SOMETIMES I get Facebook friend requests from people who have locked their profiles. If their names don’t sound familiar to me, how would I even know that I’ve met them before? Am I now expected to accept friend requests from strangers?
Facebook is a recent phenomenon with a friendship radar that cannot be trusted. Just because you’re Facebook friends doesn’t mean you’re friends, and just because you’re not Facebook friends doesn’t mean you’re not friends. Facebook is the expectation; real life is, uh, reality.
Sad moments are rarely posted on Facebook. People love to share happy times: gender reveals, babies, birthdays, debuts, graduations, passing the board exams, new jobs, job promotions, new businesses, weddings, wedding anniversaries, reunions, parties, travels.
If you’ve been to cemeteries, you must have noticed that tombstones have this dash between the date of birth and the date of death. I read this somewhere – that the dash is what matters most, standing for all the things you did during your lifetime.
And that dash is rushed. It can happen so fast; it’s almost like life has been on fast-forward since birth. And then you waste most of it on Facebook.
So, how do you stop wasting your time on social media? Let us count the ways: deactivate, delete. Otherwise, you’ll still go to Facebook to check out the latest whatever.
And that latest whatever happened to be the death of Cathy Cabral on the Friday before Christmas.
I was like, "Cathy who?" I had no idea since I don’t watch Senate hearings anymore. At least I know about the Discayas, thanks to their luxury car collection and the Rolls-Royce umbrella.
This was the Friday when the Cagayanon was stuck in traffic while hopping from one Christmas party to the next, hopping from one mall to the next hoping to find the best Christmas gifts for his loved ones, and trying to fight off sleepiness after waking up early for the Misa de Gallo. This was the Christmas rush the Pinoy had to endure.
Meanwhile, conspiracy theories began to spread about Cabral’s death. The dash in her life might have started with happy memories. But the last part of that dash wasn’t pleasant at all, no thanks to the flood control projects.
So, will this also happen to the other personalities involved in the controversial flood control projects? Is silence – or silencing – the best solution to their problem? Omertà. Hush.
There’s this group where the rule is to never sit on the chair that is suddenly reserved for its founder. Someone will actually ask you to please transfer to another chair and, no, not that chair because that’s for the founder’s laptop backpack. And there you are, the new recruit who has not met that founder. After finally meeting him and realizing his name is not even familiar, you notice that the group’s members are busily kissing his ass. That’s when you decide to leave. End of story.
But it’s not the end of the story for those who remain there because of the financial benefits they gain. Was Cabral’s story the same as this? Was the only way for her to leave the group to, uh, die? Tsk tsk.
