By Sophia Angeline G. Delantero, UC student
Remember when the word “ragebait” became one of the internet’s favorite terms? Suddenly, people were no longer being baited only by the antics of Generation Alpha or by harmless online trends, but by the political pronouncements of influencers whose platforms have become louder than their understanding.
These past few months, the political landscape of the Philippines has descended further into chaos, a reality I have written about repeatedly in my previous columns. Yet with each passing day, the situation only grows more disheartening.
I expected better from those who treat social media as their loudest amplifier. Instead, a lot of them appear to be the least aware of what it really reveals beyond their screens: in the far-flung communities where indigenous peoples continue to fight for ancestral lands; in the lives of students who sacrifice sleep because education demands both tuition and survival; in the stories of Overseas Filipino Workers who spend hours away from home just to make ends meet; and in the faces of people whose eyes no longer carry dreams because living itself has become a daily negotiation.
Nathan Portez and Joshua Garcia recently made their political views known. I felt nothing but rage and madness.
Rage because they have amassed audiences large enough to build opinions with a single post. Madness because I struggle to understand how one can speak so confidently while remaining so distant from the realities endured by millions.
There will be displacement. There will be land taken from indigenous communities. There will be forests stripped bare and rivers left to remember what they once were.
Privilege has a dangerous way of disguising itself as certainty. It convinces people that comfort is universal, that silence is harmless, and that the suffering of others is merely collateral to progress. Meanwhile, Filipinos continue to survive on empty stomachs, survival nights, and promises that are never fulfilled, while leaders who belittle their own people are applauded as though compassion were a weakness.
As much as I try to understand where they are coming from, disappointment is all that matters, not only for me, but for the youth who have long been called the catalysts of change. We are expected to build a better nation, yet we continue to watch influential voices normalize indifference.
No matter how ragebaited I am, or how ragebaited you become, we cannot allow our anger to be reduced to another algorithmic engagement, another fleeting trend that disappears with tomorrow’s headlines. Let our rage be disciplined, not manipulated. Let our madness become an amplifier of change.
Let our voices travel farther than theirs, not because we shout the loudest, but because we choose to speak for those whose cries have long been buried beneath privilege, propaganda, and applause.
For if our anger ends the moment we scroll away, then it was never outrage. It was only entertainment.
And this country deserves citizens who do more than watch, it deserves people who remember that the loudest revolution has never been the one found in comment sections, but in those who refuse to look away when the truth becomes inconvenient.
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