this is to disabuse the duterte diehard who, at the senate’s jan 30 fake news hearing, dared suggest, propound, push the notion that facebook is the new EDSA.  it is NOT.  and i’m glad, on the one hand, that no senator dignified the statement by making patol —  committee chair poe was more interested in how many followers the guy had, even promising that from 30,000 it would be more than double that after the hearing.

on the other hand, it makes me wonder if it was her underhanded way of making patol sort of?  as in, you know, it’s all about the numbers?  as in 60 million fb users! say ng diehard, which is more believable, i must say, than ressa’s 97% of pinoys (!) because that’s like saying even the poorest of the poor? are online a lot?  with what, the 4Ps pantawid cash?  but i digress.

even if it were true that practically all pinoys (except the very young and the very old?) are active online, such great numbers would far from an edsa make.  EDSA 86 was about throngs of unarmed people gathering in the streets, united behind, and ready to die for, a common cause: ousting marcos.  on facebook there is no getting behind a common cause.  duterte diehards are forever bickering among themselves while the various opposition factions can’t get their act together on anything under the sun.

and if the duterte diehard was thinking of the arab spring revolts in tunisia and egypt in early 2010 that we thought were waged and won on and through facebook and twitter, think again.  facebook was more like the GPS lang.  read So, Was Facebook Responsible for the Arab Spring After All? 

… Facebook is what guided the protests, but the true vehicle for change was the protests themselves.

… In the end, no matter the importance of the online tools, “history happened on the streets” … But how those streets became flooded by so many, well, it wasn’t random, and social media’s role boils down to two simple but central accomplishments: First, Facebook and elsewhere online is where people saw and shared horrifying videos and photographs of state brutality that inspired them to rebel. Second, these sites are where people found out the basic logistics of the protests — where to go and when to show up.

in EDSA 86 everyone was on the same page — pro-marcos peeps knew enough to stay away because they would be booed out, like nora aunor was, just because she had been identified with the marcoses at one time or another; in fairness, bumalik siya anyway and eventually got through to enrile in camp aguinaldo and was welcomed with open arms.

but wait, meron din nga palang fake news sa EDSA!  on day 3, monday 24 feb, soon after the defection of sotelo’s 15th strike wing, when fvr and enrile had opened the gates of crame to let the people in, there came the BIG NEWS from june keithley via radyo bandido that the marcoses had left the palace.  nakoryente si ketly, but so were fvr and cory who also received, and believed, the news.

it was a psy-war kind of thing, say ni fvr after.  the hope probably was that the fake news would send the crowds home — tapos na ang boksing — leaving only enrile and fvr and RAM in crame so that the marines (positioned in camp aguinaldo’s golf course) could proceed to bomb them without hurting civilians.

fortuitously, the crowds grew larger in number instead, and there was dancing in the streets until an hour or so later when it was confirmed that the marcoses were still holed up in the palace, and it was back to the barricades, no prob.  lalo pa ngang dumami ang tao sa EDSA.  it was as if the people smelled victory and were bent on making the fake news true.  and they did, some 30 hours later.

in that sense, ok din ang fake news, like when it gives you something great to aspire for?