These ‘Squid Game’ cards that are randomly appearing in Johor lead to… a secret message.

It’s Election Season in Johor, and you know what that means…

Ahh yes, ladies and gentlemen. It’s that time of the year where political campaigns are in full-swing, flags line the streets, as the people of Johor gear up to vote in the upcoming state elections. We won’t go too much into detail on the political mumbo-jumbo that’s been going down, but let’s just say that experts predict that the outcome of the Johor state elections might end up causing a shift in the political landscape.

After all, this would be the first election that newly-launched political party MUDA is contesting in, as well as the first election where youth votes will be counted ever since the voting age was recently lowered to 18 years. So, TL;DR is that the Johor state election is pretty diddly-darn important.

And in the midst of all this political madness, the people of Johor were in for a little surprise when they received a ‘Squid Game’ looking card with a QR code printed out behind it. Some of them found it in strewn all over the mall floors, some found it in their mailboxes or stuck to their car windscreens, and one guy even found it in his shoes.

And upon scanning the QR code, they were then led to…

 

This YouTube video of the “Frontman” of Malaysian politics.

Despite the logo-usage and the Squid Game theme song playing in the intro, we were pretty disappointed to find out that this video really doesn’t have anything to do with the Netflix series. *sad korean noises*

Instead, the video features a masked person who refers to themselves as ‘Frontman’, which some of you might recognize as that villain in Squid Game that’s in charge of all the other pink soldiers. We’re guessing that this person might be trying to portray themselves as the character, given the Squid Game theme and even through wearing the same mask.

The video is unlisted from public view and is only accessible through the QR code on the cards that link to it, and in the video, the Frontman has an important message for the people of Johor. In summary, they talk about lying political leaders who enjoy jumping, local welfare being sidelined, and Johor’s dignity being stepped on- before reminding the people that Johor needs them. The video then ends with this very passionate tagline:

“Tolak penipu! Tolak pengkhianat! Tolak katak! (Reject liars, Reject traitors, and Reject ‘frogs’)“

And with the Johor polls ongoing, we’re guessing that Frontman is encouraging the people of Johor to get out there and vote during the elections. But that’s not all. We decided to go through their YouTube channel to see if they had any more content, and we found that…

 

They might have gotten their start in Melaka first.

Initially, we thought that based on the name and the video we watched, the person behind this channel was only focusing on Johor. However after seeing this video, along with several other videos that were calling out to the people of Melaka (including this song that they made), we noticed something interesting about their YouTube profile:

With one of their videos even vowing to expose Idris Haron, the Chief Minister of Melaka, all of the Frontman videos also seemed to be made around the time that the Melaka state elections were happening, and ended with the same “tolak katak, tolak pengkhianat, dan tolak penipu” tagline.

At this point, it seems pretty clear that Frontman’s main goal might be to encourage Malaysians to vote during the elections. But we were still left with so many unanswered questions; How long has this been going on? Is there more than one Frontman?

And that was when we did a little bit of digging online and found that there was a similar group who did the same thing in Melaka during the Melaka state elections– one being the cards that were stuck on car windshields that had a QR code linked to Frontman Melaka, and another being a normal Squid Game card being handed out by the Pink Soldiers asking people to vote for Pakatan Harapan.

Now, we don’t know if the two were from the same group of people or if they were just using the same tactics, since the Frontman has made videos calling out PH, while the pink soldiers were asking people to vote for PH. But at this point, we’re pretty sure that there’s more than one person behind this entire thing.

Creativity… or necessity?

Malaysia is no stranger to political protests. But with demonstrators getting arrested and called up by the police, Malaysians have had to be more creative in how we express our opinions. Though, it’s probably the first time we’ve seen someone actually take the ‘anonymous masked hero’ route.

Unconventional marketing tactics aside, this whole ‘Frontman’ thing might be happening because the anonymity gives them the freedom to speak out without fear of persecution, since political commentary is often punished, especially when you’re commenting on the ones in power. And unlike groups like Anonymous that aims to serve vigilante justice through cyberattacks, the Frontman chooses to use their anonymity to speak out and encourage people to vote– just like how a Frontman acts as the face of a group, the true authority lies in the people behind them.

Anyways, we still aren’t sure if the Frontman themselves is operating as a one-man show, but if they’re reading this, they should reach out to us because we wanna hire them to make content for us. We promise it’s not a trap.