SENATE HEARING On FAKE NEWS

By Franco Mabanta t
October 8, 2017

FINALLY, my piece on the Senate Hearing on Fake News. Ready for a read?

Here we go.
1. My favorite surprise of the entire hearing was how I walked away from it liking Mocha Uson and Bam Aquino more than I did the day before.
Am I aware that 50% the internet will love and hate that statement, while the other half does the same except sequentially in reverse?
Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.

But I will always tell the truth. And the truth of the matter here is that both Mocha and Bam, who had quite the heated — and entertaining! — exchange at one point, carried themselves wonderfully well. Real talk. Neither said anything that was irksome (at least to me) and both handled the pressure of the moment impressively.

So I belong to a socioeconomic class where (I’d say) 65% of the people on my Facebook feed hate Duterte. And they’re hyper-aggressive about it to the extent that it forces most pro-Duterte businessmen+celebs+leaders+athletes+tycoons+public figures+friends to be a lot more quiet about their support for the administration. If you voice out your support here, you’re instantly labeled as unthinking or heartless or misogynistic or communist or bigoted. (The unthinking part is what’s most irritating.)
But we also see how fascinating it all gets when we traverse across socioeconomic classes to the C/D/E demographic: the needle shifts DRASTICALLY as we find — and this is quite the conservative estimate — that at least 85% of the Filipino people here love Duterte, half of which love him rabidly. We all know this by now.

I raise the point again because in this upper A/B class where well over half its population doesn’t like the Duts, it’s safe (and clear) to assume that 99% don’t hold Miss Uson in high regard. The hate is real and the daily abuse the woman receives from this demo is vicious, unyielding and painfully universal.

My experience with Senator Aquino was very similar in the sense that a massive majority of the data I had received regarding him emanated from pro-Digong parties — these are entities that hate the Yellows with a deep-rooted intensity, sorta like how Xander Ford hates his privacy. Or how Gloria Arroyo’s neck hates the rest of her body.
Like Mocha, my perception of Bam was severely skewed towards the other (less favorable) direction.

Now for the sake context, I didn’t dislike Mocha or Bam before the hearing. By no means was I extensively familiar with her social media work or his political work, as I wasn’t a follower of either, meaning I was relatively indifferent towards both of them. But the problem with receiving a consistent barrage of hateful information regarding any person (and I believe this to be true for all human beings and in all situations) is that you end up cartoonizing them. They cease being individuals in your eyes and morph into caricatures, a perception based almost exclusively on a rapid succession of incomplete Facebook headlines and unfair anecdotes from colleagues. Unjust, uncool.

The now super famous Senate Hearing on Fake News was my first time to meet Mocha and my third or fourth “hi/hello” encounter with Bam. And what I deeply enjoyed was that they were immediately humanized before my eyes. A few hours in, I gradually stopped seeing them as uni-dimensional cartoons (something you should never do to people anyway) and began understanding them as intricate, multi-layered personalities going through their own struggles and successes.

Bam — unsurprisingly — was articulate and coherent. But he also came across as sincere and well-meaning. I liked it.

On the other hand, Mocha held her ground beautifully. She spoke with candor, solid etiquette and a decent thoughtfulness that I personally did not expect. I also realized how brave the girl is. She displayed a robust ownership to a set of testicles made of Daenerys-style Dragon Skin, undoubtedly larger than the ones hanging from the hips of most of the men in the room. That Mocha Uson got some serious balls.

Most importantly: I believe the biggest daily knock on Mocha is that she’s dumb. Well — guess what — she’s not. Surprise, surprise. I can categorically say right now that Uson is FAR from dumb. She’s an emotional firecracker, sure, and I think it’s easy to mistake that for denseness, but she’s managed to convince me that she’s actually quite sharp, too. If you’re a rich person reading this and cringing, head shaking in disagreement, toes curled in disgust, here’s a quick reference to the words of the great Rick Rigsby.

Make sure your servant’s towel is bigger than your ego, as ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity…and pride is the burden of a foolish person.

Love her or hate her, ultimately, Mocha’s got three awesome things going for her: she’s a formidable human, she’s grown her brand to the point that both her power and influence are quantifiably indisputable, and she doesn’t care what you think.
I follow them both on Facebook now.

2. There are no if’s and but’s. The undisputed heavyweight champion of the hearing was ThinkingPinoy.

Let me make this very clear: Because of the FACT that TP (AKA RJ Nieto) was so goddamn dominant, all anti-Duterte media (ESPECIALLY Rappler) will spin this sideways and on its head. Everyone, myself included, was shocked at how he verbally manhandled some of the most powerful people in the country. Four Liberal Party senators took turns trying to beat up on RJ…and all four left with brand new, savagely torn buttholes. Safe bet Kiko Pangilinan is still walking around funny today.

The anti-Duterte press will tell you that Nieto lost the fight and will focus on tiny, close-to-meaningless snippets where Bam admittedly got some good shots in (remember that this was a six-hour war, making it close-to-impossible for anyone to leave completely unscathed), but to say that he lost is simply not true. I was there and I’m telling you right now that this manufactured concept of TP getting beaten is laughable, pathetic and profoundly disingenuous. ANYONE WHO SAT AT THAT HEARING WILL TELL YOU THAT THINKING PINOY KILLED IT.

He beat Bam Aquino and then proceeded to inescapably take the souls of Senators Hontiveros, Trillanes and Pangilinan. It was not a good day for the Yellows. THAT’S the truth. And the best part about what I’m saying is that YOU CAN WATCH THE HEARING FOR YOURSELF ANYTIME AND VERIFY. It’s all over the internet, my friends. Six hours of juicy, dramatic, unprecedented political content.

Biggest mistake the LP Senators made — and this is just a personal opinion but I think I’m right — is that they underestimated TP. They saw a short, chubby, sarcastic, mildly disheveled blogger and instantaneously/illogically presumed that he couldn’t hurt them. But they fucked up, because apparently the kid is also a genius. (FYI, I never toss that word around loosely.)

Moreover, if you’re a genius being backed up with shared research from the intercontinental social beast known as Sass Rogando Sasot, you become a force that destroys worlds and ends careers — you transform into a rhetorical, intellectual, political nuclear bomb. These two are NOT kids. They’re the categorical best in the business; two people who will never-ever-ever bend the knee when they think they’re in the right. And that hearing wasn’t a fucking joke to them. To them, that hearing was EVERYTHING. Social media is their LIFE, hence the issue of Fake News was treated with hypersensitivity and apocalyptic levels of thoroughness. Get what I’m saying?

My point: You can’t come in with amateurish PowerPoint presentations talking about the basic prevalence of Fake News in 2017 and then take a condescending tone lecturing Nieto about “what’s right and wrong” (as Senator Trillanes did) and then expect not to get rebutted and dissected with laser-like precision and finally ripped to shreds. This is a DIFFERENT STRATUM of political discourse — possibly the highest level in the Philippines at the moment — and the Liberal Party simply came underprepared because they likely underestimated the chubby little blogger. That’s why it played out the way it did.

One more time, for emphasis, I will say that organizations like Rappler and Esquire will come out with deceitful articles that paint a picture of Nieto losing, but if over the last two years, you’ve come to conclude that I’ve built some form of credibility and that I always try to be fair to everyone, fully aware that no human being will ever be bias-free and unconditionally objective, yet knowing and accepting that the important thing is the unrelenting, daily pursuit to do your best, please allow me to correct these insincere, misleading publications and tell you that THINKING PINOY WON — DOWNRIGHT, STRAIGHT UP.

RJ Nieto was the ultimate slayer of the Senate Hearing. He was Thanos with a completed Infinity Gauntlet. He was Khaleesi with fully grown dragons. He was the Undertaker at Wrestlemania. He was cocaine-free Michael Jordan on his second three-peat. He was fat Son Gokou on full blown Sarcastic Super Saiyan mode. He was AlphaNieto.

3. I dunno, man. I think it’s pretty clear Senator Pangilinan was lying through his teeth.
If you’re reading this piece mostly unaware of why this hearing on Fake News went down in the first place, here’s a quick story and possibly the most interesting part of the entire article. I’ve simplified it for brevity’s sake but it’s accurate so please read carefully.

The Noynoy Aquino-led Liberal Party was to draft a resolution against extrajudicial killings. This was to make history as the first time ALL 24 senators would have been in agreement. Yes, even the pro-Duterte senators wanted in on it. Good stuff all around.
Sidetone: To all the anti-Du30 people reading this, wake the fuck up. Do you really think we’re in favor of the EJKs. Of course not! That’s easily one of the most idiotic presumptions you guys have held against us the last two or so years. The only ones who are fine with the EJKs are the mentally disabled Duterte supporters — there aren’t of many of them and (trust me) we don’t like them either. They’re disgusting human beings and I avoid them like a jejemon avoids his dandruff shampoo.

Now to get a resolution passed, you need signatures from senators. Senator Pangilinan of the LP stood before us at the hearing UNDER OATH and said that he intended to give either a physical document or an email to all 24 senators to sign. That document hit the desk and/or inbox of each senator EXCEPT THE SEVEN SENATORS WHO ARE PRO-DUTERTE. Meaning Senators Zubiri, Villar, Manny Pacquiao, Sotto, etcetera weren’t given the chance to sign anything. (They were obviously furious.) Yet Pangilinan was adamant in that this was an accident — what a crazy and convenient coincidence! If you’ve ever seen that Xian Gaza in Cambodia viral video, this statement from Kiko is one trillion times more irritating.

Hang on, it gets much better. Almost IMMEDIATELY AFTER, multiple notorious anti-Duterte websites began publishing what is the QUINTESSENTIAL DEFINITION of Fake News stating that the seven pro-Duterte senators in fact refused to sign the bill and therefore are evil human beings and enablers of murder.

This — my friends — is where the bona fide genius minds of Thinking Pinoy and Sass Sasot come in. They were able to find ironclad, indisputable evidence revealing that over 20 of these anonymous anti-Duterte sites (publishers of Fake News and daily bullshit against the sitting administration) all emanate from a single person: a man named COCOY DAYAO. I want you to remember this name as he’ll be exorbitantly famous the next few months.

TP and Sass (goosebumps on my arms as I type this) were able to uncover in surefire+conclusive detail how Mr. Dayao partook in making these anonymous/faceless accounts, clearly with the intent of disseminating brutal, unethical, dishonest, consistent and (most importantly) COORDINATED online assaults against Duterte.

And guess what…
…Cocoy Dayao works for Noynoy Aquino. Oh, baby.

More accurately, DAYAO WAS PNOY’S WEB SECURITY CONSULTANT (ironic lelz) UNDER THE PRESIDENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS OPERATIONS OFFICE (which, by the way, is where Mocha works now) DURING THE AQUINO ADMINISTRATION.
Hashtag bombshell of bombshells.

One more time, step-by-step:
Kiko and the Liberal Party say they intended to hand the document to all 24 senators; the only ones who ended up not receiving said document JUST SO HAPPEN to be the seven pro-Duterte senators; within moments, a plethora of anonymous anti-Duterte propaganda pages publish what — very likely — were pre-planned, pre-written, thoroughly synchronized attacks against the seven senators; finally, it’s announced that over 20 of the websites come from someone deeply connected to the Liberal Party.

Look, if you’re anti-Duts, even you’ve gotta admit that this is pretty fucking sneaky. (And hilarious!) Maria Ressa and Rappler have been on our butts forever telling foreign media that it’s us at the pro-admin camp getting paid. Well, I’m telling you right now — unequivocally — that I have never received any money from this administration. And as far as I know, all of us at the upper echelon of online political influence have never received money outside of legitimate government work. Once again, that’s the truth.

But here’s the main rub: We live in an age where our world and the progress we all want are forcefully, agonizingly obstructed by malicious bullshit on social media. And now we have evidence that this Cocoy Dayao character is an actual factory of daily bullshit AND we can prove that he’s always been directly associated with former President Aquino and the Liberal Party. So now what, anti-Duterte peeps? More specifically, now what, Dilawans? Because if you turn the other cheek, if you look away, that makes you an A-LIST HYPOCRITE — incontrovertible and embarrassing. If you turn your head away from this today, how do you look in the mirror tonight or at your kids tomorrow?

For clarity on how essential+awful this situation is, my sources at the National Bureau of Investigation are telling me that they CAN’T find Cocoy Dayao. That’s why we can’t lock in a date for the 2nd hearing on Fake News. (Yep, we’ve got a sequel! And this time we’re doing it at the sexier main senate hall.) Do you understand how insane this Dayao scenario is? The villains are trying to hide the guy because of how much DAMAGE he’d almost certainly cause if he’s forced to testify under oath — and under pressure — in front of Philippine Senators with three dozen HD cameras targeted at his ugly ballsack of a face. FYI, he looks like a plump scrotum. Like a brown, mutated Halloween pumpkin. Hashtag truth. Hashtag not fake news.

Mind you, all seven pro-Duterte senators really want this guy’s head. Dayao’s people published news that was untrue and extraordinarily harmful to their reputations. Zubiri, Sotto and Villar are pissed. Pacquiao outright said that he wants to punch him in the face. I guess there’s a bit of a silver lining in that this is all kinda funny, too. Imagine Dayao, just a week ago, living a quiet life, possibly enjoying all that dirty Aquino money. Then out of nowhere, Thinking Pinoy and Sass flip his entire world upside down and now he's hiding desperately as seven of the strongest politicians in the country want him castrated. They fucked up that dude's life.

4. You can’t look past the social media powerhouses, especially the ones in the top tier. There’s an academic explanation to this, too.

I've learned in the last year that democracy is actually very basic…it's simply the process of appealing to the majority. That's the correct framing. This is why Duterte is a political genius and Mar is a fool.

Think of the majority; OUR majority.

Now tell me, do you think the way Mar carries himself appeals to them? Of course not. A thousand HELL NO's. He doesn't get it and never has, which is why he'll never become President.

In essence, all elections are “merely” hard-fought, exhausting and incredibly expensive popularity contests. Much like American Idol was never actually a singing contest insomuch as it was a popularity contest (in that it relied entirely on votes and where the best singer barely ever won) a democratic system — at its core — is basically the same thing. You campaign once. If you’re more popular than the rest, you win. If not, you don’t. Afterwards, even if you mess up, you finish your term 99.99% of the time.

Simply put, to win an election and finish a term, you don't have to be excellent; you just have to be popular.

But the social media game is a completely different animal. The comparison isn’t on the same page or the same book or the same dimension. Take for instance the immense yet quantifiable amount of people who comment on politics in the Philippines.

105 million Filipinos worldiwide
46% are online
Of the 46%, 93% are on some form of social media

Based solely on this, quite obvious and accurate that there are millions of Filipinos who comment regularly on our politics. Of those millions, perhaps a conservative thousand have each built a substantial online presence for his or herself.

But of that thousand, there’s the top tier. The creamy elite. These 20 or so leading authorities on social are responsible for influencing (literally) millions of minds every single day. The top 10 collectively get higher engagement than ABS-CBN, GMA, the Inquirer, Star and Rappler. And this paragraph — a mere 24 months ago — would generate mad amounts of laughter; he who ever spoke these words back then deserved nothing short of the straightjacket at Arkham Asylum.

But now it’s a concrete truth, an aspect of our human evolution that is both monumental and spellbinding.

Here’s my point: Because of the gruelling amount of content that you must CONCEPTUALIZE, EXECUTE and PUBLISH on a daily basis, amalgamated with the kind of personality type that MUST BE OKAY WITH RECEIVING REGULAR DISSENT AND HATE, you gotta be legit as fuck to hit and stay in the top 20 of the political genre for Philippine social media. You need to be smart, brave, hardworking, entertaining, useful, well-researched and consistent. There’s been a tidal wave of online personalities who’ve come and gone; a tsunami of commentators who’ve shined brighter than the sun if only for a brief moment before fading back into obscurity and irrelevance.

As I said earlier, Thinking Pinoy and Sass are the best in the biz. Lorraine Marie T. Badoy and Trixie Cruz-Angeles are some of the most eloquent and effective writers the country’s ever produced for this genre. And I’ve never met anyone better on political FB than Krizette Laureta Chu. She might be the GOAT, I dunno.

The crux: Will a well-prepared top tier social media personality always beat an underprepared Philippine senator? Of course not. But it won’t happen often, especially when the topic at hand falls smack in the middle of the blogger’s lane.
Vital footnote: This is why the Yellows have resorted to creating multiple anonymous accounts they can hide behind. Because they now understand what I’ve understood for the last 14 months…that the individual Yellow social media personalities are profoundly ineffective. So they gotta create fake shit to keep up against all the social firepower generated by the other side.

5. The most important part of this post: Grace Poe deserves mad respect.

My honest assessment is that Senator Poe handled the hearing exceptionally well. She was strong and fiery when she needed to be, yet she was fair, sharp, collected and balanced the whole way through. Do you have any idea how hard that is to do for six hours WHILE bookended by fellow senators (half of which were foaming at the mouth), surrounded by some of the craziest people on the internet, and cameras from every major outlet in the country. I saw her do this exact same thing at both Grab/Uber hearings with James Deakin and the LTFRB and now I’m convinced she’s got the mediator-between-fighting-parties role down to a science — a science, mind you, that is ridiculously, hilariously difficult to master.

After Thinking Pinoy, GP was the biggest winner of the hearing. Any inhibition I had during the election season has been eradicated and now there’s zero doubt as to who I think the best senator in the Philippines is.

Putting the following info out there for your honest consideration and nothing more. The Yellow pages have been attacking Poe relentlessly the last few days. According to them, she went "too easy on Thinking Pinoy" and was "biased" and "favoring him". They're calling her performance weak and unprofessional.

This is not true. And frankly, it's annoying. I was there the whole time. Poe was fair to EVERYONE. She let the Yellows, the Reds, and all the in-betweens either blossom beautifully or crash catastrophically on their own accord and absolutely did not show favor to anyone. Also, she was able to maintain peace in a room bursting at the seams with hate.

This criticism she's receiving is a straight up bully tactic that I'd like everyone to be aware of, particularly if you were deciding on coming at her hard having based the agenda on a broken headline.

Also...watch the attached video below. It's good.

Okay, I think that's it for now.

Next Senate Hearing on Fake News might be in a month's time. With a few awesome expected developments looming in the horizon, I expect this to be one of if not the most watched hearing of 2017. Keep you guys posted.

Congrats to Xander Ford and Kiko Pangilinan on all the new body parts. I'm sure deep down you're both sweet people and beautiful on the inside.

Good luck and good night.

Source: FB