Trending: Manila Hostage-Taking

I was trying to check my Facebook account early this morning (Yes, an addict I must admit and a voyeur and narcissist in a way. But that’s an entirely different discussion worthy to be discussed and explored in detail maybe in my next blog posts) and it said that an error has occurred. First thing that came to mind: Did the Facebook server crash due to the influx of status updates and postings about yesterday’s incident: the 12-hour hostage taking of Hong Kong nationals in Manila?

To be honest, I was a bit entertained not by the hostage drama itself, but by all the reactions that affected all people making everyone discuss what happened in almost all networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook. Rants, blames, jokes, lessons learned, preaches, what if’s and should have been’s proliferated all discussions feasting on the crime which only revealed how a single isolated incident could form differences in opinions and manifested people’s feelings and reactions on such topic. I, for one, admits posting an article on my Facebook wall on how the media should have handled the event.

Then here comes the most interesting trending topic: Who’s to blame on what happened? Since the incident happened, people started pointing fingers at all the individuals/groups involved that allegedly didn’t perform their duties well. Some blamed the police for being under-trained on such situations. Some pointed at the media for sensationalizing the event too much. Some were saying it was the bus driver’s fault (I also thought of that since he was the one who allowed for Mendoza to hitch on the bus in the first place when it was actually a tourist bus, not a PUB. I even called him TANGA and BOBO much to my dismay on his actions running towards the crowd crying that everybody’s already dead. Affected much! LOL.). A few even named the passengers. Did they not have a plan to take down the hostage taker themselves (the effect of watching too much action movies and crime dramas)? Let’s not forget the involvement of the crowd, the UZIS, who just stood there watching everything while some others just wanted to have their face caught by cameras that may have contributed to the mishandling of the situation. In fact, ambulances did have a hard time getting through the crowd surrounding the crime scene after the suspect was taken down. Even some actually thought it was a shooting for a movie.

Came the travel advisories issued by other countries making the Philippines look like the most dangerous place to go right now, with all the media frenzy that happened, when in fact it was only an isolated incident. We can blame whoever we want to blame for what happened. Some people don’t even care about the event. I know of people who were apathetic to what happened. I, at first, didn’t let myself get affected by all the ruckus (but here I am blogging about it. Hahahaha!) A friend of mine even exclaimed that we Filipinos have more serious problems to think about and attend to right now than to put so much attention on the hostage-taking. We shouldn’t even be ashamed of us being Filipinos because of what happened.

Things happen: tragedies, crimes, disasters, and we have no control over them. We can’t put blame on a person, event, or thing that may cause anything bad or unfortunate. All we need to do is to pray and work together for a better society. We can only do so much than point fingers and single out every wrong things that we think should be eradicated. And for this particular incident, we are just audiences. We are only spectators.