It’s not so surprising to see Malaysians and Indonesians arguing with each other on social media. It’s gotten to a point where an Indonesian artist had to step in to stop certain influencers from bad-mouthing their neighbouring country. Sadly, there’s no end to these heated online debates between the two countries as another one arose after a famous YouTuber Googled a traditional-pattern garment he had received from fans.
Earlier this week, American content creator IShowSpeed was in Malaysia for his Southeast Asia Tour. Despite the chaos, he did have some fun moments interacting with fans. At one point during a car ride, he was seen wearing a floral-pattern Batik shirt he received and decided to look up where the traditional dyeing technique originated from.
The first results showed that Batik is from Indonesia but his Malaysian tour guides argued that it started in Malaysia and clarified that the pattern and colours from both countries are dissimilar. One guide even suggested the influencer to Google Indonesian batik to see the difference. As expected, the interaction in the video sparked an internet war between Malaysian and Indonesian netizens.
Some claimed that Batik is from Indonesia as the word itself is derived from the Javanese word ‘bathik’. There were also netizens who tried to calm the situation by educating others about the discussed art form. A few highlighted the tour guide’s comments about the difference between Malaysian and Indonesian batik. As seen in the screenshots above, the pattern on the shirt Speed was wearing in the video is definitely from Malaysia.
Others pointed out that the art form is widely practised in other Southeast Asian countries so the origin should not matter. There were also those who believe that the tour guide did not do a good job in explaining to the famous streamer about batik; this indirectly started the heated argument online.
According to an article by Binus University, UNESCO officially declared Batik to be a part of Indonesian culture in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity back in 2009 whereas the National Heritage Department of Malaysia has yet to nominate the Malaysian Batik to be inscribed in the aforementioned heritage list, as reported by NST in 2022.
Of course, this doesn’t necessarily answer the origin of Batik but it is still useful knowledge about which one is more recognised by an international specialised agency. You can also read UNESCO’s article about Batik here.
Here’s a reposted version of the livestream that started the argument:
@malaysiatribune Bila peminat IshowSpeed ‘claim’ batik dihadiahkan fan Malaysia berasal dari Indonesia… #ishowspeed#speed #youtubers#streamer #malaysia#kualalumpur#gamer
Sources: YouTube, Twitter, NST, Bisun University, UNESCO
