Tag Archives: hoax

Qwertyman No. 180: Resolutions We Can Keep

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Qwertyman for Monday, January 12, 2026

ALMOST TWO weeks after the New Year, I’m sure many of us are still struggling with the resolutions we made—you know, the same ones we announced a year ago, like losing weight, buying no more (supply the object—shoes, watches, dresses), emptying the closet, and being nicer to (supply the officemate or in-law). I had to think that there must be resolutions we can make and actually keep—not easy or frivolous ones, but resolutions that will make a real difference in how we think, behave, and live. Here’s what I came up with:

1. I will not help spread fake news and hoaxes. Fighting for the truth begins with a healthy skepticism and the patience to verify. There’s no such thing as “harmless” fake news passed on. 

Last year I had to gently warn a score of friends—smart people with outstanding reputations—who posted on Facebook about Meta claiming the rights to their pictures and about pages turning blue (“It really happened!”) It’s a hoax that’s been going around for years, I told them; there was no such thing as the post described. What’s the harm, they said, just wanted to be sure. Well, the harm is in the propagation; every repost expands the space for fake news to grow, and the poster’s credibility only magnifies it further. That credibility also takes a hit, when it’s shown to absorb and help spread falsehood. Next time, visit a reputable fact-checker like http://www.snopes.com to verify a dubious post. The days are gone when you can assume that what you see is true unless proven otherwise; if you have to assume anything, assume the opposite.

2. I will think before I respond. I will reserve judgment until I understand the situation better, with clearer context and trustworthy and verifiable sources. It’s been said that today, especially online and on social media, people don’t read to understand, but to reply. Many of us have trigger itch—the compulsion to react to and comment on anything and everything that crosses our gunsights. And we do that literally without second thought, drawing on little more than scant knowledge and ample prejudice, and the unflinching conviction that we are right. 

The rise of the provocative meme—extremely compact and blunt, digitally manufactured to make a very specific point—has made this even easier, more efficient and more vicious. Memes eschew context, and invite uncritical concurrence. When I see a witty meme, I might smile and even smirk—but I will pause before joining a bashing spree if I have the slightest suspicion that something isn’t quite right. And while I’m at it, I will keep my sense of humor; I will not be baited or feel obliged to respond in anger, and I will remember that forbearance or silence is not surrender, but often victory.

3. I will use AI responsibly. I will use it as an assistant, but not let it do my thinking for me. I will use it to learn, understand, teach, and create. I will not use it to lie, malign, exaggerate, or aggrandize. I will not pretend to know everything AI can do or is doing. I will neither fear nor ignore it, but I will be wary—especially if what it produces is too clean, too good, or too intent to please. Truth often has rough edges that AI could polish out, like it enhances our portraits. 

I was watching a video on YouTube last week that purported to show the detailed production process by which the fashion house Hermes made its hyper-expensive and hard-to-get Birkin bag (am no fashionista, but am deeply curious about that industry’s workings). The video went to great lengths to demonstrate why the company’s bags commanded such high prices—the quality of the leather, the workmanship, the exclusivity—in purposeful contrast to the numerous fakes being made of the popular bag. But there was something about that video that made me uncomfortable—it seemed too luminous, its people too handsome, its tableaux too staged. An outdoor scene, supposedly outside the boutique, gave it away: the large shop sign clearly said HERMEES, with the extra E; it was no mistake—a few scenes later, they showed the sign again. The whole video was AI-driven, and no human seemed to be home and sharp enough to note the error. Now, its content may have been entirely factual, but its implied condemnation of fakery in business can’t possibly be helped by such a clumsy use of AI. 

4. I will not expect of others what I cannot expect of myself. This was something I learned during martial law, when I was imprisoned with all kinds of people—activists and common criminals, from both privileged and impoverished families. There and elsewhere, I saw how people who could speak so boldly and so well about revolution and liberty could break, sometimes so easily, under pressure. I witnessed and understood the marks of torture. I realized that everyone probably has a breaking point. I wondered what mine was. (My dentist would later tell me that I had a high threshold for pain, which surprised me.) But I came away thinking that if I asked another person to make an extraordinary sacrifice, it should be something I would be willing and prepared to do as well. I say this not to excuse weakness in other people, but to demand more of myself.

I will, however, hold public officials to a higher standard. They chose to lead—for which many are also handsomely rewarded—and so they must prove themselves better than the led. I have a right to expect that my President and congressman will act more wisely and more responsibly than me.

That said, I will live as honorably as I can, despite and especially because of the morally degraded environment in which we find ourselves today. I will not abet corruption in any way. This might be the hardest of all to keep, given how we have all somehow been complicit in this crime.

5. I will be more charitable, and share more of what I have. I will rescue “charity”—among the most human of values—from the political dustbin to which it has been relegated as useless and even harmful tokenism. I’ve heard too many people speak loudly and articulately about big themes like “social justice,” “Gaza,” and “anti-poverty” without yielding a peso from their own pockets or actually doing something concrete for the afflicted. Give, or serve. If you can’t change the system, change a life—you might even change yours.

Hindsight No. 2: Myth over Matter

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Hindsight for Monday, January 24, 2022

(Image from indiatimes.com)

THERE’S HARDLY a week that goes by without me receiving a Viber notice from a friend warning me about another incoming message containing some innocuous line like “Let’s go to Latvia” or “Your mother will love this,” clicking which will trigger a dizzying spiral into digital damnation: your phone will freeze, all your passwords will be stolen, your half-naked selfies will be posted to your Village Association chat group, and whatever gender you declared will be reversed in all your official records. 

It’s all well-meant, of course; some friends will even add “Sharing, just in case”—meaning, they also suspect it’s fake, but meaning further, they’ll pass final judgment on to you, a privilege you should be thankful for—on the one-percent chance that it’s true.

I’ve taken it as my civic duty to look up the particular hoax online (easy: just add “hoax” or “scam” to whatever the key words are, and Google away) and to inform the senders of their mistake. Many will reply with a terse “Thank you.” Some will protest: “It wasn’t me—it was my silly sister-in-law who swore it was true, so I passed it on!” A few (some of these senders have PhDs) will even argue back: “Now, how sure are you that snopes.com is a real fact-checker? Who’s funding them? What’s their angle?” (Makes you wonder: if they were going to be that investigative, why didn’t they ask it about the hoaxer in the first place?)

Living in the age of fake news (or “alternative truths” as Donald Trump’s aide so nicely put it), we can’t be surprised any longer by the seemingly infinite pliability of the truth, which can be warped and twisted to the point of being barely recognizable. But as it turns out, that “barely recognizable” element is key. 

An article in WIRED from 2019 on “Why People Keep Falling for Viral Hoaxes” points this out: “The narrative that Big Bad Instagram is going to take all of your most intimate personal data points and use them for nefarious secret purposes is the sort of story that is primed to appeal to the average person… because it contains a kernel of truth: You have all this data out there on the internet, and God knows who has access to it.”

We sort of knew that already—the best lies have a little truth in them, encouraging our gullibility. When Ferdinand Marcos claimed to be a war hero with 33 medals to his name—only two of which were actually given in 1945, and both contested by his superiors—all the fellow basically had to show for proof was his picture in a uniform, surrounded by pretty hardware that you can buy today on eBay, and that was enough to make many believe that he had to be a hero.

What’s more breath-taking—and possibly more dangerous—are the outright fabrications, the brazen claims to this and that outrageous deed or achievement. You’d think that they’re too absurd to be swallowed by even the most credulous, but think again.

The story of the Tallano gold, now being trotted out on social media as the source of the Marcos fortune, is a case in point. The story that went around on Facebook is that the Tallano family—the descendants of the rulers of a pre-Hispanic, pan-Pacific kingdom called Maharlika—had paid the young lawyer Marcos 192,000 tons of gold. With one kilo of gold today at around P3 million, I don’t have enough zeroes on this line to tell you what that’s worth. And for what lawyerly labor, one wonders—a gazillion affidavits and deeds of sale? 

Never mind that Imee Marcos herself has denied this story, and even the “Yamashita gold” that her mother claimed in 1992 to have found its way to Ferdie. The late Bob Couttie had been exposing the Tallano claims as a fraud even in 2018. But the story has legs. You just have to go online to find testimonials like this from a “BQ”: “It’s true but they’re burying the truth. I myself held those documents—three reams of A4-sized paper, including the mother title of all the land here in the Philippines, which came from Great Britain!”

Never mind, too, that it’s clearly a minority of believers. It’s how and why they believe kooky fantasies like this that’s more intriguing. The WIRED article again points to a reason: that, for many people, mythmaking provides a coherent narrative, a story easier and more convenient to believe than the truth, which is often too messy and complicated to figure out.

In my fiction writing class, I often bring up my favorite quote from Mark Twain, paraphrased: “Of course fact is stranger than fiction; fiction, after all, has to make sense.” Like myth, traditional fiction has a familiar beginning, middle, and end—and even a “lesson” to clarify the haze in which we stagger through daily life.

As I said in a lecture sometime ago, “The most daring kind of fiction today is out of the hands of creative writers like me. It is being created by political propagandists who are spinning their own versions of the truth, and who expect the people to believe them. The short story and the novel are no longer the best media for this type of fiction, but the tweet, the Facebook feed, the YouTube video, and even the press conference.”

Today’s savviest political operators know this: spin a tale, make it sound appealing, trust ignorance over knowledge, and make them feel part of the story. “Babangon muli?” Well, who the heck who dropped us into this pit? It doesn’t matter. Burnish the past as some lost Eden, when streets were clean, people were disciplined, and hair was cut short—or else. Never mind the cost—“P175 billion recovered in ill-gotten wealth” is incomprehensible; “a mountain of gold to solve your problems” sparkles like magic.

Imagination is more powerful than reason—myth over matter. I hope the forces of the good and right can work with that.