I kept away from Facebook until my editor told me it was my business to be where the action was. When came Twitter and Instagram, I was already too happy on FB to venture anywhere else.

As it turns out, I’m a social animal who can’t live without a cell phone anymore, and Facebook is the natural place for me to be. Where else can I wave to strangers or long-lost friends in faraway places? Well, even out of Facebook, I was already smiling and talking to strangers. It must be my age.

Suddenly everyone has become my countryman. There was a time when I was beginning to feel alienated from them, wondering whether it was I or they who had changed, almost overnight.

Polarizing

Surely, social media has influenced many of us in a polarizing way. The plague of trolls is a particular problem. Behind fake identities, they spread fake news and hurl insults and accusations also without any basis in truth. Too many of them seem almost unnaturally too angry about the wrong things. But, for all their cowardly attempts to hide their identities, it is clear whom they work for. Their viciousness has one chief target: Duterte dissenters.

Sometimes I don’t blame some of my friends for opting out of Facebook, especially those vulnerable, gentle souls among them who would likely fall ill from the slightest encounter with a troll—although there’s no slight encounter with trolls; they’re extremely malign by nature.

They are easy to spot, however, and I call them out whenever I do. I disprove their lies by citing facts. They usually resort to name-calling and other vulgar attacks, but they hardly ever engage in rational exchanges. As such, they are a waste of time, but neither should they be ignored completely. They need to be set straight not for their own sakes, for they are generally unrightable, but if only to show those who chance upon the exchange who’s decent and right.

There are people, to be sure, who would seem on the way to being lost to trolling—it could be contagious, I guess.

I once came upon a friend online reposting pieces of obvious fake news originating from trolls. It felt like a letdown, a betrayal. I had to tell her off on the same public post. She backed off, and we’ve somewhat patched things up since.

Just the other day, I took the time to express a difference of opinion with someone who raged at the Aquinos and “their oligarchs” without a given reason. He sounded far less malign than a troll. Dilawan was about the only stock troll word he picked up. I was curious. His hateful passion seemed misplaced; I thought it more suited against the Marcoses and their cronies.

Old dream

We didn’t agree on anything, but we had a comparatively civil conversation—he even extended an open invitation for me to visit his private museum in his hometown—
and our points were ventilated for a public appraisal.

The experience, I’d like to think, speaks to an old dream my husband and I have of civilized communal meetings where complaints, grievances and ideas for a common future can be aired and debated; to where experts can be invited to shine objective, learned light on things; where we can engage our community officials on how, at our own levels, we can raise the lot of the poorest among us and how we can all live in harmony and mutual empathy.

But, of course, we have to start by electing officials who will welcome and encourage such atmosphere of openness and freedom and civility. We need leaders who will work with us and for all of us.

For our part as citizens, we could perhaps work in partnership with our own community press, whether in print or on the air or online. It’s a press that would have to keep itself nonpartisan and honest and hold itself publicly accountable, if it were, to inspire the same virtues in others—in our leaders, in every citizen, in everyone.

The need for a fresh set of leaders, young leaders, may be the first reality we who have had our own chances need to come to terms with. This is their time, ours is either past or passing.

In the meantime, there’s Facebook for reaching out to our fellows, young and old, to vote for that sort of future.