Ultimately, the key question is what makes fiction an art and fake news an abomination. Is it simply because fiction is known to be not real, while fake news appears too real that it can mislead? But where does satire and parody fall? Is there such a thing as fictitious news where satire and parody can be classified as more acceptable compared to fakery?


Another debate is on whether social media trolls and fakers should be regulated, if not banned.


This is a legislative issue, emanating from the proposed law by Senator Kiko Pangilinan, and the hearing proposed by Senator Sonny Trillanes. In the end, any attempt to regulate trolling will always have to bear strongly on the freedom of expression provided in the Constitution.


There is also the more fundamental question of who is actually a troll. Is a troll always one with a pseudonym, thereby making its essence lie in the nature of the account? Or can one be guilty of trolling even if the account is legitimate, therefore shifting the logic to the behavior and the argument, and not necessarily on the anonymity of the one making it? After all, as one friend pointed out, Senator Trillanes seems to be an authority in real-time, and not just virtual, trolling, considering that he deliberately offends, as what he did to Senator Migz Zubiri.


In any case, the reason why trolls and fake news populate the cyber-universe is that they feed into society's natural craving for fantasy-based entertainment, and politics has become a world that has mimicked showbiz. We are scandalized by online fakery yet what we have are politicians who are mere images and representations and are not real. Who can forget Mar Roxas being turned into a comics super-hero saving Yolanda victims? When Noynoy Aquino was being pictured as a knight in shining armor during the 2010 campaign, was it fiction or fake news?


And so here we are, dealing with an interesting world where political narratives are so fictionalized, that it is easy to sell a story that is entirely different from truth. And people believe it. It is interesting to see how those who cry out against fakers and trolls are themselves believers of fake narratives.


And then you realize that many who want to ban trolls and fakers wept with Charlie Hebdo and bannered #jesuischarlie in their profiles.


And many of those who accuse us of being trolls and fakers believed that Mar was indeed a Yolanda hero, and that Noynoy was our savior.


So, in this world, sometimes the best way to maintain sanity is to tell a fairy tale.


One fairy tale worth telling happened in a not-so-far away land ruled by a King who was perceived to be a paragon of good governance. He is well-accepted by his subjects for being efficient in delivering services to them. His wife, the Queen, on the other hand is a plain, detached woman who has no political savvy. But deep inside this political partnership of a King seen as virtuous and a Queen seen as politically harmless, is a deep-seated desire to circumvent rules in the name of coveting things they do not deserve.


And this was nowhere more defined than when the royal family tried to pressure the royal school administration, where the mother of the Queen was also an important official, to manipulate the grades of the senior students so that the First Princess who unfortunately was only second in rank would graduate at the top of her class.


Fortunately, one of the teachers in the school informed the commoner whose daughter was the top-ranked student about the plan of the royal family. The commoner fought the machinations of the royal family and the royal school administrators. The plot to steal from his daughter the honor of graduating valedictorian in favor of the First Princess was eventually foiled.


Stories like this appear soap-operatic and trite. They are easily fictionalized, even if similar stories are being told in many parts of the country where powerful families use their position and influence to deny the deserving, but relatively less influential citizens, their due. In fiction, the good guys always win, but in real life they usually lose.


And this is where you are jolted by the reality that this type of attempted cheating, of a plot to steal the honor of being a class valedictorian, was just a precursor of an even bigger predisposition to steal an election.


And this is where the fiction ends and the faking begins.



Sources: 

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Of fake news, fiction, trolls, fairy tales and cheats by Antonio Contreres, January 24, 2017, <a href="https://goo.gl/H8d57A" target="_blank" class="news_link" title="Source">The Manila Times</a>
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</ol>


(This article is adapted from the source listed above. We are unable to grant permission for any kind of reproduction other than social media shares.)

A debate whether social media trolls and fakers should be regulated or banned