The fight against apathy

“Anak!” my father’s Viber message reads. “My meme got 640 shares!” What follows is a screenshot of a certain presidential candidate betraying a family history of corruption. It’s stylish, easy to read and goes straight to the point, and indeed, it’s gotten more likes and shares than my father probably expected.

For a moment, I wonder if his discovery of meme popularity means that he has succumbed to the lure of social media. I wonder whether he has, like me, become dependent on “likes” and Instagram “hearts” for entertainment and validation—an uncomfortable prospect, to say the least. This is until I realize that what my father is doing isn’t a solo enterprise—that he and other civic-minded adults have banded together to campaign on the Internet against what they know to be misinformation; that they engage in discussions that I’ve often felt are too pointless to even read.

It feels, for a moment, like I’ve stepped into scenes that I only know from my parents’ stories about their young adulthood. My parents were among the thousands who rallied against the dictatorship in the 1980s; our photo albums are filled with yellowed pictures of my father’s carefully made campaign posters, and of my mother singing songs about freedom and patriotism. At the end of the dictatorship my parents stepped quietly away from the fray and into comfortable middle-class adulthood. While they have kept in touch with their political roots to some degree or another, this is the first time in over 30 years that I detect a whiff of the thirst and passion that must have powered my parents’ struggle. The difference is that this time the weapons are a mouse and a keyboard. The products are photos and quotes that combine my father’s convictions—the unique convictions of someone who was There When It Happened—and the fire of someone willing to shout the truth at anyone who will listen.

My father has learned to fight fire with fire. Where before he and his contemporaries had fought against a dictatorship with songs and effigies, now he has learned that the fight against misinformation is being played out in a more massive black hole of a battlefield: the Internet. “Do you know,” he says, “that Presidential Candidate X employs trolls 24/7 to concoct stories and cover his dark past?” My father, surprisingly, not only knows what “trolls” means but also has done what I’ve never had the appetite or will to do: to take up arms against them.

This is something of a double-edged sword. While it’s satisfying to feel that you’ve gone one step closer to discouraging people from voting for a blackguard candidate, Internet memes—usually featuring brief, politically volatile quotes—tell only a part of the truth, if any. I fear that we may be guilty of the thoughtlessness and ruthlessness for which we often disparage irresponsible news outlets. Still, even in the information age, it’s rare to find a lay person who will sit down and digest information about political candidates from credible first- or second-hand sources anyway. Even the most intelligent of us depend on micrographics and memes to form our opinions; our (entertaining but disappointing) televised presidential debates are poor venues for our candidates to discuss their platforms and advocacies, and even newspapers and TV news programs are colored by their biases.

The daunting amounts of information as well as their dubious credibility can discourage even the most politically motivated layperson. We fall back on our lazy choices. We shake our heads at troll fights on the Internet and refrain from chiming in, keeping our opinions to ourselves, satisfied that we at least know some semblance of the truth; we then cross our fingers and hope for the best during the coming elections.

It takes my father’s memes for me to realize that the more insidious danger lies not in irresponsible tale-telling on social media. The danger lies in this disappointed apathy. The danger lies in not believing that you can make a difference. If my parents and their contemporaries—lacking power, money or connections—had let this belief stop them from their campaigns 30 years ago, one wonders whether People Power would have happened at all. I am a little ashamed that, rather than taking my father’s place and being at the forefront of this fight against misinformation, I sit comfortably behind my social media profile, occasionally sharing memes but otherwise not taking part. I am ashamed that rather than being able to leave the battle to us, my elders have been forced to fight back in my place.

My father messages soon after the last screenshot—“Are you awake?”—because he needs help with a “Game of Thrones” reference. Soon he sends us a photo of Presidential Candidate X’s head cleverly Photoshopped on the body of Joffrey Baratheon. Maybe we can learn something from his passion. While the results of his endeavors are unknowable as of now, maybe what matters is that an endeavor is made in the first place.

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kaychuarivera@yahoo.com