Trends of the Week

MANILA, Philippines - While an entire aircraft filled with over 200 passengers went missing for days, Twitter was busy thinking about things like the network wars, band puns, and random, off-topic hashtags. #PrayForMH370 trended immediately as soon as the mysterious disappear- ance of the Malaysian Airlines flight made the news last weekend. But as the days went by, and the more eerie the disappearance be- came, the farther the hashtag receded down to the bottom of the trends list. That Twitter is still overwhelmingly trivial and pop-cul- ture-obsessed is no longer a surprising fact in 2014. It is our ID, masquerading as our superego. This week, the mask was noticeably off once again and it wasn’t even shocking.

#RhodoraXDay33 and #TheLegalWife- Day33 face off

The ABS-CBN vs. GMA network war is largely ignorable in real life, unless you live with a network employee or have friends who believe that a couple of TV channels can somehow represent the great moral battles of our time. But on Twitter, it’s a war that wages on forever, causing collateral damage all over our timelines and trends lists. Social media has turned into the Normandy of the network wars and every day is D-Day. Sometime this week, #RhodoraXDay33 and TheLegal- WifeDay33 were next to each other on the trends list, two of the competing net- works’ newest shows slugging it off in hashtag form, outside the ratings ring, but well within the belly of the Internet beast.

Who won? The Legal Wife or Rhodora X? Love triangle or schizophrenia? Angel Loc- sin or Jennylyn Mercado? It really doesn’t matter. Twitter is a venue pretty much domi- nated by ABS-CBN, its talents, and its fans. But Twitter is also the place where elections are not won and public policy is not dic- tated. What it is, what it’s always been, is a place where noise is mass produced. What matters is that Philippine television will con- tinue to be an exercise in public pandering, where innovation will always be the great casualty.

#RuinABand saves Twitter

Initiated by Comedy Central’s improved game show @midnight, #RuinABand was definitely the most entertaining trending hashtag in an otherwise uneventful Twit- ter week. Its crowd-sourcing strength was twofold: 1) it appealed to people’s already piqued desire to be seen as witty on the Internet and encouraged them to satisfy it in the most fun way possible, and 2) it al- lowed people to show off their encyclopedic knowledge of music. The longer it went, however, the less it became a snob-off and more of an ultra-competitive wit challenge. For example, “Wand Erection” was far more impressive than, say, the slightly more mu- sically-sophisticated “The Mold Steady.” In fact, a lot of good ones were inspired by the most popular bands: Nuns n Moses, Fleet- wood PC, Metallican’t, and The Saving Our- selves For Marriage Pistols, among others.

For some reason, however, the greatest #RuinABand tweets still featured obscure acts. There was Tegan And Sarah Palin, ...And They Shall Know Us By The Trail Of Toilet Paper From Our Shoe, Churches, and even a vintage reference in The Guess Whom. This hashtag also teaches us that Death Cab For Cutie is apparently the most mockable band name of all time, inspiring gems like Death Camp For Cutie, Meth Lab for Cutie, and Death Uber For Cutie.

#DiKoMagets sums up the week

#DiKoMagets was the top trend dur- ing the middle of the week, for reasons that will remain a mystery, just like most trend- ing hashtags essentially are. It also unwit- tingly encapsulates the week that was. On one end of the spectrum, no one truly gets what it feels like to lose a loved one inside an airplane that has disappeared from the face of the earth. On the other end, no one really gets what it’s like to be numbed and dulled by the sheer abundance of life.