Stopping The Agents of Dumb Through Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

Mainstream media or MSM continues to contribute to the dumbing down of this country on issues related to the upcoming elections. MSM has been providing more than enough coverage alright, but what it has been doing so far is hardly beneficial. Instead of using their power to tackle REAL ISSUES and help uncover REAL SOLUTIONS, mainstream media companies remain fixated on useless stuff. Their particular favorite: the never-ending shifts in political alliances.

The sad thing about all this is that this particular topic is also becoming commonplace in the blogosphere. Not a few bloggers (particularly those who have positioned themselves as experts of some sort) are giving way too much bandwidth and disk space on such useless “political” analysis. Just this morning I visited the site of one particular blogger who imagines himself as both a journalist and a political commentator. As I expected, one of this blogger’s most recent output is again about this and that politician’s allegiance with this or that party, which is really not unlike the “who’s sleeping with whom” reports regularly dished out by showbiz reporters only more disgusting. I read through his crap and noticed that this poseur journalist (who also happens to have a juvenile understanding of heroism) thought it best to end his commentary with a statement of disgust over the “dumbing down of the people.” I almost spat on the monitor.

Wadapak! Helloooo!!! Your political commentary contributes to this dumbing down you jackass.

Another troubling trend that caught my attention recently is the emergence of bloggers who do pr work for politicians and at the same time engage in political commentary. I don’t really have any problem with the fact that they’re doing this for monetary gain or any other personal benefit. That’s their business. What I can’t stand though is the fact that, because of their strange, hybrid position as both pr manager and political commentator, they produce nothing more than feel-good press releases on and in behalf of various politicians. The problem is they pass off their junk as unbiased commentary. Unfortunately some people actually read their stuff and end up believing them.

Moving on.

The period allotted for the filing of Certificates of Candidacy is nearing its end. I’m hoping that after the deadline our candidates would start focusing more on communicating their respective platforms instead of the awesomeness of their characters. By the way, Senator Noynoy Aquino has finally come out with his platform. However, based on what I’ve read so far I think there’s still a lot of room for improvement.

Related to this, those of us advocating for a more issue-based discussion rather than the “trapo-esque” personality-based debates  are very pleased to see a steady growth in the number of people wanting to find out more about the candidates’ platforms. A cousin of mine told me that in their university some students are actually discussing the importance of platforms. She said some students even think that there’s a certain element of “cool” about it and that they’re realizing it’s better to be informed than mesmerized.

My hope now is that more people would help spread the word that there’s more to choosing a candidate than just watching their dramatic political ads, memorizing their feel-good anthems and accepting without question all their motherhood statements. This is one situation where good old-fashioned, word-of-mouth marketing and networking could play an important role. Visit http://blogwatch.ph/ and look for the post titled Platforms and Motherhood Statements by Noemi Lardizabal-Dado.