Tag: social media

Skyway roadkill: Cats seemingly dropping from the sky onto Manila elevated highway

April 3, 2014April 3, 2014 benign0 6 Comments

Motorists who use the Philippines’ Skyway, an elevated express tollway linking Manila’s southern suburbs to the central business district of Makati City have for some time observed flattened carcasses of cats littering the pavement. The baffling roadkill has raised the question of how the animals had somehow made their way onto the elevated structure. A…

Civics, Lifestyle, Tech Talk

Love in a time of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Oculus

March 27, 2014 Kate Natividad 4 Comments

The other day I was waiting for a friend of mine — let’s call him David — who was arriving from a quick trip overseas to ping me on WhatsApp (as we had agreed in our last conversation) as soon as he fired up his mobile phone at the airport. Aba, it was already two…

Lifestyle, Tech Talk

Repeat after me: I am the Philippines and I am home to a dysfunctional society

March 26, 2014March 26, 2014 benign0 37 Comments

I realised the whole problem with the prevailing discourse within the social media space I inhabit: there is too much discussion about politics and not enough about the underlying issue with Philippine society that I have long highlighted is the real deal here — Filipino culture. Fact is, the Philippines is beset by a really…

Crime, Culture, Development, Government, Media, Politics, Society

#TwitterIsBlockedInTurkey: Turkish PM Erdogan mirrors PNoy style

March 21, 2014 benign0 2 Comments

Hours following an announcement by its prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has blocked its citizens’ access to Twitter last night. At his campaign rally in Bursa on the 20th of March, Erdoğan announced “We now have a court order. We’ll eradicate Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the…

Civics, Government, Media, Politics, Tech Talk

Why cadet Cudia’s case has played out on social media like an EDSA revolution

March 17, 2014March 18, 2014 FallenAngel 48 Comments

I don’t pretend to know much about the nitty-gritty of military life. In fact, the closest I ever came to experiencing it involved being an officer in the Citizen’s Army Training (CAT) program in high school, and being a normal cadet in the Reserved Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program in college. If anyone cares to…

Civics, Crime, Culture, Media, Society

Social media for social change? Think again, Philippines

March 13, 2014March 13, 2014 FallenAngel 12 Comments

The more I hear people say that social media is going to be a “game-changer” for social good, or however they want to say it, the more I get convinced that it’s actually not going to happen. Social media is commonly delineated in scope to refer to Facebook, Twitter and in some cases Youtube, no…

Civics, Media, Politics, Society, Technology

Philippines’ Makati and Cebu Cities among top ‘selfiest’ cities in the world!

March 11, 2014 benign0 31 Comments

Another feather added to the Philippines’ cap of dubious acheivements! Two Philippine cities made it to the Top Ten “Selfiest” cities in the world. A database compiled by TIME, reveals that the Philippines’ financial centre Makati City produced “more selfies per capita than any other city in the world.” Following Makati, which logged “258 selfie-takers…

Culture, Lifestyle, Society, Tech Talk

ABS-CBN’s “Flesh-Eating Disease” Hoax Takes a Sadly Predictable Turn

February 25, 2014February 25, 2014 BenK 57 Comments

So the story goes like this: Sometime in April of last year, a self-styled “prophet” — an Indian man whose name is either “Sadhu Sundar Selvaraj” or “Vincent” — of a hiterto unheard-of religious organization called Jesus Ministries delivered a fire-and-brimstone sermon to a gathering in the Cuneta Astrodome, in which he prophesied, among other…

Media, Religion, Society, Uncategorized