Chewing gum is not illegal, the importation and sale is. You can bring in gum from abroad and chew it. What you do with it afterwards is also important.

Once, there was this kid who

Took a trip to Singapore and brought along his spray paint

And when he finally came back

He had cane marks all over his bottom

He said that it was from when

The warden whacked it soooooo haaaaard

The law hadn’t been applied decades, male homosexual sex was decriminalised in 2007 and legalised in 2022.

The legal situation before that was inherited from the British Empire, a 1871 law which made all kinds of “sodomy” (oral, anal) illegal for everyone. By now you also have protections against discrimination, hate speech, etc. There’s a gazillion things to criticise about Singapore you don’t need to make shit up. Other things on the list of “don’t criticise about Singapore” include public transit, public housing (though they could ease on the mandatory ethnic mixing a bit), and the food. Oh gods the food.

Dictatorship is also kind of a misnomer… Singapore is one of a kind. Certainly paternalistic as fuck, authoritarian it depends, the PAP is actually listening to people and considers electoral results <70% an issue that must be addressed by fixing shit – and no they don’t mess with the ballot: They mess with media and election timing, as is British tradition.

Two particular things that stand out is the lack of corruption and actual respect for the law, otherwise the whole system would long since have collapsed. That is: All the authoritarianism is actually codified, there’s laws you can read, rights that you have, you’re not going to prison because some big-wig doesn’t like your face or your business idea is interfering with their kleptocracy but because you broke the law, and there’s no easily abused laws like Thailand’s lese-majeste, either. All that is highly untypical for your usual run-off-the-mill dictatorship where favours and loyalty are the only legal currency.

Things to criticise that aren’t caning for littering or insanely hardcore drug laws? Things like the abysmal status of foreign workers. Or, from a more Confucian perspective actually: The failure of the grand daddy PAP to properly see discontent coming, and address them proactively. Lack of connection to younger people who don’t happen to be PAP members.

Thank you! Finally someone speaks out, too. Singapore is a totalitarian capitalist dictatorship and the closest thing we have to a true cyberpunk dystopia. It is a horrible place with clean sidewalks.