EVENTS: Christopher Lao, a stupid law student? Or a bullying victim?

rnet by Louie Ross Perez


brownseo.com

Before August 3, Christopher is living a quiet life. Balancing the demands of reviewing for the bar exams and his responsibilities as a husband and a father. But that Wednesday afternoon everything has changed. He was just a motorist who was challenged by the forces of man and nature and unfortunately the actions taken and dialogues uttered didn't actually showcase his better side. Hurrying up to go home for his family, he tried to cross a flooded area and got hopelessly caught in the floodwater. And to add this misfortune, a reporter from GMA 7 is exactly at the same place at the same time to record all that had happened.

“I should have been informed. They should have blocked the road. Did you guys even tell me? Did anyone tell me? It’s like people were waiting for somebody to just do that? Bakit ako? These are the words that came out of his mouth at that particular moment. His rant seems to be unreasonable, incomprehensible and I admit, hilarious. Why would a man like him blame everyone else, the MMDA, traffic enforcers, the people around him, why ask for a notice when everything seems to be obvious?

But if you really come to think of it, his outrage is nothing but ordinary for normal people like us. We rage about our heartbreak, when our supervisors sucks up, when our car broke at the middle of the highway, we say things that we don't mean. We shout, we curse, we punch anything within our reach, we blame people but the difference is that there's no microphone in our mouths and there's no camera that will broadcast our outbursts to the whole nation in our most vulnerable state!

video from youtube

This could have been a situation that people can show empathy, the reporter could have given him time to compose himself, but the reporter seems to be more concerned in "doing his job" as part of media, than being a concerned human being. He wants to give good television to everyone! And guess what, he succeeded!

Minutes after the broadcast, tweets, blogs, internet posts were all around the internet. Calling him stupid, a guy with no common sense, ridiculing his words and some lunatics even created pages to ridicule Christopher Lao and what's funny is there are a lot of people who liked and still liking the pages. Whaat?????? I hope you readers are not one of them! Because this is now a case of cyberbullying. We are still struggling with the social media phenomenon and because of the absence of norms, it has given way to excesses and abusive use of the platform. This resulted to using the social media to propagate a culture of hate, blame and judging. WE should be careful with our posts, it can damage not only other people, but especially ourselves. It can affect how people perceive us as a person.

Lao already issued a statement, apologizing for his lapse of judgement. But what's good about it is, he has vowed to turn the whole event into a learning experience. I hope from there, we should ask ourselves, was I able to help? Or I became part of the problem? Hopefully everyone including Christopher, GMA7, the cyber bullies, you and I will become better persons after this.