Trends of the week

MANILA, Philippines - Twitter makes the world bigger. Let’s all keep this in mind whenever we feel like railing against the shallowness and narcissism it purportedly fosters. Because of social media, Filipinos are more aware of global issues than ever before, more in step with cultural trends, and more engaged in real-time global conversations. Of course, this also means that Filipinos get to project their national insecurities on a global scale.

This week in Twitter offered plenty of glimpses into both the good and bad in Filipino interaction with the world. Whether in real life (through state visits or celebrity interviews) or online (through racial issues), everything still ends up being processed, judged, and revealed in the online world. Borders and oceans in between countries are a lot like the line between IRL and online — they’ve become virtually nonexistent.

Kris Aquino’s new haircut confuses Twitter

“Miley Cyrus and Boy Abunda” trended this week, to a chorus of “Wait, Boy Abunda interviewed Miley Cyrus??? Why haven’t I heard of this???” It turns out he didn’t, but his late night co-host did have a haircut that had her son Bimby compare her to Miley Cyrus, which Twitter instantly ate up.

Internationally, the worldwide trend caused a few “Who the hell is Boy Abunda and what does he have to do with Miley?” tweets from non-Filipinos, to the delight of Filipinos everywhere. One of the benefits of being among the most active people in social media is the ability to consistently troll the world. Unfortunately, this is also a case of Kris Aquino trolling us, just by virtue of existing.

This was days after her predictably Krisian interview with the Amazing Spider-Man 2 cast, wherein she bragged about My Little Bossings outperforming the first Amazing Spider-Man movie to Andrew Garfield and introduced herself to Jamie Foxx as the Oprah Winfrey of the Philippines. The “Miley Cyrus and Boy Abunda” trend was basically one long Kris Aquino subtweet. She’s infamous for forcing herself into conversations that aren’t even about her, but Twitter has somehow devised a weird form of revenge — this was totally about her and few people even knew.

But as this week perfectly demonstrates, Kris doesn’t even need to talk about herself anymore — people willingly do it for her. Yes, even if the president of the United States is in town.

Obama Fever hits Manila

“The POTUS is here! Quick, somebody hide Kris Aquino!”

There were at least a dozen variations of these jokes going around Twitter earlier this week, the most common of which involved the US Secret Service making her “disappear.” The joke, of course, is that Kris Aquino is cringingly embarrassing. Since Twitter is apparently under her permanent spell now, she became the de facto stand-in for the real joke: Filipinos need to impress Americans or else our world will crumble.

Our world-leading approval rating of the US went viral even days before America’s rockstar president stepped foot on simmering Filipino soil. Twitter’s jokes (there’s also the facepalm-inducing Binay joke about his skin being darker than Obama’s) couldn’t conceal the underlying sense of awe: “Wow, it’s so cool that Obama’s actually here.” The minutiae of his visit were fetishized. Here’s what he wrote down on the Malacañang guestbook. Here’s the state dinner menu. Here’s the uber-sweet dessert they gave him. Here’s its ingredients. He wasn’t so much a rockstar as a biblical figure.

Then we heard him talk about Filipinos, say “Bayanihan” with such grace you almost believed he uses it in casual conversation, and refer to typhoon Haiyan as “Yolanda.” We knew they were just motherhood statements perhaps composed after a half hour of skimming through the Philippines’ Wikipedia page, and that the US remains non-committal on condemning Chinese territorial bullying, but the takeaway was inevitable and unmistakable: so that’s what an inspiring leader actually sounds like. The thought was embarrassing.

The Internet cries ‘racist!’ (and gets it right this time)

Donald Sterling — an unfamiliar name for those who do not follow the NBA — trended worldwide this week after the Los Angeles Clippers owner was caught on tape telling his girlfriend to stop bringing black people to “his games.” As far as race-related transgressions go, this is Sterling-lite. The man has been sued for housing discrimination, refusing to rent to minorities because “black tenants smell and attract vermin” while “Mexicans sit around and drink all day,” and for wrongful termination by former Clippers GM and NBA Legend Elgin Baylor who revealed Sterling’s “vision of a Southern plantation-type structure” for the Clippers. But since none of those things involved an audiotape, or an Instagram picture with Magic Johnson, or the viral volatility of the social media era, we had to wait until this week for the long-overdue outrage that finally led to the banning of the biggest living bigot in American sports.

The NBA’s decision to severely penalize Sterling (Commissioner Adam Silver is also pushing for a vote to sell the Clippers) wouldn’t have happened without social media. But while this issue needed Twitter, it was also what Twitter needed. I know this is a strange thing to say, considering that people have been genuinely offended, but from a purely narrative standpoint, it was helpful in reminding Twitter what real racism looks and sounds like.

Just last week, social media was in a furor over Avril Lavigne’s ridiculous video for her equally ridiculous song Hello Kitty — a work of kawaii (a Japanese aesthetic centered on cuteness) monstrosity that the singer claims to be an act of homage and that critics, none of whom were actually Japanese, claim to be offensive. Meanwhile, the Japanese were busy either not giving a crap or praising the video for being spot-on (it was, in fact, shot by a Japanese director). It reminded me of a quote from stand-up comic Michael Che: “Liberal audiences are more conservative than conservative audiences — only liberal people get offended on behalf of people that are not even at the show.”

Outrage, like culture, is easily appropriated these days. So it was refreshing to see Twitter filled with legitimate revulsion over an actual racist who causes real harm IRL and not the semiotic kind often imagined online.