Filtered By: Topstories
News

The petty perils of tech and sosyal ek-ek


So here we have another techfest in an e-Pot, with everybody and his online cousin (as adapted from the late great sportscaster Joe Cantada's "everybody and his brother") heaping up the shame bucket for one Mai Mislang — "President's speechwriter" (certainly not "presidential speechwriter") — so that the poor lady must now be the most irrecognizably disfigured, self-contorting pretzel this side of the Palace by the Pasig. I say poor cuz sobra na, tama na! Huwag naman an FB site dedicated entirely to demonizing her further. Ano ba kayo?! If anything, it only proves that sosyal neknek-working also satisfies bloodlust and mob mentality. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not defending what she tweeted, or the way she tweeted. But like good Christian theologians, we have to hair-split through all of the attendant issues spawned by MM's version of Good Morning, Vietnam. So many were quick to pounce on the faux pas, even rhyming it with taklesa. Others assessed fellow Pinoys as being ever a crabby tribe of carapace-and-claw-pulling, auto-flagellating SM (sado-maso, not Sy & Megalo) cultists, eager to decry any violation of proper conduct with more than just tsk-tsk rants. Serious journalists (a hardy foolhardy breed) took MM to great task, even her looks, her discolored aura of panache, her impolitic gaucheness as an innocent abroad. Sosyal media adherents, and they are legion, reviled her instantly, tsunami-ing a sort of Tech Offensive that would have done Gen. Giap proud. The usual oppositionist ravers drove another stake into the Student Council body that not only doesn't wake up early enough, but also can't tell between Viet and Chilean wines. A couple of senators (F&G: Francis & Gringo) suggested getting over it soon enough, 'twas a small matter, the girl had already been reprimanded, her Twitter account frozen — thus echoing basically what PNoy himself and his Robin Ricky said in downplaying the dyahe little business. But Manong Johnny differed in his view, with a vantage of course as Senate Prez. He suggested termination for MM. Kaluoy naman. For someone who's strung up words for Noynoy since he was still in the Senate, that would be too harsh a comeuppance just for having used words (140 characters max) to reply to Robin Carandang, este, Ricky. Especially since her messages bore obvious lack of footnotes as well as malice aforethought. Methinks her simple fault was replying to an inquiring boss (with the rest of the world tuned in) while still stuck (up) on that stance of breezy casualness — you know, pa-smart, pa-witty, the way advertising and corporate suits and skirts engage in cheery hallway conversation, trying to sound like characters scripted by Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network). And that's what you get when you have a twittering class. Methinks Mai already got what she deserved, all that dyahe plus the demonizing deluge, which should be tough to live down for some time. Oh, maybe six or eight more weeks, and then like Maricar Reyes she can walk around in public again, with chiffon-gowned hide tough enough to deflect stares and pointing fingers. Methinks too that the real story has to be the way every single gizmo that comes along is rapaciously embraced by techies, geeks, and nouveau techie-geeks, as well as all the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses "syndromists." I mean, really now, who needs a cellphone that can open garage doors? Why, Twitter can't even make up its mind on its cognates. Why can't it be Tweeter if one tweets, or why can't one twit? Well, I suppose it might retro George Harrison's pained recollection of how the Beatles had to run the vengeful gamut at the old MIA after having supposedly stood up the First Family at the Palace, way back in the ML era, and years later he said of Marcos, "Oh, that old twit." And why must everyone and his/her erstwhile or still bloggin' cousin have to get into FB and fatten up Mark Zuk's account? Isn't having a FUBU decidedly more palatable, on a one-on-one basis however serial, rather than be 24/7 at a group grope, with a lot of strangers around? First it was blogs and blogsites and blogorrhea — opening up all that digital slumbook space to kids who think they enjoy anonymity behind virtual facelessness so that they can turn into an army of trolls, flamers, haters, and ranters — in brief a disputatious lot. Then you had Multiply and WordPress and everyone became a photographer cum diarist, welcoming and pushing the envelope on all the shareware like so much block rosary rituals. So that it leads to phishing aggravation with Boxbe et al. that even tries to shame one into lighting candles in the name of feigned camaraderie. All this excited, excitable talk about the glories of new media and sosyal ek-ek-working can really be only signposts to something possibly overrated. The jury should still be out on whether some benefits — like tweeting disasters and calls for relief aid, or finding long-lost cousins via Facebook to get up to speed on who's won any Lotto draw — outweigh the nakedness of public spectacle, or expose the sloth of universal interest in what anyone may have had for breakfast, or how many corny pictures one can take at a barbecue party, thence parade onscreen as an imposition of generosity. But then geeks, techies and faddists tend to view everything new with rose-colored glasses, like Manong Johnny who only wanted to make you happy. So the darned bandwagon begins to creak under the weight of too many cock-eyed optimists hailing a brave new world called the kingdom of sharing. Whatever happened to the fine memory of Groucho Marx begging off from joining any group that would have him? Sure, it fills the vanity void, expands virtual friendships. But what about the sensitivities of the poor lot who are defriended, or maybe worse, ignored, denied entry into private settings, or laughed out of an unsolicited tag? I still don't understand why one can't just join a specific e-loop, which is like having a more intimate soiree, rather than have to cast one's lot with a street hoedown where stalkers can turn up to foist their graceless manners and bad grammar on non-peers of greater cachet. Well, if I reflect a little deeper, I do understand. After all, there have been religions since that first crack of lightning hit a tree, and it happened to have been witnessed by humanoid eyes. Had the event escaped observation, then it would have simply been Zen — like that other tree soundlessly crashing in a forest where there are no lurkers around. All this tweeting and FB paging may indeed be the brave new world's version of one hand clapping — if only cuz the other hand may be too busy reaching out for the next novelty, so that no consensual applause is ever generated. Okay, say that I'm so yesterday. Why, yes. We had real friends then. And we knew our manners, even when we played tag. – GMANews.TV

LOADING CONTENT