Dancing to ‘Ting Ting Tang’  

At a Christmas party I attended over a week ago, I along with friends gamely danced to the viral song ‘Ting Ting Tang Ting,’ which is now popular on TikTok. I didn’t care if I got the dance steps right. What mattered was that I had fun along with friends and colleagues. Good thing no one took a video of it and shared it on social media. Otherwise it would ruin not just my reputation but also the entire day of everyone else who watches it.

Kidding aside, in the age of social media virality there is something about cameras that spoils the occasion, at least for me. I might politely oblige, for example, but I don’t particularly enjoy people interrupting my meal to take pictures of us in a restaurant or buffet party and posting them online.

Back in college where I majored in mass communication, I remember studying about the effects of camera presence on human behavior. In intimate or small group settings, researchers observed a difference in interpersonal interactions between the presence and absence of a camera.

Journalists are also familiar with the shift in the tone and body language of their sources when there is a camera or audio recorder. When I was a novice reporter, a seasoned journalist once told me that a better way to understand a source and a story is to spend time with the source without your notes, recorder or camera. You can’t print or broadcast anything the source shares off the record, of course, but the information you get in those moments your source let down his guard can give you a better handle on understanding a story that might come up later on and the issues behind it.

Those were the pre-social media days when mass communication was dominated by newsrooms and editorial offices modeled after traditional gatekeeping roles and a stringent vetting process. In today’s social media age, however, anyone can be a media creator, and through algorithms that promote sensational or provocative content, reach a mass audience and become viral.

This is concerning in a way that most video content that go viral on social media inherently lack the context of what was recorded, edited, and disseminated. Their visibility to a massive online audience makes these videos a fair target for all kinds of comments and interpretations. These are often shown without explanation or are related through the biased and crude annotations of the media creator.

This is the reason why I try to be careful of not making any judgment against anyone or anything based solely on videos I see on social media. Studies show that self-centeredness increases by about two-fold when we engage with social media. Thus, we can easily slide into becoming judgmental and horrible persons there.

When I first came across a viral video of a priest in Danao City dancing with his assistants to ‘Ting Ting Tang Ting’ at the altar of his parish before capping the Misa de Gallo, like all videos I see online, I took it in good spirit. The video I first saw that went viral was the one posted by a netizen which only showed that portion when the priest and his assistants danced ‘Ting Ting Tang Ting.’ The song, by the way, is a Vietnamese fun-dance pop song originally titled "See Tinh" which means “love.” That post on Facebook garnered at least 13,000 mixed reactions and 1.3 million views. Using foul language (which I can’t print here), the netizen lambasted the priest for allegedly disrespecting the “Magisterium of the Church.”

Another video of the same dance inside the church in Danao City posted on YouTube was a longer one. There one can see that it was actually a Christmas caroling with matching dance moves that started with the traditional Visayan Christmas song ‘Kasadaya ning Taknaa’ and culminated with the viral song ‘Ting Ting Tang Ting.’ In fact, many inside that church seemed to enjoy the act or take it in good spirit.

The dancing inside the church was unusual, yes, but I was not immersed in that community to make any further judgment. I also agree with Archdiocese of Cebu spokesperson Msgr. Joseph Tan who saw nothing improper or morally wrong with it. The dancing priest, I heard, is well loved and respected by his parishioners and likewise in the communities he was previously assigned. He may dance before them more often – hopefully next time without the cameras.