PARADOXICAL

Panic-Mongerer: A Puzzling but Real Character in Our Midst

In I can't remember what year, the year when typhoon 'Pepeng' lashed at this part of Pangasinan, inundating entire tracts of field and residential areas, it happened.

During the height of massive flooding, according to some accounts of people I know, someone in the public market shouted, "Agesang la'y San Roque!"--meaning San Roque Dam has cracked!

This sent everyone panicking at the public market. Eyewitnesses reported how money bills and coins and even cell phones flew in the air, while people ran to and fro shouting themselves hoarse.

This is how someone was able to acquire a high-end cell phone at the time by simply picking it up where it fell.

The fake news spread around the town quickly.

In the church, a funeral mass was allegedly ongoing. I don't know if this is true, but everyone including the priest fled the scene without thinking, leaving the dead alone.

Within a few minutes, everyone in the Poblacion area ran for their lives or drove their cars and vehicles to the highest point in town: Brgy. Cadre Site. "Akala namin mamamatay na kami," someone recalled.

One lady I know, not knowing any better, could only absent-mindedly shout, "Yung mga sinampay! Yung mga sinampay!" as though it would make any sense at the end of the world.

As they say, a few minutes laterrrrr.... Everyone learned that the report was false or merely a cruel prank. "We've been had," people chorused, as they recalled one by one the hilarious way they had been duped by an anonymous source of the lie.

***

This is something I noticed each time there is a major natural calamity in this town. There are just some people who love to spread invented news of catastrophic nature to cause instant widespread panicking.

I don't know why, but maybe this is a new undiagnosed mental illnesss.

I am not alone in my observation. In another typhoon of recent past, someone in Brgy. Tambac allegedly screamed, "Agesang lay dike!" (The Agno River dike has been broken!)

The same series of tragicomic things ensued--running, screaming, saving whatever they could lay their hands on. Only to find out that the dike was intact

The same thing happened during COVID, when some people claimed so and so person had died, and when we checked, he was still very much alive.

In recent typhoons, this sort of creature has resurrected without fail.

Our public information team had to routinely show latest video footages of Calvo Br. and Romulo Br. to show the real score, that these bridges were still very safe to pass through just to dispel malicious rumors of these being impassable or worse.

I say 'malicious' because what could the motive possibly be, but to the get some sort of cheap and morbid laughter from instantaneously spreading misinformation to the most number of people?

What kind of person would do that, I wonder. Do they get a kind of psychological high from doing so, particularly in one latest incident in which a boy reportedly has made a bomb threat online to an entire high school as a prank?

Do they do it out of ignorance? Or are they fully aware that on top of unduly alarming an entire populace, they could also wreak havoc on the local economy in one fell swoop? Are they really unmindful of the tricycle drivers who wouldn't be able to earn their daily bread, eateries that have already cooked an entire menu for the day ready to serve them hot, and a variety shops and stores that have opened wide to cater to hundreds of student needs for the day?

It's a challenge to figure out this particular character, and quite hard to let go scot-free. ...A character we'd love to give a nasty bump on the head.

Yes, we laugh at ourselves, our natural reaction to the prank, but whatever funny thing we get out of it, it is only in stories of our frail humanity told in retrospect. The original sin remains a despicable act because of the enormity of harm, the gravity of consequences.

***

In I can't remember what year again, an Anti-Bomb Joke Law was passed. It became a necessary piece of legislation because of the reality of the terror-mongerer as an ever-present danger and real-life character in our midst.

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:31 PM