Gotcha! Amos Yee taunts mainstream media in Facebook posts
Singapore teen blogger Amos Yee gave mainstream media the metaphorical middle finger on Wednesday.
Yee wrote on his Facebook page at 2:40pm on Wednesday that he was willing to meet with reporters and answer their questions if they could catch him coming out of the Pasir Panjang MRT station between 3 to 4 p.m.
That time, he said, would be before a meeting he had arranged at 7pm with a visual artist, “a humble fellow by the name of Dick Ow”.
Yee gave incentive for reporters to rise to the bait when he said he would clear the air about what happened in prison, his future plans “to f--- with the government”, and even reveal how his ex-bailor Vincent Law “molested me.”
In a second post at 9:41pm the same day, the potty-mouthed 16-year-old wrote that his earlier post was meant to troll the media.
“Yeah… I think some people found out by now… I did, in fact, make use of the voracious desire of the reporters, to f--- with the mainstream media,” he said.
“I think it’s pretty obvious when I have arranged a meeting with a person named ‘Dick Ow’…,” he said.
He also added, “And Vincent Law didn’t really molest me, haha. Though he is immensely creepy. I’ll save the specific details for another time.”
He noted that he “manipulated the press to indulge in the thoroughly exhausting experience of waiting in Pasir Panjang fruitlessly for several hours, which they did with their quote unquote ‘diligence’.”
Mainstream media did appear to fall for Yee's ruse. An AsiaOne report noted that "up until 5.15pm, there was no sign of the teenager" at the Pasir Panjang MRT station. Similarly, a Channel NewsAsia report said Yee was "nowhere to be seen" at the station at 5pm.
Yee's Facebook posts came just a day after he was found guilty of wounding the religious feelings of Christians and transmitting an “obscene” image involving late former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Yee pleaded not guilty to both charges.
A third charge of harassment over his anti-Lee comments made in a YouTube video titled “Lee Kuan Yew is finally dead” was dropped.
The Straits Times contacted Law for a reaction to Yee’s first post that day, and quoted the former as saying, “I deny the very serious and false allegations that he has made. I have no idea why he would say that.”
Yee is to be sentenced on 2 June.
