In these forums, there is no concept of one user “blocking” another. ![]() Only a forum moderator has the administrative rights to govern the quality of this debate and determine who is in or out of line. When participating in the latter, a typical user opts in and commits to the debate. This is the fundamental difference between “debating” on social media and on the old turn-of-the-century online forums and message boards. Interesting, indeed, that a crop of these social media “influencers” attained fame, not because of what they tweet but because of who they block. Getting a critical question or even a challenge to said “insight” often results in a block rather than a response. Whereas, in the old days, Netizens articulated their ideas on a forum like expecting these to be scrutinised by its critical - even skeptical - members, today’s online jocks issue their thougts on social media to angle for followers’ “likes” and “retweets” to validate their 250-character “insights”. Note the notion of one testing her ideas. It probably also does not help that Twitter, the preferred media of the supposedly more “woke” of the chattering classes, encourages off-the-hip blather rather than the deep and well-thought-out thought streams that were possible in the long-since-supplanted online message boards and forums of yore where the politically-enlightened once gathered to test their ideas in the crowd. Perhaps social media, once celebrated as a platform that democratised this debate had, instead, amplified and brought to the fore the deep-seated inclination to tribalise that still persists in the Filipino psyche. ![]() It is quite ironic, in fact, that the start of the decline of this art seems to have started when social media became the dominant platform upon which the Philippine intelligentsia exchanged ideas and debated the issues. Indeed, Lingao hits upon an important aspect of the Philippines’ online political discourse that seems to have been lost: intelligent conversation. The eminent journalist Ed Lingao once said of online “trolls”, “You have to engage them because we cannot leave the internet to them.” the Yellowtards), there are thought leaders in their camp who also encourage conversation over mere partisan sloganeering and mutual-high-fivin’. To be fair to the Philippine Opposition, for their part, which, unfortunately for now, is led by the Liberal Party (a.k.a. Sotto’s bashers might realize they have an unprecedented direct line to a Senate president active on Twitter, and engage him intelligently instead of simply picking fights. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Opt into a paid subscription and you'll get premium insider briefs and insights from us daily. ![]() Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter.
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