We regret the closure of Thambi magazine store, but let us stop regretting the hypocritical heritage

HERE’S a quick guide for any Singapore company with deep heritage roots. If you are going to close or move, for the love of God, don’t tell anyone. If you do, expect to be inundated with slightly hypocritical and vaguely narcissistic social media posts, lamenting their demise.

Typically, posts say something like this…

“When I was a kid, I used to spend all my days at this business closure in Singapore (because Netflix didn’t exist then and there were a limited number of times we could visit the strange woman with exposed breasts at Haw Par Villa). “

“I used to buy a lot of products from this Closing Singaporean Business (and then the internet allowed me to get the same products cheaper online).”

“And it’s a shame that another business closure in Singapore will be lost forever as we transform into a bland, identical city (and I’m only writing this at Starbucks because I need good air conditioning and free Wi-Fi).”

“I actually haven’t visited Closing Singaporean Business in many years due to work and family (and found inferior alternatives on Shopee).”

“But I’m going to visit Closing Singaporean Business to pay my last respects (and look for two-for-one deals!).”

And then, if the poor, beleaguered owner of Closing Singaporean Business is very lucky, he might be blessed with a second round of social media posts, perhaps even more tongue-in-cheek and lacking in self-awareness than the first.

Typically, these posts are reserved for LinkedIn specialists, the ones who start with something deliberately generic. I was working in the lab late one night. – and then moves on to something dramatic – and suddenly to my surprise – before reaching the shocking outcome – he made the monster mash – and encouraging the reader to bring out their executive “monster” by enrolling in a C-suite course.

Social media hyenas circling for viral posts

You see, there’s really nothing that can’t be included in a personal branding exercise, whether it’s a hit novelty record from 1962 or the poignant closure of the Thambi magazine store. We couldn’t just talk about the store and its loyal and worthy owner, could we? We had to make it about us.

Within hours of the news that the Thambi magazine store in Holland Village was closing after more than 80 years, the first round of cut-and-paste posts about business closures in Singapore appeared. But the second round focused on subsequent visits to the affected business. And they said something like this…

“When I heard the news about Thambi magazine store, I had to run down and take this photo with the owner. He’s the one scowling, dealing with the staggering shortsightedness of Holland Road Shopping Center management and worrying about where he’ll find another location to keep his family business alive. I’m the one smiling like the winner of a school contest and wondering how many likes I’ll get on this Facebook post. Or, better yet, how I could turn this silly business-turnaround photo shoot into my next LinkedIn masterpiece. Still, I bought a magazine for the cat litter box. In fact, I stopped reading physical magazines after Peak printed an unflattering photo of me at one of my wife’s charity balls. And my wife has had a lot of dances, you know?

Yes, now I’m getting carried away. And yes, there were many sincere visitors at the Thambi magazine store, familiar faces who had frequented Periathambi Senthil Murugan’s noted magazine den for decades. And I thought about making the trip myself, but I was aware of the hypocrisy (I have bought magazines at Thambi since 1996, but not regularly) and the narcissism (I didn’t want their financial situation to affect me).

And frankly, that horrible media photo of punters gathering around the shop and taking pictures with their phones as an excited Mr Periathambi closed his shop for the last time defied belief, like social media hyenas circling a lion hurt, smelling weakness or a virus. mail. A kind man’s discomfort is not a source of voyeuristic entertainment.

Love letters after disappearance will not save heritage companies

But I’m doing it too, right? As I write this, I am part of the same hypocrisy. Not really, Mr. Periathambi and I have been part of the same industrial ecosystem for decades. I wrote words. He sold them. Think of a prominent Singapore print publication in the past 25 years and you’ve probably written for it at some point. Mr. Periathambi’s magazine cave provided shelter to thousands of my columns, along with every bookstore in the country, and I will always be extremely grateful to the indefatigable, unsung heroes of our faltering ecosystem.

And, by the way, what happened when several Times bookstores closed recently? The armies of nostalgia marched through our social networks once again, while singing things like…

“I used to buy all my books at local bookstores. And then I discovered Amazon. And then the Times Bookstore closed. And now I’m sad and I have to blame the management or the government or something.”

Elsewhere on the high street, there have been variations of this popular lament…

“I bought my first office outfit at John Little and then I discovered Shein. And then John Little closed and I got sad. And then I was briefly happy when I ran into John Little’s 80 percent off sale. And then I felt sad again, so I posted some black and white photographs of John Little.”

And maybe that’s the Hobbesian nature of the retail business. It’s nasty, brutal and short, with too many failing industries struggling to survive in the digital age. But we can’t have it both ways. We can’t always be cheaper, inferior, foreign and free (or even pirated and illegal) and then feign ignorance, regret or loss over the disappearance of local products and industries that we rarely supported in the first place.

Singapore is too small to preserve all distressed businesses and buildings, whatever their heritage value, unless we sponsor them. Whether it’s a Holland Village magazine vendor, a bookstore or a hawker stall, nostalgic love letters after the fact won’t save them.

Hopefully, Mr. Periathambi will quickly find a new location for his magazine business. But he doesn’t need our Facebook posts. He needs our money.

Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 28 books.

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