SINGAPORE: A woman is winning praise online after she bravely confronted a middle-aged MRT commuter of taking surreptitious pictures of her. While most are appreciating how the woman made the man delete the photos off his phone, a minority have deemed her response an “overreaction.”
TikTok user Daisy @daizamazze revealed on Sunday (26 Feb) that the incident took place around 10 pm the night before while she was on board the East-West Line train when she felt someone filming her. She confronted the man, who had greying hair, at the station and asked him to delete the pictures of her. The middle-aged Chinese man initially pretended to use his phone and ignored Daisy but she said: “There’s no point ignoring me. I saw the photos, you can delete the photos please.”
@daizamazze so obviously this is NOT my usual content however I wanted to share this because nasty crusty uncles / tourists / men do this WAY more than we think, this one was just stupid and made it blatantly obvious he was taking pictures of me. But even though it was obvious what he was doing, i STILL questioned what I saw. “Surely he didn’t take a picture?” “I must be seeing things.” “Would he do that?”. I followed him on the platform and he was dumb enough to CHECK the photos he took LOL. To my girls, ALWAYS trust your gut. NEVER be afraid to make noise. CALL THEM TF OUT!!!! This is ILLEGAL. Even if you don’t see proof, YOUR GUT IS TELLING YOU SOMETHING FOR A REASON. So many times have I felt this unease around a man on public transport but didn’t go up to ask out of fear. If this is your uncle, i just wanna talk. #tiktoksg #caughtoncamera
The man tried to argue, saying that there was a problem with his mobile phone and he originally planned to call a friend. He finally gave in and deleted several photos he had secretly taken of her, in front of her.
After deleting the photos, the man left in a hurry while Daisy urged him not to do such things. He then pretended to be on the phone with someone, prompting Daisy to say: “I can see that you’re not talking to anyone on the phone, you don’t need to do that.”
Revealing that she questioned if she was seeing things before she found proof that the man was filming her, Daisy said:
“… I wanted to share this because nasty crusty uncles / tourists / men do this WAY more than we think, this one was just stupid and made it blatantly obvious he was taking pictures of me.
“But even though it was obvious what he was doing, i STILL questioned what I saw. “Surely he didn’t take a picture?” “I must be seeing things.” “Would he do that?”. I followed him on the platform and he was dumb enough to CHECK the photos he took LOL.”
Also revealing that the incident shook her, Daisy said: “To my girls, ALWAYS trust your gut. NEVER be afraid to make noise. CALL THEM TF OUT!!!! This is ILLEGAL. Even if you don’t see proof, YOUR GUT IS TELLING YOU SOMETHING FOR A REASON. So many times have I felt this unease around a man on public transport but didn’t go up to ask out of fear.”
The video Daisy posted of the confrontation has garnered close to a billion hits in just one day.
The majority of netizens responding to the video have praised her but some said that she should have made sure that he also deleted the photos from his recycle bin so that he is unable to restore the images. Daisy said that she did not think of this at the time.
Some women shared their own encounters with creepy men on public transport, shedding light on how these incidents are not uncommon and have to remain on guard – even in a metropolitan country like Singapore that has low crime rates.
Meanwhile, a small minority of netizens shocked others by defending the middle-aged man. Some said that his actions were not illegal as he did not take upskirt pictures. These netizens accused Daisy of not knowing the law and of being too sensitive.
Daisy uploaded another video this morning (27 Feb), pointing out that the man obviously had a s*xual motive and had pictures of other women in workout gear in his phone. Many expressed support for her and said they were troubled by the vile comments supporting the creepy MRT commuter.
@daizamazze Replying to @Nameless One