Another day, another viral video. It’s like reality TV, only this time, it’s actual reality, and not a television producer’s version of it.
You know the ones––like the grainy cell-phone video of the gun-toting idiot in the Montero; the Fil-Am brat in Clark that cussed out the cops for taking his license; the drunk-driving Ateneo basketball player involved in a traffic altercation and impersonating a councillor; the counter-flowing Jaguar; the Ford Ranger driver that dragged a cop on his car door a week ago because he didn’t want to be questioned about an accident––in short, the kind of juicy content that has online news aggregators salivating over it like politicians over pork allocations.
Sounds like the hunger games, but the truth is, this stuff happens everywhere. Difference is, with our penchant for drama, scandal, public ridicule and swift online justice, plus our lack of any real-world enforcement, it has taken this to a different level––one that I believe is becoming counter-productive.
You see, as much I believe in shaming these idiots, the problem is that with more and more websites and Facebook pages devoting themselves to being purveyors of shame and dispensaries of Internet scorn, we are actually doing the opposite. Because without any solid police work behind these exposés, we’re only desensitising the public.
Put it this way. Rarely a month goes by with out another shocker. Yesterday it was the idiot in the Innova in BGC that counter-flowed, beat the traffic light, hit an expat on a motorcycle, then ran down another motorcyclist as they were trying to prevent him from fleeing the scene. Next month I guarantee you we will have something even juicier to chew on. And each time, just like clockwork, angry netizens gather with their pitchforks and conduct a public digital crucifixion. You’ve heard of blood-thirsty? This is shame-thirsty, like-thirsty and share-thirsty. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, but in the end, without any charges pressed or action taken, the only winners here are the administrators of the FB pages or websites that later peddle that white noise as ‘influence’ to their advertisers.
Take the case of the gun-toting Montero owner. What ever happened to him? He became an Internet sensation overnight, then faded just as quickly. Can you even remember his name? The counter flowing Jaguar? The Clark Fil-Am brat? According to the cops I was with in Clark last week, nothing. And the Ateneo basketball player/fake councillor? You guessed it. Yellow card lang.
Why? We got distracted. Again. And again. And with an infinite supply of stupid out there, plus a successful business model built around peddling it, you can expect this to get exponentially worse until something more analog is done about it. Like permanent driving bans or good old-fashioned jail time. In other words, real punishment.
Case in point, Bill Emerson Tan. Here’s a viral sensation that rocketed into Internet stardom when he pulled a gun on a taxi driver in broad daylight in the middle of the busiest road in the Philippines last year. Bill eventually surrendered to the police only because his cousin had been falsely identified and was on the receiving end of all the cyber-heat. But despite it becoming one of the most viral Internet stories of the year, Bill was handed his license back and set loose on our roads after coming to a settlement with the taxi driver; barely 18-months later, Bill was back in another starring role––this time dragging a policeman on his car door while driving away from a checkpoint.
Bill has since claimed to have settled once again with both the new taxi driver in the new viral video, as well as the new set of cops. Bill is once again free and will probably turn up on the news again. Bill is a dick. Don't be like Bill.
And herein lies the rub. As effective as social media has been in calling out these cysts, unless someone is there to ‘operate’ on them once they’re discovered, these cysts just grow. And grow. And you can’t expect to eradicate them with likes and shares; you need to throw the book at them. And I don’t mean just Facebook, either.
