Simples...

"The Rake reserves the right to regulate its readership" - please order our commercial product but be aware that if you should criticise it we will regulate you. For the first offence we will forbid you to pay to read it and you will have to scour dentists' waiting rooms and - given its igent readership - the mens' cubicles of tedious commercial enterprises.

Should you be found criticising the Rake further then we will further regulate you. For a second offence you will be forced to listen to Eagle, Jovan and Doug NZ lecture you about how to dress, whilst CuffDaddy goes through your wardrobe to make sure that you only have black suits. If you do not pay attention Jovan may show you his rubber ducky.

Finally, if you do not love Big Rake you will be further regulated. Manton will make you wear a shit fitting jacket and a ridiculous expression. Mafoofan will dress you in purple shoes. Kabbaz will make you pay $3,000 dollars for a shirt and close your business on any saints day likely to attract Hispanics and you will have your picture taken in a mens toilet and posted on SF. Finally Gilchrist will make you donate your entire wardrobe as a freebie. You will then be fit to appear on the Rake's pages as fully regulated.

Unfortunately we cannot do this to you. However, as we have shit for brains we are going to act as though we can.

I must say that I just retired after 31 years in the magazine business, and I never heard of such a practice before. Frankly, I think most of us in the business would be indifferent to whether readers spewed venom about us so long as they kept buying the magazine--which is the name of the game in any sound business.

I recall that The Rake is a Singaporean publication, an authoritarian place both governmentally and culturally. Your experience is probably a reflection of the local culture where you must do as you are told or suffer very harsh consequences.

Last edited by Bishop of Briggs (2010-10-03 04:35:13)

In this age of free content, The Rake magazine is overpriced, vacuous and poorly written by hacks who have no insight about their subjects.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/24/world/singapore-executes-a-dutch-engineer-arrested-on-drug-charges.html

This article claims it was almost ten pounds of heroin, but it's chilling nonetheless.

In college I was in a class with three or four Singaporean girls, and they were CONSTANTLY shocked at everything that American college students did. They were totally horrified if anyone spoke about our professors or the administration with anything less than worshipful respect. For some reason they had no problem eating in class, though, and this horrified me. We learned ever so much from one another!

I have it on good authority that the originator of this thread is an aspiring satirist; aiming at ridiculing one of the better chaps who appear on the various fora. Why? when there is so much better material to 'deal with'.