Pinoy hospitality

Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, the American-Russian blogger, must have felt pretty indestructible while careening around our third-world isles.

- Joseph T. Gonzales [e-mail]

With school-age pranks such as snatching security guards' caps, absconding with a trike, hulking over elderly women and, in general, making a nuisance of himself, he must have thought his antics, filmed for precious content, were a lark. How he snickered at these small brown folk cowering before him.

There is a new breed of humanity borne out of the social media age. Those who make a living off of their own creativity, filming, editing, publishing, and touting their own social media bubbles. It is enough to sustain them, the clicks and hits funneling precious ad revenue to their bank. So, their challenge is to make ordinary folks watch. The longer, the better. And to keep coming back for more.

This ecosystem is what has bred Vitaly and his ilk. And what do they do, exactly? Nothing much. They do humdrum things like ride a boat and eat local delicacies and walk on beaches. Their fresh eyes capture nuances otherwise lost to regulars, which is great. But sometimes, all they do is just make nuisances of themselves. Rage, after all, is pretty good fuel.