We beg to differ.
A few years ago an incident in an LRT station that involved a video recording of an irate girl berating a guard went viral and was immediately devoured by ‘netizens’ with sadistic glee. It showed a relatively young woman speaking to the guard in a voice a few octaves higher than the regular conversational tone…
Read More “A glimpse at our participation and the culture of online shaming” »
A lot of people balked at my article “Pinoy Pride will never save the Philippines.” They said, in effect, pride isn’t all that bad, and I’m cruel for saying it is! And if pride won’t save us, what will? I agree, there is a kind of pride that is good. But the most popular form…
I have already written much on the point that Da Pinoy’s attempt at projecting Pinoy Pride has only served to shoot oneself in the foot. The more Da Pinoy tries to project pride, the more Da Pinoy actually earns shame. Da Pinoys are probably saying, “enough of the shame already, please!” They’re probably sick of…
As my colleague Ilda pointed out, Filipinos seem to be averse to speaking out. This may seem to be a counterintuitive assertion to make, given how Filipinos pride themselves with a tradition of flamboyant political activism, tacky spectacle in the way they practice freedom of speech in their mass media, and voluminous undifferentiated chatter in…
Read More “Filipino viral videos: mere modern symptoms of a very old cultural dysfunction” »
So I finally saw the “Amalayer†video posted on YouTube and I just had to ask myself, what the heck was the big deal? Why did this video go viral? It’s not even funny and there’s no way to tell why the girl, Paula Jamie Salvosa went ballistic towards the security guard at the LRT…
Read More “Filipinos who cyber-bullied #Amalayer girl showed worse behaviour than her” »
Following another viral video circus, this time involving Ms Paula Jamie ‘Amalayer’ Salvosa, we find an emerging pattern in the sorts of “scandals” that Filipinos tend to salivate over. A common denominator underlying these is a perverse fascination with the hilarious gaffes Filipinos routinely deliver in their on-going clumsy effort to use the language of…
Perhaps Paula Jamie Salvosa, a.k.a. the Amalayer lady had a bad day and navigating the steaming chaos of one of the LRT stations in Manila’s train system is not exactly the best cure for a shitty day. But I can’t help but think back to how the Japanese, in their direst days following that really…
Read More “‘Amalayer’ girl Paula Jamie Salvosa should have Tagaloged when she Englished” »