According to 18th-century reactionary thinker Joseph de Maistre, every country gets the government it deserves. Perhaps, in the modern world, each society gets the technology it deserves too — particularly when it comes to dating.
Take Malaysia, a society so conservative that authorities last year canned a beer festival and so corrupt that a raid on the homes of former prime minister Najib Razak’s family yielded $275m worth of designer handbags, watches and jewellery.
It is also where Darren Chan founded Sugarbook, an online platform for sugar daddies to meet young women. Mr Chan switches between referring to the latter as “sugar babies” and “goal empowered individuals”. The transactions that follow are absolutely not prostitution, he insists, but are “honest and transparent relationships”.