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Netnet Camomot

‘PEHPOHL’ love to name-drop. For example. If, say, in the late ’80s you were introduced to the then Davao City Mayor Rody Duterte, you’re now tempted to recall that to anyone who cares to listen.

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Meeting Duterte at 3 am in a Davao resto famous for its bulalo is a story you may want to share now that he’s president, but it’s a potential target for more queries: 3 am?! You were with…? Name of resto?

The truth and nothing but. So, you begin to explain: You were drinking with friends, needed bulalo to soften hangover woes, and you didn’t care about the resto’s name.

But what if it’s fake news, with the story created to prove your six degrees of separation from President Duterte. Well, you can’t claim to have dropped from the sky and landed on the resto. So, you create another story to explain the resto story, until it reaches a point where you now believe your fake news did happen.

If this fake news were a Facebook post, the person reading it doesn’t have to be a genius to see that you’re lying. It’s in the details. That person mentions a name, you respond by acknowledging that you’re familiar with that name when obviously you’re not, a third person who happens to be reading this exchange immediately sees you got it all wrong, but both of them decide to leave your post as is and allow you to dream on. Meanwhile, your clueless Facebook friends continue to believe in your lie, but those who know the truth will simply smile and remain amused. Kawawa ka naman—trying so hard to attach your name to the rich and famous.

Lessons need to be learned: Don’t ever claim to be a close friend or relative of anyone if he or his family doesn’t even know who you are.

Insecurity has its price. You work hard to be rich and famous, especially to be richer and more famous than the people whom you consider as rich and famous. But there’s no end to that. Eventually, you discover your achievements will never be enough. Despite the mansion on the hill, the luxury cars in the garage, the billions of dollars and pesos in the bank, para que? In the end, what will matter anyway? Well, at least there’s the bedroom in the mansion on the hill.

I tend to post food photos on Facebook. I don’t know if the lack of a healthy diet is the inspiration—desperation?—behind this. There are people who don’t eat three meals a day. One meal probably, with that one meal composed of rice combined with salt, soy sauce, sugar, cooking oil, coffee, hot choco, or instant noodles. The “or” there means they can choose only one, i.e., they can’t have both soy sauce and cooking oil. Better that than looking for leftovers in garbage bins. Whenever I post food photos, I forget the hunger that others are trying to survive through at that moment. It’s only after, once I’ve posted the photos, that I imagine how the hungry would react to that. Should I delete the photos then? Hmmm. Here’s a reminder for the future: Please, Net, no more food photos!

I may not have made any New Year’s resolution, but I did vow to post less this year. Spring cleaning, after all, is not only for the things you don’t need anymore. It includes everything in your life from Facebook to elementary and high school slumbooks, and the unread books gathering dust in cabinets.

There are no words to describe the satisfaction of throwing away garbage. One drawer is now half-full—or half-empty, depends on how you look at life—after I found garbage in there. Unnecessary papers, unimportant papers, unknown papers. As unknown as, What is this? Much like finding a stranger: Who are you?

Why we keep the things we keep. Tsk tsk.

If you’re still keeping anything that no longer sparks joy, you’re wasting your time deciding on whether to throw it away or not. Choose na, now na.

Both Facebook posts and spring cleaning require the truth and nothing but. Hey, let’s look for a meme on this. Oh, here’s one: “That feeling when someone is lying, and you know the truth.”

Hmmm. Translation: the Thinking Face Emoji.

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