Digital Regionalism

I’ve never been so frequently online since I was new with Friendster or blogging, but with Skyscrapercity.com and Dinagyang.com on my desktop, there’s no stopping me from posting in these online forums.

Different from online chats, which will need immediate reply like an ordinary conversation, online forums have been there eversince and I was just getting a hang of it as of this time. I like it, because the exchnage of ideas from different sides of the world converge in such forums such as mentioned above and the likes of PinoyExchange an other forums.

  The online forums became the venue of updates from every corner of the country, which is likely to see OFWs or expatriates in the forum, getting updates from the home oceans away.

I’ve enjoyed it but sometimes astonished by the degree our regionalism in our country is as deep and as wide as it can be.

I was shocked at the degree of how hard bickering is in the SSC before because it was between Filipinos versus Filipinos! Shocked! Sibling rivalry? Pataasan ng ihi or whosoever has the highest pride or what.

The aforementioned "crab mentality" is present as some forumers try to pull down a city’s image to the doldrums. Sometimes going personal or below the belt. Some people enter as antagonists, attacking cities with no reason at all besides the comments that will make a city improve.

I was part of the batch that saw the post-war period, the city versus city wars I mean. I read the previous threads and was all came to shock and grief. Filipinos bickering with other Filipinos. Below the belt criticisms and comparing with other cities.

 Its a good thing that the moderators or the admin banned such topics to resurface again and there was an uneasy peace in the forums. There are still occacional bickerings but not as hard as before but sometimes hitting and spicy.

Some forumers have moved on instead and never minded businesses outside of their thread and instead focused on their own progress. Others continued with bickering while most of the "seniors" learned their lessons in their past.

This is just my observation. As if I’m back in pre-Spanish era. People seperated by mountain and water and language. Raiding each other, bickering each other. The product of barangay in the archipelago.

Philippines really is divided culturally, I don’t even know what "Filipino" is before the Spanish era or what to call our ancestors.

Regionalism brought to the "Matrix".