The E-limination series: Did life online turn nightlife off?

(Part 2)

Image building.” That’s what it’s come down to. This, from a nearby table in the middle of what has begun to sound like a leadership forum; their mantra repeated with more intensity as the shots keep coming.

“You have to show them that you’re sincere,” the table’s most prominent speaker — a recently inducted member of the yuppie workforce — says, launching into an explanation on how best to compensate bouncers and waiters. The tipping point, so to speak. “Managers, especially,” he says. Such as the one who’d offered him a good (read: seen) table tonight.

The speaker is young, in his early 20s, and the power suit he’s wearing seems to overwhelm his wiry build. But like a boy that’s awkward in his armor, he’s pumped up to prove himself on the battlefield, his enthusiasm never waning when it comes to the topic of conquering the enemy. The enemy in this case: the image that hasn’t been built.

“Make it casual, slip them each 100, sometimes 200. Not all the time, though. Don’t spoil them,” he says to another suit-clad male cohort and two accompanying ladies who are peripherally preoccupied with anyone who might be looking their way. With that, another toast of tequila is made — Patrón, as you’d expect — and once again, the night’s battle cry: “To image building!”

But One Night Life To Live

Of course, if there’s a venue where today’s rising population of image builders can construct their personas freely, it’s at the exclusivity-espousing Taguig nightspot I was at the evening I’d witnessed this character.

As in a Norman Rockwell painting that exhibits middle-class American ideals — turkey dinners, cozy fireplace settings, and other such pleasantries punctuated with warm smiles — every club booth, banquette and square-footage of dance floor here is for the showcasing of status; bottles of Grey Goose, hot bodies, and elevated VIP seating as building blocks of an image that must be aspired to. A good time, as I was led to believe the night out was made for, is now secondary to looking like you’re having a good time. And what’s this good time for, anyway, if no one’s watching?

I happen to believe that when social networking began to replace actual social activity, the rise of the status message merrily coincided with a rise in nocturnal status anxiety. For those like myself who’d come of age with an audience — that is, the friends you amassed on Friendster — you just went ahead and made your profile a public spectacle. Self-advertising, you discovered, was your birthright.

By 2007, life began to imitate life online, self-promotion finding its real-world counterpart in the super club. Then followed the self-actualized DJs spinning a new career out of MP3s. Then came all the self-deluded digicam debutantes who became their own paparazzi, party pics all posted on Multiply.  

Nocturne Of The Century

There were once better days — nights, rather — those well past their quarter-life crises can attest to. A mention of Malate’s choose-your-adventure past is always made; a sense of wander attributed to finding a rock bar or jazz club across the street from the club you’re at. Or a floor up, even.

“What happened to Malate?” YStyle columnist Audrey Carpio recently lamented as we exited a still-standing bar on Nakpil, where once, mardi gras-type carousal spilled out onto the pavement. It was a Saturday night and the bar was empty, save for its two-member acoustic act. Today, the closest thing to the grimy glory of Malate is Cubao Ex, diluted in its arty party-dom as it is.

Other friends who’d gotten down in the age of Aquario (DJ Montano’s bar in Malate — bet you thought you’d never hear that name again) remember a scattering of choice across the city. Some cite Ecstasy-era Libis and a club in Alabang worth driving to. Most bring up good ol’ melting pot Makati, where sometime in circa-2000, the “dress code” had been enforced at one hotspot, the “hip-hop night” had begun at a hotel bar a short drive away, and Anne Curtis constantly squeaked for the whereabouts of Cogie Domingo at a bar several streets down. “Anne Curtis would go to Porch a lot,” says a former frequenter of the bar now called, fittingly enough, Memento. “She’d always go, ‘Where is Cogie?’ You couldn’t miss that voice.”  

Now, you’ll find most of your celebrities celebrating at The Fort, as with everybody who wants to be somebody in order to complement their lives online. After all, if Cristine Reyes is just a tweet away, why can’t you be in her gyrating vicinity, as well? This about brings us to the present, where a lack of variety in places to go could be due to so much vanity. Choreography care of rap MVs, dramatics inspired by reality TV, sense of entitlement from the Internet.

But when you build a façade so high from all of this, it’s bound to topple over. A tipping point, so to speak.

For the disenchanted that once found refuge in the night, home is it for now. I’ve also come across a few people who’ve torn down their Facebook walls, inspired by an actual life beyond them. Similarly, all this image building could possibly halt. And in its place, people going out of their way to socialize rather than network. In its place, people actually going out for its primary sake: a newfangled thing called fun.

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Next week: Why stars are blinding us.