There's a difference between being a dick, and trying to negatively affect a business's revenue with multiple, fabricated negative reviews posted over several weeks.

Over the fact you didn't want to pay corkage for bringing in outside alcohol (a pretty normal thing).

Is that really the level of being a dick that should land you in a foreign prison?

"Should" is a dubious word to use here. That's what the law is there, and what you or I think "should" happen isn't relevant.

It's relevant for other tourists who want to know the level of risk they are subjecting themselves when visiting. The Thai resort really Barbra Streisand'ed this.

Really? I should abandon my ethics and morals when I look to a different jurisdiction? If "what the law is there" is unjust, immoral, unethical, I should STFU, because that's what the law is there? That's an 'interesting' world view. It's a convenient one, because standing up for morals and ethics is inconvenient, but not everyone swings that way.

I don't see why not. The net damage might be equivalent to stealing significant money.

Stealing implies one party enriches themselves at the expense of another.

A better term for this situation would be "costing."

I was specifically referring to damage.

Perhaps, but as America has a reputation for putting people in jail for quite a few ridiculous reasons, we should be the last people to pass judgment on other countries' arrest policies.

Harassment might though, if the hotel is to be believed in this story.

I would not be surprised one bit if Singapore punished being a dick with N lashes in a public square.

I've lived in Singapore and they have a strong legal system, they don't just punish you for "being a dick". They do have a lot of strict laws, however.

They do kind of punish you for being a dick though, very very harshly: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/covid-19-robe...

I was actually there when this was going on earlier this year. Could have easily been me. They just picked on these poor people to make an example of them because they faced a backlash from locals (many of whom did similar things in other areas)

But again, that's breaking laws, not being a dick. They have laws and they enforce them.

Unless you're a live in maid right?

Sure, my comment was meant to further demonstrate how different nations have different laws foreigners must respect when within their borders.

I've read multiple articles over the years about foreigners being caned in Singapore over relatively minor actions, hence my not being surprised if they did such a thing.

Here's one such example:

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/26/us/us-student-tells-of-pa...

Singapore strikes me as an interesting mix of an archaic kingdom with a modern culture and economy. I'm not necessarily against their use of corporal punishment and strict laws, it seems to be a generally nice place.

> I've read multiple articles over the years about foreigners being caned in Singapore over relatively minor actions, hence my not being surprised if they did such a thing.

The Michael Fay story was reported with a heavy bias in the US — the media conveniently left our significant parts of the story.

I have friends who were expats in Singapore at the time, and this is (approximately) their version:

- He was caught vandalizing multiple times.

- The first time he was given a stern warning.

- After successive events, his family was warned that their son was in grave danger, and their status in the country was at risk.

- After one or more additional events, they suggested to the family that Michael should leave the country immediately. His parents found that inconvenient due to their jobs being in Singapore.

- After another event, it was suggested to the family that both they and their son should leave Singapore immediately. Again, they chose not to leave.

- Finally, after multiple warnings, and one or more additional transgressions, they threw the book at him.

- According to my friends, most of the expats thought he was a rotten kid, and they thought he deserved it.

Note that this jibes with how I have seen a lot of law enforcement happen (esp. with Americans) in Japan, Korea, and HK. Specifically, warnings often happen before the hammer comes down, and that usually solves the problem. But if and when the hammer comes down, the outcome will be very bad for the recipient. When I have discussed this matter and this type of justice with folks from Japan, Korea, and HK, they all think it is fairly reasonable, and they don’t know of anyone personally who was not given a reasonable chance (obviously small sample size, and obviously the system isn’t always reasonable, but the consistency of the answers was surprising to me).

All that said, I suspect that some folks from developing countries may reasonably disagree with my assessment of Japan. I haven’t had the chance to speak with specific parts of those communities, so it’s hard to know what the reality is.

Otherwise +1, but they actually went comparatively easy on him: he could have been sentenced to 3 years in jail plus 8 strokes of the cane, but he got away with 4 months and 6 strokes, and even that was commuted to 4.

That said, caning in Singapore is no joke, even those 4 will scar for life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore

I remember that! I went to the same school as that student. Blast from the past. It was a big news deal amongst the expats of the time. Although clearly he did a little more than simply just being a dick.

Which by the way might a perfect way of punishing dicks - nothing like pain and public humiliation to cure inflated egos.

That seems like a decent enough idea when you're 14 or so, but you need to understand how these things pan out IRL.

When Fill-In-Political-Party-You-Don't-Like takes charge, lobbies to expand the definition of dickery, adds criticism of corporal punishment policies to the list, and rules that you are a dick... now it's just about the worst idea.

> Which by the way might a perfect way of punishing dicks - nothing like pain and public humiliation to cure inflated egos.

That's a sub-human system of torture and brutality that you're cheering for, which would be rife with false accusations and witch-hunting style assaults by the mob as large groups of people would increasingly lust to harm outcasts and persecute smaller collections of minorities.

Are we burning people with inflated egos today? Stonings? Pulling finger nails out? That person over there, they've got an inflated ego, I saw them taking a selfie on Tuesday!

It would be the perfect way to run a stalinist gulag perhaps.

That’s a very Western point of view and not held by much of the world.