His story begins in the mid-90s.

Picture grainy photographs, coin-operated telephones, PM Goh Chok Tong. A young man (this is Yuan Sheng, though he’s more of a boy) sits alone in the school canteen.

“I would just eat my packed lunch alone, never buying anything, because that would mean actually having to talk to someone. I was painfully shy,” he shares.

“Then, in ‘97, I got access to the very early internet; I subscribed to a few UseNet bulletins. Think email, but instead of point-to-point, it’s shared with a group. Because of this, I became used to interacting online with people from all over the world. It helped me a lot.”

He began using HardwareZone in 2000, revealing that he was actually one of the founding members of the local photography forum, ClubSnap.

“I started using Reddit in 2012 for a gaming forum. r/Sg was around back then, but it was mostly expats.”

While Singapore has its own local-only forums, like HardwareZone’s Eat-Drink-Man-Woman (EDMW) and Stomp, younger Singaporeans are gravitating mostly towards r/Sg.

“We attract youth because … they [have] a certain mindset. Generally more comfortable in English, more progressive … These people do not feel welcome on EDMW, [who] have their own brand, their own language.”

Additionally, Reddit is a one-stop-shop for young people from all over the world to form communities around specific interests, from Greenland to gardening to gastroenterology (as of writing this article, r/gastro has 93 subscribers). This creates a positive environment for discussion on a specific topic by enthusiasts, hobbyists, and professionals alike.

This is why Yuan Sheng believes the internet is still a place for thoughtful dialogue, an idea that I myself gave up on a long time ago. When I bring this up, he laughs.

“I grew up when the internet was not as common, and I got on board fast. Nowadays, everyone’s online, but the early internet was frequented only by academics, graduates, et cetera. If you notice, I only post in full, complete sentences; that’s how everyone typed back then. It was a more thoughtful culture, and that rubbed off on me.”

At the turn of the millennium, the internet was also a much healthier environment; trolling and fake news didn’t exist, and people who met online often formed genuine, authentic, and meaningful relationships.

Yuan Sheng hopes that the internet can once more be a force for good—an optimism that I envy. I ask him whether modern online forums, like r/Sg, can be as beneficial for (lonely) individuals as UseNet was for him.

“It depends on the environment in the forum,” he replies, “Some toxic forums can breed negative personalities. It really depends on where you go.”

And as a moderator (think: forum cop) on r/Sg, HidingCat and his fellows are working to prevent it from becoming such a space.

“We are strict on doxxing, witch-hunting, et cetera. We want to allow a place for people to express ideas without a negative mentality. Sometimes, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. Once [a forum user] crosses a certain line in terms of these rules, that’s it.”

Doxxing is essentially an online version of witch-hunting, where a user’s personal details are sourced and revealed, usually for malicious purposes; an incident involving a certain Go-Jek passenger and the subsequent harassment she suffered comes to mind.