Opinion: Forget the moral pandering — the PLB scandal was about spectacle, not accountability

MS Speaks: Was the PLB scandal about holding power accountable? Nah man, it’s all about the memes

This piece is part of MS Speaks, a segment in which MS News reporters share their honest views on current affairs and trending topics. Views expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect those of the publication.

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Are you not entertained?

Because let’s be honest, isn’t that what this is all about? Why else would people be here, refreshing Reddit threads, cross-checking Instagram deactivations and reactivations, and nodding at the umpteenth video remix of the leopard crawl? 

This is what accountability looks like now: a livestream moral circus, with a cast of characters we can project our values onto without doing any actual work.

Netizens wring the news taut, hoping for more crumble to fall: an apology message, the alleged cheaters stepping down, a hundred agents leaving their company. “Give us more, more,” they seem to say.

The scandal involving Melvin Lim and Grayce Tan didn’t go viral because it represented some profound moral crisis. It went viral because the format was perfect. 

Sex. Power. Status. Finally, something juicier than inflation or salary stagnation to be mad about.

And look at them go.

Eat first, ask questions later

A sex video. Screenshots. AMAs. TikTok breakdowns. Reddit Mega-threads. The now-infamous leopard crawl video dissected, remixed, meme-ified to oblivion.

Within hours, the conversation shifted from what happened to how funny, how outrageous, how delicious this all was.

The outrage was never about empathy. If it bleeds into your timeline, it becomes entertainment.

The more outrageous, the more consumable. The faster it spreads, the less anyone bothers to ask whether the conversation is actually meaningful.

Sure, there is pity for the wife, the kids, the newly married husband amid an alleged years-long affair. But that sympathy is quickly folded into something uglier.

They become props in self-righteousness, proof that we are more moral than these people, with their money and glitz. Finally, we get to look at them from our mundane lives and think:

We are better than you.

Outrage, here, wasn’t an ethical response. It was a reflex. We weren’t witnessing a reckoning; we were watching content.

Pass the popcorn.

Every good scandal needs a pretty face

Enter Grayce — attractive, social media prolific, female.

She didn’t become the target because she bore more responsibility (it takes two hands to clap) but because she was easier to consume.

She is an influencer. Her job is legibility. Her face, her lifestyle, and her brand are already public property.

Every image is searchable, and every post can be scrutinised.

Meanwhile, Melvin hides behind a wall of institutional power — corporate, abstract, buffered by layers of legitimacy. How do you make memes out of that?

The crowd punished visibility more than consequence-bearing behaviour.

Scroll through the comments, and a pattern emerges. People pity the wife, rage at the “other woman”, and spew the tired refrain: “Why did she open her legs?”.

Even women joined in, furious at Grayce for perpetuating the stereotype of the ambitious woman who climbs the ladder by sleeping with the boss.

Sure, the above stereotype is worth interrogating, but here’s another question: who actually held the power in this relationship?

Are we also dogpiling on Melvin for perpetuating the stereotype of a man who takes advantage of those who work for him?

There was little sustained scrutiny of the fact that he was the man in charge when Grayce was an intern.

While that gets shrugged off as a footnote, Grayce’s motives, morality, and character, were excavated with forensic enthusiasm.

The explanation to this trend is simple: Social media doesn’t punish who merits it, it punishes who presents itself best for punishment.

Speculation over substance

The most obscene part of this sex scandal isn’t the alleged affair. It’s how quickly a corporate leadership issue mutated into collective free fire.

Threads spiralled into amateur forensics. Salary guesses. Side-business gossip. Conspiracy theories.

Meanwhile, far more serious allegations — favouritism, blurred boundaries, even whispers of inappropriate conduct by senior staff — floated briefly before being buried under memes.

An unsafe or unethical workplace culture should be a far bigger issue than two people getting their rockers off outside their marriages.

But that conversation doesn’t generate punchlines. It’s slow, uncomfortable, and it doesn’t clip well.

So governance gets replaced with gossip. Structural accountability with tea.

Everyone gets to feel righteous without threatening anything that actually matters.

The real scandal isn’t the affair. It’s that power, privilege, and leadership accountability faded quietly into the background while everyone was busy consuming the drama.

Is there even a lesson here?

What many people are calling “holding them accountable” is really just performance.

We comfort ourselves with the illusion that by tearing into two people’s private lives, we’re doing something meaningful.

In reality, people are consuming this the same way we consume reality TV — brainlessly, compulsively, and without interrogation.

This is no corrective response; it’s spectator sport.

So although resignations happened, statements were issued, and people left, the room hasn’t really changed at all.

The structures that made this scandal not just possible but predictable — and made it so easy to distract us with spectacle — are humming along, untouched and unbothered.

Which is awkward. Because spectacle was supposed to do something, right?

Accountability was never the point

The social media storm around the PLB scandal says far more about public appetite than private morality.

The scandal evolved into a twisted form of sanctioned cruelty, showing how quickly moral failure becomes consumable drama, how easily outrage replaces inquiry, and how power slips through the cracks untouched while a single, visible figure absorbs the blow.

Instead of paying attention to who was actually harmed, most were too busy asking who could be consumed next.

And maybe the most uncomfortable truth is this: we do this because it makes us feel better.

We can’t have their quarter-million yearly salaries. We can’t inhabit their glittering, aspirational lives. But at least — at least — we get to stand on the moral high ground and look down.

Don’t think this was ever about morality. This was a show with audience participation.

People fed it. Circulated it. Refined it into something shareable.

So tell me — are you not entertained?

Also read: Opinion: Another indie cinema won’t fix what S’pore let die

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Featured image adapted from Reddit and PropertyLimBrothers on YouTube.