MindaNews / 29 June 2026 – The Internet these past few weeks is filled with news of grief and horror. Students shooting classmates, and two basketball prospects drowning during a team training.
These tragedies draw out sympathy, but also spark outrage and calls for punishment. It has turned netizens into their own commentators and defectives, este, detectives, drawing conclusions even before the investigations happen.
Because of the Internet the Philippines has bred our own version of the FBI – Facebook Investigators.
On the Tacloban school shooting, it was learned that one of the guns used by the teenage shooter belonged to his auntie, a police officer, but they still blame Senator Kiko Pangilinan.
On the student athletes’ deaths, it is a fact that they died from drowning, but our Facebook Investigators insist it was hazing conspired by teammates wanting to drown one particular athlete. Never mind if all those same teammates nearly drowned because of the coach’s reckless choice of training ground. For this FBI, everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty for being a tisoy Atenean.
With these “alternative facts” they conclude that Ateneans are a hateful bunch. Never mind if Ateneo has produced Mayor Baste as a political science graduate, lawyer Israelito Torreon or your favorite political analyst Ryan Maboloc. It is still possible for Ateneo to be academically brilliant yet politically skewed.
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The Tacloban case has come up with the following solutions.
* Senator Robin Padilla pushes for his dream legislation: lowering the age of criminal liability to age 10 means these kids deserve to go to jail.
Senator Robin said his proposal is based on his experience. Yes, he was jailed for illegally owning guns, he played a 16-year-old detainee in a movie, and he always blames Kiko Pangilinan like your average DDS.
If Robin thinks experience is the best teacher, he is really not kind of experienced in making laws or using his mental faculties to think of better solutions.
* Malacañang wants to ban online video games that are deemed violent which may have influenced those two young shooters.
If video games get banned, it’s just repeating history. BBM’s father, the old dictator, cancelled the favorite anime of the Martial Law Babies, Voltes V, for its story of five young siblings leading a rebellion with their fantastic robot.
Ironic that politicians do not like young rebels, but young people continuing their dynasties — Marcoses, Dutertes. That’s the new skewed normal.
* VP Sara just rants that intelligence funds and intelligence work which she started as DepEd is justified with this case.
We have to disagree with Inday, because the kind of intelligence that can solve this problem is the intelligence the kids need to understand values and respect. We don’t need the kind of intelligence that Inday wants which only produced a Mary Grace Piattos and other palusot.
Besides, keeping schools safe doesn’t need millions in intelligence funds; all it needs is just a cheap wooden stick for security guards to use to poke into the school bags of the students before entering schools.
Politicians blame video games, blame metal music for the violent behavior of children. They forgot that ten years ago, the violence started with tokhang, with a president cursing and spitting threats, and DDS bashing and bullying people they hate.
Sa mata ng bata, ang mali ay nagiging tama kapag ginagawa ito ng matatanda.
In the latest version, ang mali ay ‘di lamang nagiging tama, pinapalakpakan pa.
Imagine a country where young kids can be sent to jail while corrupt politicians get away with money and blood, and also run a flight of stairs and sneak out of the Senate building. (Mind da Noise is a column by jaded Mindanawon observers.)
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