SACRAMENTO—Don’t ever mess with netizens.
They can’t part the Red Sea, but they are capable of taking a tribe of their choice to the promise land, wherever that may be.
The Arab Spring that freed Egypt from one-man rule and exposed Syria’s brutal and out-of-touch regime is their handiwork.
So is the Million Man March against corruption in Manila’s Luneta Park.
The online multitude has become the new normal. Its adherents are the reincarnation of the courageous nuns who softened soldiers with roses and rosaries during the People Power revolt at Edsa in 1986. They are today’s version of Lech Walesa and his daring trade union activists who brought communism to its knees in Poland during the same decade.
People by the millions and with a modern tool—the Internet—have taken to cyberspace in a big way in recent times to protest against everything.
With the social media now a formidable force, netizens wield A-bomb power. They can follow you via Twitter wherever you go. They can ogle and salivate at your material riches on Instagram and Facebook, but they can fast track your downfall, too.
Look at what happened to Janet Napoles, the alleged pork barrel scam queen whose daughter carelessly flaunted her fetish for designer shoes, bags, clothes and fancy cars. The young woman’s blogs allowed netizens to check her family’s lifestyle and clued in authorities that it was indeed lavish by most standards.
Netizens have become game changers because they are watching everything you do 24/7. With uncontrolled views that are boorish at times, nothing escapes them, including perhaps, what you write.
The social media shouts not only transparency but urgency as well. So you would have to face issues pronto, which I am about to do.
My piece last week on Silicon Valley mogul Vivek Ranadive, the new principal owner of the Sacramento Kings was informative and harmless enough, or so I thought.
The headline screamed that Ranadive, an immigrant from Mumbai and the “new King” in town, was living the dream of Filipino tycoon Manny V. Pangilinan. MVP once thought of becoming a majority or part owner of the Sacramento franchise someday.
Well and good, except that in the Internet version of the column, a paragraph I crafted to make this connection got snipped by the editors. You can say that’s the unkindest cut for MVP.
But that’s also how the newsroom works. To editors, nobody is a sacred cow. Subjectively, stories get abridged. Everybody gets edited.
Netizens serious about their sports reacted and all hell broke loose.
“What’s happening to the PDI … ? What has Pangilinan got to do with this item? His name is nowhere in the item. So many suspiciously slanted or wrong headlines lately…” complained someone who signed in as Philcruz.
“I have a dream???” chimed in a Bulakeño Ako in jest.
“What has this story got to do with Manny Pangilinan’s dream? And it’s not King, but the Kings (sic) and they ain’t the ones clutching at straws, it’s this freakin writer,” vented a Jack Phalaphitac.
Finally someone with the handle Komentador was savvy enough to put the whole manuscript into perspective with a backgrounder about Pangilinan’s quest for the Kings.
“Thanks, Komentador for the clarification,” said a Jiru Harz.