MANILA, Philippines - What do the coverage of a senator’s arrest, presidential role-playing, and a fourth movie about giant robots have in common? They were all trending topics on Twitter this week. More importantly, they were all unnecessarily long and ultimately pointless. Let’s go back and rehash all the gory details.
People can’t get enough of ‘Transformers’
Transformers 4: Age of Extinction opened this week, trending worldwide on Twitter, and underwhelming critics along the way. We’ve been here before; many, many times before.
When the first Transformers movie came out in 2007, it rode a great wave of anticipation, an entire generation raised by the cartoon series and Hasbro toys drooling at the thought of a live action movie. It turned out to be a messy piece of fluff, but it was fun fluff — the sight of Autobots and Decepticons brought to life was too cool to dismiss altogether.
But now it’s 2014, the world now seven years older, and Age of Extinction is the fourth Transformers installment. It’s also the fourth Transformers movie to be widely panned by critics and, as Twitter suggests, lapped up by moviegoers. The world is still pretty much my fifth grade classroom.
Twitter turns into a senatorial journal of feelings
The news media wants you to know that Sen. Jinggoy Estrada is at home with his family, waiting for his warrant of arrest. The news media wants you to know that he’s ready to be arrested any minute now. The news media wants you know that he’s now heading to Camp Crame and that he’s deeply hurt. The news media wants you to know that Mayor Erap Estrada feels sad, too, and that they are all sad, and are still sad, and will be sad for the foreseeable future.
The news media makes you want to erase the Internet off the face of the earth sometimes. Perhaps still high from the adrenalin of Bong Revilla’s theater of the absurd from the previous week, news outlets stuck to Jinggoy Estrada like vultures on a carcass (or lawmakers on PDAF, am I right?), short of escorting him to his cell and taking off his shoes. What news outlets do to make their existence more justifiable is their business, but I happen to follow their Twitter accounts, which they carpet-bombed with up-to-the-minute updates on Sen. Estrada’s arrest, pre-arrest, and post-arrest to the point of nausea. Social media was already sick to its stomach after last week’s Bong Revilla Extravaganza, where he imagined himself as Nelson Mandela, if Mandela had a lame statement shirt and no cause. So when it was time for Jinggoy Estrada to play the martyr, Twitter was no longer a raucous hall of hecklers — people have already walked away in disgust.
So why did the Senator trend? Because the news media was intent on showing us things we already decided were not interesting, dragging people back into the spectacle, if not screaming details into their ear. News organizations mentioned Estrada’s name at a frequency and rate that can only be rivaled by the most obsessive of stalkers. So, of course, he trended, albeit in the most hollow and insignificant way possible, which oddly enough, also describes how the news media operates in the Twitter era.
I don’t think everyone seriously wants to be the President of the Philippines. The job is too demanding, too thankless, and too harmful for one’s self-esteem. But I do think everyone believes that he or she has better ideas. The trending hashtag, #KapagAkoNagingPresident, turned people into insufferable cab drivers all week, spewing unsolicited opinions on how to turn the country around, or just generally trolling like usual. Here are some executive decisions netizens would make if they were somehow elected to the highest office in the land:
“OPM over KPOP.†I had no idea that was a priority.
“Free KPOP Concert every week.†Ah, a stirring debate is brewing.
“KPOP HERE KPOP THERE KPOP EVERYWHERE!†Okay, I think we’ve already exhausted that subject. Let’s move on, people.
“I will jail all the corrupt politicians and never allow them to run in any government position ever.†Now we’re talking.
“DEMOCRACY shall be redefined and shall only be used with RESPONSIBILITY.†That sounds interesting and possibly terrifying.
“Economy over Society. Education over Development.†I don’t know what that means.
“May free KPOP summer class for aspiring KPOP stars and fans.†That’s it. I’m out.
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Tweet the author @ColonialMental.