Australian Marketing Exec Dumped After Ranting about Pokémon Go Not Being in Singapore

July 12, 2016

An Australian marketing executive was recently fired after posting a Facebook rant about Singapore’s lack of Pokémon Go.

Pokémon Go, the widely-popular augmented reality game that has been flooding your Facebook news feed, is currently available in the U.S., New Zealand and Australia.

Sonny Truyen, of Melbourne, Australia, took to Facebook to complain about Pokémon Go being unavailable in Singapore. According to Mashable, Truyen was the vice president of digital marketing at the Singaporean-based property development company 99.co.

Frustrated that Pokémon Go had not yet been released in Singapore, Truyen decided to vent on his social media page. He wrote:

“You can’t f*****g catch Pokemon in this piece of f*****g s*** country.”

Following his post, a Singaporean woman commented on his remark. The user replied:

“Get out of our country.

“[…]Please leave we don’t need rude people here.”

A screenshot of the exchange was shared by a user on a local forum called Hardwarezone. On Sunday, 99.co’s CEO Darius Cheung issued an apology. In it, Cheung stated that Truyen had only been working with the company for a week as a SEO agency specialist. A part of the statement read:

“About 24 hours ago, we were alerted by a user that one of our consultants, Sonny Truyen, demonstrated rude behaviour on a Facebook thread.

(The thread has since been deleted by the moderator, but it can still be found on some forums. We won’t be reposting it here because of its offensive nature as well as against our company philosophy to propagate hate.)”

According to Cheung, 99.co prides itself on being a Singaporean company that celebrates diversity and equality. The company appealed:

“We take responsibility for the public behaviour of any employee or consultant affiliated with us as a reflection of the company. We are truly sorry, do accept our apology.”

Consequently, Truyen’s employment contract was terminated by the company. Truyen reached out to Mashable on Monday with an apology. He said:

“It was a dick move on my behalf and a very big error in judgement to negatively label an entire country over Pokémon. It was very wrong of me to rage like that.

“However in my defense, I was racially vilified for not being a ‘white’ Australian. It was disappointing the lengths Singaporeans went at to attack me and deny any chance of making amends for my actions.”

It seems that Truyen isn’t trying to get back with his company either. He continued:

“I’ve parted ways with 99.co and would appreciate it if everyone could stop the witch hut there and leave them alone, bombarding them with threats isn’t helping.”

The former digital marketing exec has since deleted or deactivated his Facebook account.

Share this Article