Every so often, your social media feed will be popping with an expose of a problematic person in the independent music scene. The expose comes from a whistleblower, often an anonymous account, recalling their experiences or others being harmed — whether verbally, emotionally, sexually or physically — by someone with a status and name, still booked and busy performing shows across the country. Despite the anonymity, social media algorithms — notably Threads these days — push the post knowing it’d attract broad swaths of attention, falling into the feed of groups of people that may take interest in them. By the time you notice the post, it’d already raked in the likes, the views, the quotes and the shares, possibly its lifespan extended to group chats and other platforms. The comments under the posts vary, some are quick to jump to defence for the predators, always an awful sight to witness. But there are also the predictable ones — as if you can already see them before you even open them. You know them: the meme “Telah Masuknya Waktu Gossip Underground,” lazily curious people asking “What’s the tea?” and gifs of people greedily eating popcorn, ready and loyal to watch the “drama” unfold.

When I first noticed these reactions, I was appalled at how little we regard abuse happening to real people who are seeking support in some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives. These reactions feel belittling — they say so much about where people stand without saying it outright. Silence is complicity, they say, but happily playing passive spectator to “the drama” screams exactly where you stand. But over and over, across case after case, these reactions became the default. So default that my initial shock shrank into induced normalcy — as if this was simply the expected part of the package, and finding a rational, victim-supporting reaction meant scrolling further and waiting longer than it should.

On Friday, September 18, singer Takahara Suiko took to her social media to raise awareness to call out problematic artists and their enablers on her social media. Her posts first snowballed from a response to John Bear, the frontman of ska band Budak Nakal Hujung Simpang, following concerns about his conduct raised by her and others in the scene. Since then, Takahara has said she received further accounts from people describing experiences of abuse within the scene. She later shared the Rape Culture Pyramid, a visual model that shows how the littlest behaviours such as catcalling that many deemed acceptable can eventually lead to sexual violence such as rape, and reminded sexual harassment victims that they can now lodge a report to The Tribunal for Anti-Sexual Harassment (‘TAGS’). The message that she is trying to deliver is loud and clear: Any form of harassment, no matter how little, should not be tolerated in the scene and more people should speak up about it.

But most people in her comments section reduced her calling into trivial scene drama. The spectators arrive just to weigh in and joke on which sides to take, as if the argument is all about two musicians beefing with each other on a public platform and nothing more. They crowd the comments section, with their virtual popcorn and audience chairs, gleefully awaiting who will win out of this. But when you’ve been in the independent scene long enough, you’d know this isn’t an isolated case nor is Takahara Suiko the first whistleblower in the scene. She certainly won’t be the last either. So how did her message fly overhead, the accused receive thoughts and prayers while the victims get ignored? 

These passive spectators aren’t exclusive to the independent music scene. There’s something about how social media platforms operate in recent years that encourages voyeuristic responses to victims and whistleblowers speaking out against abusers. The audience wants to attach themselves to the narrative while openly doing nothing about it. You see it with how people consume the daily churn of strangers exposing their cheating partners and broken marriages; everyone is eager for the next drop of “tea” to spill, closely observing two sides of the story ping-ponging their versions, forgetting there are real victims facing trauma behind them. And when the issue drags on, the audience gets bored and demands something else, as if the whistleblowers and victims are milking out the issue dry. What a privilege it is to see a fight against abuse as nothing more than frivolous gossip, not another warning sign of bigger systemically-approved abuse.

The Malaysian independent music scene has long been a boys’ club. On the rare occasions it gets properly documented, the scene paints men as the rock n roll heroes whose music made them so. Their music gets lauded and passed on as trophies, their problematic behaviours get rubbed off as mere passing clouds. Women on the other hand are often written out of the picture, and when they do get any treatment at all, especially in music, it’s one dimensional — the cardboard muse or the psychotic ex. But documented or not, women have long been part of the independent music scene. In recent years especially, we’re seeing more young women attending music shows, filling the barricades at big festivals and buying tickets to attend small punk gigs. You see the rise of female-fronted bands on stage, alongside female crews making shows happen. And yet, when a woman speaks up against abusers, she gets discredited as if her safety isn’t a real concern. A lot of the time, their male friends keep quiet or side with the abusers, in fear of breaking up the brotherhood or the band. It says everything about how women give to this scene and what little they get back.

When people point out the number one flaw of the Malaysian independent scene, they’ll always point to the lack of an ecosystem. Ecosystem here refers to a stronger network in the scene, where each field coexists with one another to work together and build a more flourishing scene. But that framing skips the actual condition: a scene can’t flourish while women are still experiencing structural abuse that keeps happening unchecked. I’m imagining a reality where our music scene flourishes in textbook style: local artists get proper recognition, festivals and concerts sell out without a hitch, demand and supply thrive together and cultural impact is left everywhere — but women are still treated like second-class citizens and abuse still gets swept under the carpet. That reality, if it ever comes true, sounds less like a dream and more like a nightmare. What is the point of success when half of the audience is too scared to be part of it?

Silencing women from speaking up on their abuse is the practice the Malaysian independent scene has been championing for way too long, as if pointing out abuse hinders progress towards success. So is pretending sexual abuse is mere gossip — as if none of us will ever be affected by it for as long as we stay “good” and “mind our own business.” It’s embarrassing even to see how people demand so much attention for the local indie music scene, but from the outside, the inside is looking rotten and spineless. If you want the scene to be bigger and more successful, you must face the ugliness you’ve been comfortably perpetuating for so long. You can’t keep using the music as the sole reason for people to pay more attention. The music needs to be good, but the people must always be better.