Where's the sympathy?

Over a year ago, perhaps the most amazing display of social solidarity in the Philippines happened on Twitter. As a great portion of Metro Manila was submerged in floodwaters and cloaked in blackouts caused by storm “Ondoy,” Filipinos from all over social media came together to help out. PayPal accounts rapidly reached thousands of dollars in donations, and people went to help pack relief goods and supplies through the power of Facebook and Twitter.

Fifteen months later, as rains, floods, and landslides assault some of the poorest and most vulnerable provinces in the Philippines, the country's social media sphere didn't do the same. There was outrage, all right: the caps on broadband Internet services, P-Noy's purchase of a Porsche, and the hullabaloo over horoscopes and new zodiac signs. From where I was, the smattering of tweets and Facebook status messages seemed disappointing, sad, and to a certain extent, outrageous.

When 1.3 million people are displaced from their homes, P1.6 billion worth of crops and other properties are destroyed, and 47 people die because of a storm, a sense of perspective should suggest that our emotions and efforts should gravitate towards that concern. If the weight of an issue is worth its weight in conversations, then the suffering of the victims were far worth less than an Internet stick, a car, or lines drawn between stars in the sky.

The storm clouds surged through the provinces, wrecking houses and fields with nary a hashtag. It doesn't help that the flash floods and landslides affected some of the poorest and most vulnerable provinces in the Philippines: Albay, Southern Leyte, the Samar provinces, the Caraga region. Some of these provinces, in fact, were the very first ones to extend help to the metropolitan center when it was so severely damaged by Ondoy: the few million pesos, the sacks of rice, whatever they can give.

I'm not saying that one should not be outraged over any attempt to foil the rights of the consumer. I'm not saying that it's OK for the President to lead his country from behind the wheel of a sports car that's anything but austere. I'm not saying that no one has the right to be peeved over having the wrong horoscope all along. Yet if these conversations are made at the expense of something as important as the welfare and well-being of people dying, starving, and catching disease from a calamity that strikes home, then the quality of our conversations should be indicted, in the same way we indict the subjects of our conversations.

In a country with (purportedly) 2.1 million Twitter users, there could have been P2.1 million donated to the victims. Could it be that our ability to effect change through Twitter and Facebook only happens when we're personally affected? I certainly hope that's not true.

True: the political remedies and long-term solutions for the perennial problems of the country's eastern seaboard are out of our hands. What is in our hands, though, is the ability to sympathize – and to act on that sympathy – especially when our countrymen need it the most. The fact that we all stood in silence, or looked the other way as pleas for help and aid were made in evacuation centers and shelters, makes “Where's the sympathy” a perfectly valid question to ask.