JULY 31 — As the world went crazy for Pokemon Go, our little city-state of Singapore simply went, well… crazier.

Days after the app went viral, an Australian man posted a disgruntled rant about Singapore not having the game officially available (though it is available through various workaround and hacks). He declared, "You can’t f**king catch Pokémon in this piece of f**king sh*t country.”

And immediately, the red and white blooded denizens of this nations came forth to bay for his blood starting with the amusingly shocked question: "Why would you call Singapore a piece of sh%#!”

An extraordinarily outraged online attempt was made to defend the Poke-honor of our country.

When the man in question refused to immediately apologise for his heinous criticism of our nation, a few of our trusty online vigilantes went a step further and having uncovered where this man worked began goading his company (a local property listing start-up) to fire him immediately.

Shamefully, it worked.

A girl sporting a "Pikachu” hat uses the Pokemon Go application on her mobile as she participates in a mass gathering in Madrid on July 28, 2016. — Picture from AFP

The man got booted out of a job and the hilariously sensitive people of the island returned to their cloistered, protected, insecure lives.

These internet trolls are nothing but bullies and what is most frustrating about their petty outbursts is that 1. Someone seems to be listening 2. How absolutely and utterly unnecessary and besides the point it all is.

A random foreigner saying something doesn’t make it so — you can unclench and let it go. It doesn’t matter if they say it sucks or if they hate it and call us stupid, uncreative, sheeple — their words don’t make it so. Relax. Keep scrolling down your newsfeed and let their little rants dissipate into the ether.

Also remember the poor guy was just upset he couldn’t play the official version of Pokemon Go, it’s hardly a damning indictment of our country…

In part this is symptomatic of a bigger worldwide issue of "doxing” and invasive, frightening internet vigilantism — suddenly everybody with a smartphone is judge and jury. A single comment, a moment of weakness, the "wrong” opinion, what others deem a lousy sense of humour etc. can earn you the wrath of the great unseen body of keyboard warriors.

What really riles me though is how often this hullabaloo serves only to distract from the issues that matter.

Fittingly, the very boss that reacted with swift knee-jerking speed to give his hire the boot in this anecdote turned up in another news article recently: this time sharing how he and his minority wife (he’s Chinese and she’s Indian but they are both Singaporean) were encountering open, blatant racism as they searched for a flat to rent.

Landlords were repeatedly refusing the couple a space because of her race. In the face of this, no anger though only a tepid tsk tsk-ing and the toothless inclusion of a "filter” on property websites to empower the non-racists.  No tangible action taken against people who quite happily admitted to being racist and discriminatory.

This is the real tragedy of Singapore — a foreigner makes a silly post and it’s news, but the fact a Singaporean woman cannot rent a house with her husband because of the colour of her skin barely registers as significant.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.