The Philippine Media: LOLCasting at its best
Am I the only one who finds the media’s predilection for depicting itself as a victim worryingly funny? Now, because every blogger in the country and their pet cats, in a quasi-journalistic fashion, are writing about yesterday’s hubbub involving a former navy lieutenant with funny hair, I’m pretty sure you have an idea of what I’m talking about and I am not even going to attempt to write about the machinations surrounding it.
Bleeding heart idealist militants are about as common in this country as prime time news shows showing a field reporter interviewing a suspected criminal in a ramshackle police precinct before finally cutting to an interview with the victim who’s talking about how the crime has caused damage to his life which are impossible to rectify. In this process, television viewers everywhere shed a sympathetic tear for the victim and summarily convict the suspected criminal in their minds.
The public is addicted to victim stories—everybody loves hearing about how some person got wronged and screwed over by some big bad guy—and the media knows this.
So, I wasn’t at all surprised when I heard ABS CBN cub reporter Willard Cheng on the news last night talk about how the police supposedly manhandled media men in the process of clearing out the Manila Peninsula yesterday:
Um, okay. Fruitcup, first of all, those “plastic things” are called PlastiCuffs and contrary to what it said on where ever the fuck you did your research, these are not “commonly used to secure luggage” but rather are restraint devices used by law enforcement units when making multiple arrests.
Don’t even get me started on how anyone who has watched a couple of western cop movies should have an inkling on what the protocol is when clearing a structure as big as a hotel of hostiles because really, it will be a very LONG discussion.
Anyway, at this point, I feel like it behooves me to educate you on using this newfangled thing called “the internet” to do basic research so that you won’t sound like an absolute dolt the next time you go on air to present some breaking news to the public.
You first start with a site called Google. Now “A Google” is just like your school library’s card catalog system where you like search for books you are interested in reading. The main difference between them is that instead of browsing through drawers upon drawers of cards, you can easily search “A Google” using keywords you can input using a contraption called a computer. Amazing, I know.
Once you key in keywords using your computer, “A google” automatically searches the internet for items(called webpages!) related to what you are looking for. It then generates a list of “webpages” you can click on using another scary contraption called “a mouse.”For your purpose, I keyed in “handcuffs” on “a Google” using my computer. I clicked on the first link on the results page with “a mouse.”
Wikipedia
Woah! Just like a wormhole, I was taken to a whole new “web page” after I clicked on that link from “A Google!” Now it seems like I am perusing a page with assloads of information about handcuffs.
Now, using basic deductive thinking any college-educated idiot should have, I got myself thinking that the term “Plasticuffs” might be a portmanteau word that means “Plastic Cuffs.”
Again, I click on the link with my “mouse.”
I HAVE HIT TETH MOTHERLAOD!!!!11111111
It looks like I found a page dedicated to everything PlastiCuffs! It’s really not that hard! Thank you Mikey, you rising internet star! I fellate you nao!
Look! Gay partayyyyy!!!!!
