Joe Rogan Killed the Video Star

I do think that one of the most consequential measures that the ill-fated Erap administration successfully passed; one which today's Philippines is dealing with now, with dismal rates in literacy as the evidence, was a universal mandate for all media companies to switch—as much as possible—to the masa format. 

Its effects are as profound as the abandonment of the Fairness Doctrine via Bill Clinton’s pen. While the intentions of these laws were understandable—the Fairness Doctrine did set limits to the acceptable opinions one could air, while the lack of the masa mandate in the Philippines did ensure that all news media remained in English—since they were meant to make mass communications as immediate as possible to their target audience, they also had unintended consequences.

By making the masa format the default, media companies can now get away with a lot of things by appealing to the lowest common denominator—be it news, documentaries, shows or films. The segregation between prestige and reality TV in America, and cable and network television in the Philippines, thus took root: becoming the trial run for the death of a national monoculture. 

For a time, it did offer a reprieve and an escape from the daily gruel. Yet, this tendency of manufacturing consent out in the open also became the downfall of the mainstream media, now  overtaken by alternative platforms and channels which at least do not pander. This explains the popularity of vloggers and podcasters who, unlike the official media, have no interest or  incentive to curate their production, whereas traditional media institutions remain captured by their donors and sponsors.

This also more or less killed our drive and ambition to aspire towards challenging ourselves at the individual and collective level—to derive from mankind’s treasure, as Lenin once put it. If one is to simply peruse the catalogue of old Philippine media from 1984 to 1999, it is comparatively patrician and articulate as compared to what we have now. 

Then came a real decline—as Spengler notes—of civilization; once complacency was fused with immediacy, thus unleashing the seeds of its own undoing.

Allen Casey S. Gumiran is an essayist and a lecturer specializing in Geopolitics at DLSU-Dasmarinas, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science in 2018. He is currently taking up his Master of Arts in Philippine Studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman. A contributor to Esquire Philippines and Rappler, he specializes in current events, foreign affairs, military science, philosophy of history, psychoanalysis, and political economy.