Scorned

They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but they obviously don't know Malaysian men. Within the space of a month, three cases of lovelorn men taking revenge on their objets d'affection have surfaced with the mildest resulting in a bit of online prankstering and the worst in death. 

It started with the case of 16-year-old Lai Ying Xin, who was kidnapped, put up for ransom, murdered and then burnt in a gruesome crime in September. The main suspect is a 22-year-old man who had apparently been wooing the girl for six months before Ying Xin got fed up and started ignoring his messages and rejecting his calls. The case shocked the nation and was reported in all the major newspapers, including stories on grieving schoolmates and a public funeral announcement.

Then, an 18-year-old schoolgirl was stabbed in the abdomen with an icepick by a classmate before the morning bell in school. In a matter of days, another report surfaced about a college student who had a Friendster account set up in her name, complete with her personal information, which claimed that she was looking for a life partner. Apparently the man responsible has been badgering her for some time to marry him until she lodged a police report against him in December of last year (you go, girl!) but then he resumed his old ways in March, so she lodged another report against him in October. Hopefully this one will do the trick. Do we have restraining orders in Malaysia?

What I don't get is, how do these men think they will get these girls to accept them after these acts of violence and pranks? And seriously, it can't be "love" if the guy is willing to hurt the girl or take revenge on her for not "loving" him back. Don't they always say that if you love someone, let them go? It would make for a great pick up line, though - have a drink with me or I'll stab you in the guts!

All joking aside, with these cases happening one after another in quick succession, it reminds me of something Malcolm Gladwell brought up in his book, The Tipping Point. Apparently in Micronesia, suicides were almost unheard of in the early 1960s but by the end of the 1980s, the suicide rate for males was 160 per 100,000, eight times that of the US. It was so prevalent that it was embedded in the local culture, appearing in songs on the radio and graffiti on t-shirts and walls. One line in a report by anthropologist Donald Rubinstein was especially chilling:

Especially among some younger boys, the suicide acts appear to have acquired an experimental almost recreational element. 

David Phillips, a sociologist at UC San Diego, hypothesizes that just as if you would follow someone who jaywalks while you were waiting at a red light to cross the road, when someone famous commits suicide, 'it gives other people, particularly those vulnerable to suggestion because of immaturity or mental illness, permission to engage in a deviant act as well.' Thus, people who die in highly publicised suicides serve as the "Tipping Point" in suicide epidemics. Case in point, the suicide rate in the US jumped by 12% for a while after Marilyn Monroe's death. 

Back in Malaysia, is it possible that Ying Xin's death and the subsequent media field day has sparked off the recent spate in lovelorn vengeance seekers? Ok, maybe not in the case of the online prankster because that's been going on for months, but could it have prompted the actions of that high school kid with the icepick? Will we see more stories like these in the months to come? Do I risk a switch knife across the jugular if I turn down the next guy who hits on me?