with insufficient information and creating a more effective form of public shaming.

Its moderators say most of the material they receive violates the group’s restrictions on hate speech or insufficient information.

For example, if a user writes fiction about a false medical professional, his or her post will be rejected without additional evidence – in the form of images or screenshots – to back up the claims. In this case, a filter that requires more effort and gathering evidence favors cooler heads.

But there is at least one small and important plus in complaining.

“Petty complaints aside, one of the things I’ve come to realize is that I prefer people who complain to people who don’t, because people who complain show that they really don’t care.” , says Dr. Sim.

“On the other hand, people who are so exhausted and apathetic, they just don’t care.”