You gotta love our country. The land where Kafka wears a smile, while tripping on Zoloft in between marathon cocaine speedball sessions. And where the scandales keep on coming like the gift that never stops giving.
Forget the NBN-ZTE scandale. All of Manila - and beyond - is riveted by the ongoing revelations of the former Australian gay lover of some lifestyle columnist with a penchant for snorting the white stuff up his nose and defrauding boyfriends. His partners in crime - allegedly - are some of Manila's IT boys and girls collectively known as the Gucci Gang. Whether self-styled, self-proclaimed and self-advertised I won't say; you be the judge.
So the spurned lover not only starts a blog in an attempt to get his $70,000 back, but starts naming names of his apparently two-timing ex-boyfriend's best friends and associates. Complete with photos! And lists of "enablers and users" whose headquarters would be Embassy - who's blowing whom, who's supplying whom, who's fleecing whom, who's dissing whom...
I understand the whistleblower's frustration and despair, but I'm not sure a shame campaign is the way to go about getting his money back (and of course he should be paid). The immediacy of a blog perhaps makes it a tantalizing medium for venting rage but in the end there's a thin line dividing bitchy from bitter. There is merit in taking a few moments to compose oneself if it results in a more coherent argument.
Over at remembrance of things awry, my friend Toto calls it a case of misunderstood privilege.
What alarms me is not so much the revelations (so Kate Moss, really) but the viciousness and sheer hatred embodied in many of the comments. It's akin to cyber mob rule, demanding the heads of all of the Gucci Gang and everyone associated with them, with the clamor reverberating all over the internet. As it is some people who have nothing to do with the matter at hand have been unwittingly and unfairly implicated and slandered against, only to be immediately pilloried by the commenting mob.
Thank God I belong to the low-tech generation! Although there wasn't much craziness one could get up to with a 1 am curfew!
UPDATE: It's soozy hopper redux! The whistleblower's blog is going, going, gone... in the next 24 hours, apparently. He now wants to put the incident behind him and move forward with his life. As my best friend likes to say, Choose Peace.
Ha! you too! hehehe. I love it!
Posted by: manuelbuencamino | March 12, 2008 at 10:24 PM
by the way, your link to the gonzalez blog is messed up
Posted by: manuelbuencamino | March 12, 2008 at 10:26 PM
haha, manuel, it was addictive! fixed the links already by the way, thanks for that!
why is it though that when (some? most?) pinoys attack, they go for physical attributes, or the abundance thereof, and not the issues? with regard to comments about one of the "GG" members, it was m*lu f*rn*nd*z all over again...
oh, and apparently there was a F*ck Brian party tonight at embassy!
Posted by: bambinawrites | March 12, 2008 at 10:57 PM
A FUCK BRIAN PARTY AT THE EMBASSY? But I thought it was Brian who got royally screwed.
Anyway, this could be the good part: they all show up at the embassy and nothing is on the house so t*m y*p makes little money out of the hole thing. sorry, couldn't resist the pun. Only rum and coke at the party and keep the other one dry!
But the physical attributes thing...really funnier than getting into the issues when you think about it...specially if one is good at it ...but if one sucks at it then it really sucks.... (no pun intended this time)...
And isn't it so typical of Pinoys to threaten people with "my family is powerful so watch out!"
I love this country!!!!It's so baduy!
Posted by: manuelbuencamino | March 13, 2008 at 01:30 AM
hey, you seem to be on a roll tonight... any chemical assistance hahahaha. kidding!
i've also heard the statement "but what are we in power for" more times than i care to remember... from shrimps who were ten years younger than me!
Posted by: bambinawrites | March 13, 2008 at 04:13 AM
chica! how do you find out about these things while you are out there in SA? let me know about the next one....:-)
Posted by: flipland | March 13, 2008 at 10:37 AM
hehehe... my journalistic sources are very au courant!
Posted by: bambinawrites | March 13, 2008 at 09:15 PM
Bambina,
Apparently, the fat lady hasn't even begun to clear her throat. The DJ Montano blog has been resurrected. The newest post is Brian making fun of a letter he purportedly received from Celine Lopez's lawyer.
And in a stunt worthy of Lazarus, Brian even resurrected all posts of ALL the characters in the tawdry saga.
Z :-)
Posted by: zippo | March 15, 2008 at 07:49 PM
zippo, it's not as much fun without the comments!
Posted by: bambinawrites | March 15, 2008 at 10:27 PM
The fat lady has laryngitis.
The comments section is up again.
Z :-)
Posted by: zippo | March 18, 2008 at 08:49 AM