What We Haved Learned from the AMALAYER Incident

The term "Amalayer" is currently trending not only in the Philippines but around the world all thanks to a viral video of a young lady who goes on a rampage and berates a lady guard in one of the MRT stations yesterday. The video when viral and it's now a meme.

Amalayer girl's popularity has eclipsed that of Senator Tito Sotto's infamy. 

If you haven't seen the video here it is for your reference:

In the video we hear the girl (whose identity was soon released for the whole world to pick on... tsk tsk). What happens is that she does this whole 'melt down' thing and shouting in English trying to sound off as an intellectual.

Unfortunately for her, somebody took a video of the incident and posted said video on Facebook which went viral in a matter of hours.

Now I'm not going to say that she was wrong and that the lady guard was right (because I tell you those MRT security guys and gals can be pretty rough and rude as well). I won't say she was right or rather had the right to treat another person the way she did. What I am trying to tell people are the following:

1. Public Meltdowns are not cool - this young lady must have had a rough day or woke up at the wrong side of the bed thus when the incident occured, she went ballistic. This is normal. People have bad days and have outbursts but making people hear your angry rants won't do anything. What's not normal is her berating other people for some petty thing or issue.

2. Big Brother is watching - its so easy for us to take videos and photos now. Conformity or at least some sense of social decency should always be worn by people the moment they step out of their homes. Be rude or violent for all we care, but remember that it will only take a few taps on a smartphone to cast you as a villain.

3. Underdogs are People's Champions - People love underdogs. We would've learned from past experiences that there will always be two sides to every story. In the case of the Amalayer incident, we're only privy to a portion of what happened. It seemed to me that people seemed to have ganged up on the girl just because she was plain mean making the lady guard the people's choice in the incident.

4. Social Networks can be a pain in the arse - decades ago, this sort of incident would've required a lot of time and fanning the flames type of s*** but these days, a simple share on one's Facebook wall can make or break you. Remember the old lady who was looking for her husband? Problem solved! Remember Barney Carabuena? Remember Christopher Lao? All these events and situations show that whatever s*** you've been doing can potentially go viral at any point in time thanks to social networks. (Which again has ties to number 2.)

5. Hypocrisy is an even bigger pain - AMALAYER taught us that hypocrisy is in our DNA. She claimed she was educated yet she kept on shouting in public, that my friends is hypocrisy.

6. Quick to Judge, Quick to Gang up - the problem that we really should eliminate is ganging up and passing judgment so quickly. Reading the comments on youtube, it seemed to me that the young lady got more than what she deserved. Yes, she made a bumbling mistake but people who don't know her just all of a sudden, hated her. 

Just a thought. You might hate me for noting these things but come on, its the 21st century, shouldn't we have learned anything by now?