Just when you thought you couldn't fall for the traps of the Internet, wait 'till you hear about foreigner vloggers milking an entire country for economic gain by clicking on what you think is a harmless video. What they do is expand, bait, and invite Filipino audiences to cater to their economic needs — a seemingly obvious pattern that has expanded in the corners of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
As we head into the month of September following an ECQ lockdown in the beginning of August, we are greeted with news of a scandal of a famous foreign vlogger in the Philippines. A vlogger known for his one-minute exploratory videos, and, several years later, began building an expanded project to teach subscribers different lessons in arts, culture, and the like. Earlier this month, Nas Academy, the masterclass platform, received harsh criticism from his Filipino audience following the revelation of his exploitatory processes. The issue began when Gracias Palincas, the granddaughter of Philippines' living national treasure Apo Whang-Od, had labelled Nas Academy a scam that takes advantage of Philippine culture. She claims that the 104-year-old mambabatok has not signed a deal to collaborate with Nas Academy.
WHAT WE HAD IN THE PAST
Before this explosive story had spread among Filipino netizens, Nuseir Yassin, popularly known as Nas Daily, has created several videos endorsing the Philippines in the past. Some of these videos were problematic and have portrayed the Philippines as a one-stop economic treasure foreigners can easily prosper from. This plants the idea that our country is an easy target for money and exploitation.
But our country is not new to this morbid depiction. To break down our history, we were repeatedly enslaved and colonized by advancing countries in the past. This indicates that we were -- and are -- the underdog in both past and present systems, and that our Western contemporaries always have the upper hand in every political and economic aspect of our lives.
After years of colonization and territorial wars, we have gained colonial independence from our conquerors. But even after being freed from the reins of colonialism, we're still held by the neck from the remains these colonizers left us. We continued to have independence as long as we're pawns for their wars, our territory as a battleground to exercise imperialist powers.
As we look to the trails of our past, it explains why we are still behind in political, cultural, and economic progress. Imperial countries have continued to press down our nation by expanding their political power over us. As imperialism expands, the exercise of power to extend economic and cultural influences in other countries becomes recurring. This exercise is neocolonialism. Neocolonialism is the intrusion of foreign economic domination, possibly backed by political and military intervention, in countries that have already achieved colonial rule in the past. But by the textbook definition of neocolonialism, this stage — unbeknownst to us — had already expanded when virtual platforms rose from the beginning of the 21st century. How could neocolonialism be so concealed to even reach the corners of the Internet?
WHAT WE WITNESSED
There was a major drop in Nas Daily's followers, where the majority of his audience are Filipinos. According to data provided by CrowdTangle, a public insights tool owned by Facebook, Nas Daily has lost more than 267,600 followers on its main Facebook page from August 2 to 6. Considering that almost 43% of the Filipino population are active Internet users, we can say that a huge amount of fraction from this netizen population are a part of the 300,000 people who have reacted to the awful scandal.
Yussein and his colleagues had pulled the Nas Academy Philippine branch and announced on its website that they would be working with the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP). The NCIP protects and promotes the interest of the Indigenous Peoples and their welfare, but it is not so much a safehouse at the hands of the chairperson who was also appointed as National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) Executive Director, namely Allen Capuyan. NCIP would be demolishing IPs and their leaders' rights and compromise their safety instead of representing them at the best of their welfare. A Nas Daily situation could easily get through that tiny keyhole by simply misrepresenting our Indigenous Peoples by the NCIP.
Following the call-out of his Facebook page for cultural exploitation, Yussein was also criticized by a Filipino business-owning family for his rude and impolite act towards the company. Soon enough, he invited some of his other collaborators to act as witnesses in favor of him to dismiss the issue. He was later exposed as the deceiver and not the persona his Filipino fans had looked up to.
His Nas Academy Philippines project had failed even before it had begun.
WHAT LIES IN THE BIGGER PICTURE
Even before the whole scandal had been the talk of the town, Yussein's one-minute video content had frequently received international criticism. He was deemed a privilege Palestinian-Arab who accusingly made unnecessary comments on former collaborators and colleagues. Others have said that he uses this privilege to 'whitewash' Israeli's crimes by portraying the Palestinian-Israeli matter as a "conflict", fort of llowing a long post about his family history concerning the situation yet plays safe and reducing the issue to a "strained friendship".
Like Nas Daily, many social media influencers have pushed boundaries beyond their videography content. These influencers should rather put their platform to use in speaking up deeply about political and social issues than shying away from it. When vloggers like Nas had risen from the imminent humility of their beginning, creative risks are no longer the heart of what they are meant to do: document. The culture of video-blogging is not only scaled to the frame of mere entertainment, but also widens the scope to the bigger picture that is neocolonialism.
NEW FACE OF NEOCOLONIALISM
What we only know about the culture of video-blogging is that we have witnessed catalogs of different social media influencers in every corner of the Internet. Some document their daily lives, some produce funny and creative contents, some give tips and advice in many activities, and some travel and explore cultural barriers. What makes Nas stand out from the rest is his one-video formatting that captures the short-attention spanned audience, many of which are Facebook users.
As one of the most-viewed people on the Internet, Nas claims that he had always put forward the "risks" of what he documents. However, as his popularity and net worth continue to increase, these "creative risks" had continually dismissed precautions thus putting ethics and other people's virtues at stake. For what we know, when it comes to economic gain, there should be no obstacles in bearing the full capacity of generating money. When there are obstacles, they will do anything to push them aside, and there will be social, political, and even cultural harm.
What we simply witnessed as mere understanding delves deeper of what it looks like from the outside. From Yussein's 'whitewashing' of Israeli crimes to his exploitation of the treasured tattoo artist from the Philippines, he has indirectly trespassed the values of nations in exchange for monetary gain. Besides, what does he even know about Filipino culture that he takes courageously enough to milk it for profit? There's a reason why Apo Whang-Od is deemed a living national treasure of the country. Yet, he has endorsed this culture so performatively for views and money.
This bears a serious issue concerning how a famous vlogger like Yussein controls his audience. For a man who has a net worth of 5.99 million USD and a follower of 20 million and counting, he has influence over the Internet in different parts of the world, and definitely has power to dismiss the issues attacked against him. He would even still be making videos and earning profit as we speak. Nas Daily and other social media vloggers who have taken advantage of cultural values have platforms big enough to seize virtual control over those who watch their videos — or simply, neocolonialism in a digital space.
WHAT WE SHOULD DO
Uprooting our colonial impact has its difficulty, considering in our age of digital spaces and consumership that bred many ways of ill treatments and exploitation. Similar issues of Pinoy Baiting (foreigner vloggers using Filipino culture to garner Filipino audiences) and Filipinos obsessing over Filipino-identified international celebrities are likely to be compared to this kind of scenario. We must not overlook the fact that these are outcomes of our colonial history — to being taken advantage of by major-advanced countries and left perished with only the help of global dependence to survive. It has a definitive impact on our politics and society, and especially culture.
To what we see as global recognition may only be a constant seeking for global validation.
But what we need to undo the damage of our colonized past is to deconstruct the system that perpetuates colonial ideologies. We need to dismantle the flawed system that continues to exploit, neglect, and abuse our natives and their indigenous communities such as Apo Whang-Od. Our identity as a multicultural, multilingual nation was attempted to be vanquished by our past colonizers, and we must preserve what's left of it. But we must also remember to acquire strength as we solidify in uprooting the system, because decolonization will always be brutal and violent.
Combatting neocolonialism is not an easy task, but it's sure to be fatal. To be strict and critical with our indigenous guidelines is one thing, but being dependent on this new form of expansionism — in the world of digital space — needs to be addressed as well as resisted. To withdraw from our colonial assumptions and biases that favor our colonizers, we must look back to the seeds of our national identity and remember who we truly are.
We must resist those who dare touch us.
Written by Gieselle Ann Apit
Design by Genevieve Feliciano
WordPress.com
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