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Manila Bulletin devider Opinion devider Don't steal my name

Don't steal my name

Published Oct 5, 2020 05:43 pm

MEDIUM RARE

Jullie Y. Daza

For the last 20-something years, I have been trying to stop a person or persons unknown from using my byline to spread what appears to be a devotion to a canonized saint of the Catholic Church. I have nothing against religion nor saintliness, but what kind of Christians are they who would commit not one but three sins to further their cause?

Thou shall not steal. Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Thou shall not covet.

With all due respect to St. Therese, the Little Flower of Lisieux, I am not involved in the group’s activities. Despite my repeated denials across the years, the article in question has acquired a life of its own – lately with the help of social media – and keeps surfacing and resurfacing, refusing to vanish from cyberspace. Friends who know me know how I write (style), they also know the kind of person I am (not the type to be advertising my own spiritual experiences). But my friends are vastly outnumbered by those who with one click of their smartphones are able to access information correct and false, recycled and rehashed, information/disinformation/misinformation that is casually multiplied countless times and travels across oceans and continents in the speed of light. What is my defense against such technology-enabled chicanery?

St. Therese, forgive them for they know what they do. They lie, they cheat, they have stolen my name. Please tell them to stop deceiving the very people they are trying to attract to venerate you.

In a universe that’s running amuck with the “magic” of social media, parents and teachers   should watch a Netflix documentary called The Social Dilemma. After the first few minutes, the viewer will be convinced that Twitter, Facebook, Viber, Instagram and other addictive social media apps do not comprise a social dilemma so much as a curse upon society. The producers and their resource persons, including tech experts and designers, psychologists, and AI scientists, do not have answers to these intriguing questions: Something’s happening in the technology industry that doesn’t have a name – what is it? Have we lost our way in the maze of data being collected about us to manipulate our behavior? The future – Utopia or oblivion? Ever tried to control your teenagers’ screen time?

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Jullie Y. Daza
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