After a stressful day at work the way I relax my mind is to go on Facebook to catch up with friends and see what they have been up to since the last time I logged in. So after an extra hectic day today, I got into comfortable clothes, turned the heat up to a comfortable temperature, poured myself a glass of juice, settled in front of the computer and logged on to Facebook.

The website opened up with a list of most recent updates my friends have made and I noticed that a lot of them have posted something along the lines of “Congratulations to Efren Peñaflorida, CNN Hero of the Year!” and “I am proud to have voted for you.” Once again, I had to shake my head in disappointment about the highly predictable reaction of the common Filipino.

Memories of other on-line voting “triumphs” came back to mind. One was that of Jasmine Trias of the reality show American Idol whom Filipinos rallied behind like a pack of rabid dogs using all the phones they could get their hands on. The same thing went for Brooke Burke in Dancing with the Stars. Heck, even the Chocolate Hills (which is really nothing compared to other wonders of the world) was not spared from this on-line/phone voting frenzy that Filipinos wet their pants in excitement about.

So I replied to one of those who posted about Mr. Peñaflorida and I pointed this out:

There really is nothing to be so proud about in Efren Peñaflorida’s so-called victory.

Let me explain. The nature of his “win” is rooted in a system called “on-line voting”. On-line voting involves people logging on to a website to cast their votes which are then tallied by the system running behind that website. Usually IP addresses and/or cookies are used to uniquely identify individual votes captured by the system in order to avoid duplicates. It is easy to get around this. All you have to do is reconnect your modem/router and clear your cache, then you can cast your vote again. There are many other ways for people to game on-line voting systems to vote multiple times, but this blog is not about the fine technical points of such activities.

To understand the significance of the loopholes of the sort of on-line voting system that catapulted Peñaflorida to world renown, consider the recent activity I monitored in the various mailing lists on various subjects that I am a member of. Some of these mailing lists are of Filipino groups and some are primarily American. In the Filipino groups, we were always bombarded by messages to vote for Mr. Peñaflorida and to forward it to all our friends. Some schlemiels even forwarded it to all their friends and back to the group. In contrast to all this, the American mailing lists were all discussing topics consistent with the purpose of their group and not once did I get an email soliciting a vote for Americans who were also part of the CNN Heroes contest.

I explained these points to the poster on Facebook and she basically said that Efren won because Filipinos wanted him to win. I replied that that is exactly where the problem lies. He won because Filipinos wanted him to win and not because he really was the best among the contestants. Yes, Mr. Peñaflorida did good. Yes, he should be happy that he won, got recognition and harvested a big chunk of money as well. But Filipinos should not be trumpeting about how proud they are of his “victory” because the way it was “achieved” was through a system which yields results that are best taken with a grain of salt. Maybe the CNN Heroes organizers do not realize it, but Filipinos in the Internet and cel-phone age have developed a propensity to get into what we call voting frenzies. Too many people who just have too much time on their hands keep going on line, voting and soliciting the heck out of everyone to jump right into the voting horde just so some Filipino can win and quench their compatriots’ thirst for the next “hero” to latch on to.

My explanation further inflamed the Pinay poster and she continued to defend Peñaflorida. What she and many typical Filipinos don’t understand is that it is not Peñaflorida specifically that was being criticized here. I acknowledge that he did a lot of great things and got funding (even a windfall if you count this latest one) for them. The criticism actually goes to the Filipinos in general (and maybe even Efren himself) who start tooting their own horns once things like this happen even if we all know deep inside that there was a lot of excess effort put behind his “win” compared to those of the other candidates.

Efren Peñaflorida’s “victory” did not prove that Filipinos are a cut above the rest. It was merely a recognition at most for what he has done above and beyond what a common man would do. What his “win” has proven though, is that:

1. Filipinos have a lot more time on their hands
2. Filipinos will exert more effort to win on-line or phone voting polls in order to create a new “hero” to worship than other nationalties
3. Filipinos will trumpet the “victory” of a person (or even a bunch of hills) even if what caused the win is a highly flawed system
4. Filipinos will get defensive and angry if you point out the realities behind the “victory” and resort to emotionalism
5. Filipinos need to get real and work on attaining real victories instead of virtual ones

As long as Filipinos keep on doing what they’re doing, what keeps happening to them will keep happening.

=)

rafterman

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