SOCIAL media, everyone’s favorite bulletin board, is once again awash with pre-election messages, all intent in wooing us in our choices of local and national leaders come the presidential elections next year. Nothing wrong in that at all, for one, the internet and social media in particular, is relatively-free (or so we think) and everyone has been using it for whatever we fancy.
On the subject of political topics and advertisements, despite existing laws that allowed for only a given period for electioneering and working for the success of any candidate, the many loopholes that exist allow for much travesty. Someone had said that if it were only possible to build a house made out of election laws, that house would therefore be one with no walls, only windows.
On the whole, given this free access to one gigantic dumping ground for all our intentions, plus the common disregard of some people for following the law, the stage is set for a colorful election indeed.
Alas, this is only the tip of the ice cream. The most amusing (though sad) aspect in this whole process concerns us, the electorate. Like street dogs, we are turning against each other in this social media dumping ground now turned battleground. Safe to assume, the populace has had much time to hone their craft at this, as if we were suddenly given a new toy. Even before the coming into office of the present leadership, where it was implied by the losing parties that social media played a huge part in the victory, us Filipinos have already been famous worldwide. Not only were we hailed as texting capital of the world once, but also, we have been known to be a force that was instrumental in influencing beauty pageants and such.
Now, it has become common to see daily “skirmishes” between opposing supporters and camps on the net. While some posts appear witty and entertaining, the slip shows revealing their real intent. Many posts even break through one’s own algorithms of food menus, family pics and pun/jokes. A friend has remarked that if you know someone, they be family or not, who posts political anything on your page, that’s the welcome mat for other related junks to follow.
This begs the question, as we the askals fight it out under the streetlamps, where are the owners? Safe in their beds or near their windows overseeing our progress? One may also wonder, in spite of this new settings of pitting us against each other, what happens after the elections and the smoke has cleared? Should we then go back to respecting each other and shedding off our canine coats, or should we continue to bay at the moon of our dreams because by then we might have realized that those whom we’ve voted has all moved on leaving us all alone in the streets?
