Here we go again, dressed up as responsibility. This week, The Manila Times reported that the Philippines is considering mandatory social media user verification to curb abuse. The pitch is neat and comforting. Order over chaos. Safety over noise. Names over anonymity. The subtext is even clearer: if everyone can be identified, everyone can be managed. That is not about
Category: Opinion
Somewhere inside Malacañang Palace, there is a comforting belief that corruption can be outsmarted by software. Not confronted. Not dismantled. Outcoded. Just add blockchain, say transparency a few times, roll out a pilot, and suddenly decades of theft, patronage, and selective justice politely excuse themselves and leave. It never works that way, but we pretend it does. Yes, Filipinos might
We live in a time where human connection is unlimited and humanity feels rationed. You can reach anyone instantly. You can speak to strangers across continents without leaving your chair. You can watch lives unfold in real time, tragedies, celebrations, confessions, meltdowns, all neatly packaged for your feed. And yet something essential is missing. Not access. Not information. Humanity. Connection
There was a time when having an account on Twitter meant something. Not followers. Not impressions. Not engagement rates cooked up by dashboards designed to impress advertisers and exhaust users. It meant you were there. Present. Plugged into a place where the world talked to itself in real time. News broke before press conferences. Ideas collided without permission. Expertise surfaced
I walked into McDonald’s expecting the same old deal. Greasy comfort. Predictable regret. Fries that taste like childhood and bad decisions. What I did not expect was to open the bag and think, what bullshit is this, dafuq with this. The fries came first. No red container. No proud cardboard spine holding them upright like they mattered. Just a paper
I grew up being told that utang na loob was virtue. That it was the glue that held us together. That without it, we would become cold, Western, selfish. That gratitude was our superpower. What they never said was the price. You feel it early. The tone shifts the moment you do well. Not celebration. Accounting. Who helped you. Who
We are not ready for what’s coming, and we still think we’re fine… … and yet we do not realize how much we are f*cked. Not mildly inconvenienced. Not challenged. Effed in the quiet, structural way that only becomes obvious when it is already irreversible. In the Philippines, flooding has been downgraded from crisis to background noise. It is something
The Great Filipino Hallucination We’ve become a nation of highlight reels and hollow souls. Everyone looks rich online, but behind those posts are overdue bills, loan app notifications, and unpaid rent. It’s not poverty that defines this generation—it’s delusion. Take a walk through Instagram and it looks like we’re all living the good life. Café hopping, beach trips, unboxing videos,
Every nation has flaws, but not every nation repeats them with the stubbornness of a drunk who swears he’s sober. We Filipinos have perfected the art of messing things up, proudly, consistently, and sometimes cheerfully. From politics to culture to economics, we manage to sabotage ourselves with a creativity that could have made us great if only it were directed
Drive across the Philippines and you will find them. Bridges that end in rice paddies. Roads that fade into gravel before reaching a barangay. School buildings locked, without teachers or students, but with the politician’s name engraved on a plaque. Health centers with no doctors, no medicine, no electricity. Ghost projects. These are not accidents. They are not freak interruptions