Title Goes Here

There are many posters and tarps advertising new political groups all over the streets these days. It's election season after all, and these groups spring up like weeds only to disappear once it's all over. What caught my eye was that one of these posters had a lead candidate promoting himself as "Engineer Juan de la Cruz". Well good for him but does that mean he's planning to build a bridge or something? It didn't say what kind of engineer he was.

Traditionally, it's always been lawyers and doctors who swagger around with their titles. Nowadays, professionals from other disciplines are doing it too, not just our engineer. Accountants are trying to get in on it although adding "Accountant" before your name is probably not going to make you sound like a fun person. "Teacher" has a more noble air about it, don't you think? "Architect" is more iffy. These aren't jokes; people are doing this. 

For all the "pinoy pride" posturing, Filipinos don't think much of their own countrymen. It's always assumed that the typical Filipino is dumb, untrustworthy, or both. That's why people wear their titles in defiance as well as pride: "I am not one of the common rabble!", "I am intelligent and trustworthy!" If only that were the case. These titles denote profession. At most, they prove that you're smart enough to pass a board exam but if someone goes around calling himself "Attorney So N. So", how do I know if he's a good lawyer or a bad one?

Titles are treated as proof of character but it's not a guarantee. The den of vultures picking at the carcass of the republic are all supposedly smart people on paper. The President, who is a staunch advocate for summary executions, is a lawyer though you can be forgiven for not knowing that.

Still, people cling to their titles as a means to let others know that they're higher up the social totem pole and therefore have the right to tell you how to live your life. This is why the media made a big stink a few days ago about Imee Marcos. Imee Marcos, daughter of the late Ferdinand Marcos, claimed to have graduated from Princeton University. She didn't. A politician lying? Say it ain't so. A sheepskin from Princeton would be an awesome status symbol better than any Italian handbag. It was the same story with her brother too, who didn't earn a degree from Oxford University despite claiming he did. Their illness must be genetic.

I wonder if it's the same in other countries. I don't recall people doing this in the United States. Maybe doctors but I don't know.

Nobody tells you their title outside of professional settings unless it's to impress you. People who do this are basically selling themselves and the advertising can have different effects depending on the market. The D and E market would be very easily impressed as a title is something they aspire to and see value in. Just tell them you're a doctor and they'll assume you have two cars, two houses and two wives. The upper classes wouldn't be as impressed as they've sampled other products but a degree is still considered a bare minimum requirement to prove competence in something at least.

Don't think that I'm hating on accomplished people. I'm just skeptical. People who feel the need to drop their title constantly are suspicious. It's like a killjoy pulling rank on you. I don't have a fond experience of such people. I won't give names but I know this woman who would constantly remind everyone around her, in case they forgot, that she was an "attorney". She was a bully who did this to intimidate others. Never mind the fact that she had never stepped in a courtroom for half a century and probably had no more right to practice law. 

Everyone has something to sell, including themselves. Only doctors impress me but only because I know I'll need them sooner or later.

Just be you, for Christ's sake.

Words And Phrases That Annoy Me

Drug Personality

Ever since Duterte's campaign against drugs began, the media struggled to find words to describe those individuals who came under intense scrutiny for their alleged involvement in drug trafficking. This dumb thing is what they came up with. 

Maybe "alleged drug dealer" was too libelous? The term is stupid because it could mean anything. Does "drug personality" refer  only to peddlers? The word itself could apply to drug users too. They have personalities although nobody cares about them. 

Furthermore, I've read drug personality used for politicians who are protecting drug dealers but don't necessarily sell drugs themselves. That's confusing. "Narco-politician" has more pizzazz. You don't need to be directly involved in drug dealing to be a drug personality? What are the rules on degrees here? No, wait. I remember hearing the term "drug protector" once to describe narco-politicos. Could a pharmacist be considered a drug personality? How about a doctor who writes prescriptions?

Handmade/Hand-crafted

I went to a restaurant recently that boasted of their "handcrafted" food. Am I meant to be impressed? Handcrafted is the word restaurants use when the word "artisan" is considered too intolerably pretentious even for the modern food snob 's standards.

Yeah, yeah, I know they mean that they themselves made the bun they use in their burgers or whatever but does that make it tastier? That's what matters most in the end, right? The local five peso bakeshop on the street corner bakes their bread by hand and you don't see them launching fireworks over it. I see no inherent value in something being handcrafted. All handcrafted means to me is inefficient. 

What image are they trying to conjure? Imagine a dystopian future where Skynet has finally taken over the world. Mindless robots churning out food daily for the helpless population. People smuggling balls of kneaded dough in dark alleys. Heartless automatons serving passable dishes devoid of any love but at a very affordable price. The humanity!

I swear, I saw a restaurant once that proudly advertised serving "handcut" steak. Did the butcher slice the cow with his razor fingers? Maybe he was a robot.

Lodi

It's a new local slang. It's the reverse of the word "idol" or something. It has to do with a game show. Honestly, I don't know what it means. All I know is that the people who use this word should be shot.

Only the Best/ Choice Ingredients

Take any packaged food and read the back of the item. It claims to use only the best and choicest ingredients which is obviously a lie. Are you telling me this bag of chips was made of literally the objectively best potatoes and processed cheese dust on the planet Earth? 

Besides, what idiot company would admit otherwise? What product would say "we use only the most average and mediocre ingredients"? It's like a politician proclaiming he's for clean rivers. Who isn't? Have you heard a politician coming from the Dead Dry Riverbed Party? The claims are meaningless.

Everyday it's an assault.

I, Myselfie and Me

To be frank, I'm a bit sick of all this Typhoon Yolanda disaster porn. Sure, it's a horrible disaster but it seems quite exploitative already on the part of the media as they milk this for all it's worth.

Anyway, this is the first disaster of this magnitude to hit the Philippines in the age of social media. While I have no doubt social media has been instrumental in bringing attention to the calamity and gathering support for the people, one thing struck me as strange.

After the storm, there was an unwritten rule that seemingly sprung out of nowhere on Facebook and other sites that it was a bad thing to post pictures of yourself on the Internet. It's called a "selfie" apparently and the fact that such a term was added to our lexicon speaks a lot about the modern self-obsessed and narcissistic culture. Anyway, it was bad to post selfies, especially of you pigging out or enjoying life in any way, shape or form because it was "insensitive" to the people suffering in typhoon ravaged areas.

I don't have a problem with this rule. I don't feel strongly about it in any way. It's just the thought process behind it that I find curious. If one wants to understand how a line of reasoning works, it's often helpful to use backwards questioning.

Why is posting selfies wrong? Because it's insensitive to the typhoon victims. Why is it insensitive? Because they are suffering and you are not.

They are suffering and you are not.

Call me crazy but I don't understand exactly how posting selfies is a bad thing. They are suffering and we're supposed to and ought to feel bad. But if, for example, somebody posts a picture of himself having a buffet dinner at the Marriott, from that picture alone, is it actually possible to deduce that that person is an unfeeling man? Is it fair to say that the picture alone is proof that he's a bad person? Can we conclude that he is insensitive, has probably done nothing to help the needy and posted the picture perhaps just to insult the typhoon victims? Of course not. It's not fair. One can post pictures and still volunteer later, right? Point is, posting pics and "doing your part" isn't mutually exclusive. It's just perception.

But what's worse is that this isn't really about being insensitive, is it folks? It's about perception. I know what this is. This is all about image. This is yet again, another example of the narcissism and self-obsession that modern culture is descending into.

People worried about looking bad.

The cynic in me says that this isn't about the typhoon victims. It's about a bunch of guys (or girls) who probably wanted to look holier-than-thou and started saying that they stopped posting selfies because their hearts go out to all the suffering victims and that they just had to let everyone know how caring and thoughtful they were. Pretty soon it spread around and it became a contest on who could seem like a selfless and sensitive soul without actually doing anything in the real world. It's all perception.

This kind of crap is why I don't do Facebook.