Metamorphosis

‘Lo and behold! Senator JV Ejercito just filed a bill for anti-bullying and online harassment penal clauses. This is subsequent to a loss of life of Emman Atienza – a famous vlogger and mental health advocate. According to the legislator, social media serves as a platform to advocate for truth but it has also given room for ruining reputations, spreading fake news, rumors, false accusations, and violence so much so that we have to protect individuals from online harassment which includes deterring cyberbullying and online hate. True enough, such is the price you pay for having technology and adding fame to it.

I’m not really a fan of technology, but since I am a millennial I have begun my high school years with AMA MS DOS and Microsoft Word lessons. While my college years taught me of animations and PowerPoints. There was one time when I used a floppy disk that didn’t save my work. To save it, you have to save it as a new file. Now, you know how ancient I am!

But now, animations, photos or digital drawings with AI assisted create flying or even metamorphic backgrounds. You have Canva for the sake of ease with colors and drawings free of copyright issues especially when you pay for a Premium account. You have good video content that is recorded by a cellphone from iPhone 17 to realme. Cellphones that are tough in every sense of the word – militarily. You have noise cancelling headphones and cinema or stereo surround sound system plus flashing lights. More like a disco and theatre inside your own room with artificial lighting. Almost everything can be done at home from work-outs, dancing, studying and hopefully – sleeping with Alexa putting off the lights. Such is the age we are in now.

We are no longer in the stone ages with the Flintstones family where you yell barbaric sounds and words. Neither, Genghis Khan in the quest of conquering lands for lordship can make it. Unless, they knew of the nuclear wars with those cheap drones. The words used now may be sling-shots with that slang ‘twang. Indeed, many have changed and so am I.

Yet, has the world made better or crueler people? The dog eat dog eat world has that commonality for survival of the fittest. So much that kindness is lost. You can be a keyboard warrior to make that comment that makes one feel unworthy and depressed. Words are powerful, so is technology.

For a person with mental illness, too much belief in something hyperbolic online and connecting one fact with another is shying away from reality. Truth is a hard pill to swallow, bullying is depressing and comments may stick to invalidation of physical makeup. Racism at some point and throwing of backslashes online is really demeaning. One which you can no longer erase. I remember doing a twiddle of things online that I am surely not proud of. Why? It is because a happy face may be slithering inside. A joker may have been panted by pain or she or he may have been a laughing stock – the bad way.

As Emman puts it, live with kindness. Maybe then we do not need those bills against bullying and all. If we learn to empathize we may not have lost many lives but perfection is far off and slandering makes one famous too. Don’t believe facades online, live realistically. Too much of everything is bad enough, especially with the looming technology.

I chanced upon a movie feeling emotions as a holographic robot. She learned to live with the most human forms of emotions. Men have emotions, but they forget to be true sometimes. To a point, they may become uncaring like robots.

I wonder what the future would be like. Good if the future will build Autobots like Optimus Prime to save the world. But what if not? Where will we all go? Anxiety is not far away but until there is life, there is hope. I hope you still believe – in humanity!