Blog over

THE blog everyone's been gossipping about in the past few days is now "officially over." There were no explanations from the blogger, an Australian gay man. The archives have been deleted, with only one remaining entry dated March 4 which the first entry to the blog detailing the blogger's purpose in putting it up. All the comments have been removed as well.

When we found out about it, I had still not seen the blog entries for the day, so our first instinct was the blogger had already been paid the $70,000 his blog subject allegedly owed him. Someone in our group decided to call a person with indirect ties to the pasosyals who had been targetted also by the blog, to find out if the blogger had been paid. According to the source, the Australian is still waiting for his money. (Phil. Daily Inquirer finally decided to write about the blog scandal, but declined to name those involved.)

So of course, many assumptions arose about why he had stopped blogging, and why he had deleted most of his entries and readers' comments after March 4: a) the harrassment of the families named in the blog got to him; b) he did it on the advice of his lawyer (after all, there were too many libelous statements already being published including those of commenters); c) the Australian police ordered him to do so; or d) Blogger had requested him to do so after receiving complaints about the blog.

One thing is for sure, a reliable source told us that the father of one of the blog's targets had spoken with the Australian ambassador in Manila to complain about one of its citizens. Not only had his daughter been dragged into the affair, but also him and his ahem, life partner.

We were also told that there was supposed to be a party in support of the group of pasosyals mentioned in the blog, at Embassy at the Fort last night. We don't know if it really took place. But if it did, that was really in poor taste.

Another source also told us that one of the "elder" members of the pasosyal group had already advised the blog subject to pay up, even before the Australian had put up the blog. The elder member had warned his younger colleague that if the latter didn't do so all of them would be dragged into the messy affair. He was prescient. That was exactly what happened.

I must admit that there were also legitimate reasons to have the blog closed. There were other innocent people getting dragged into the affair. Some of them were mistakenly lumped together with the pasosyal group simply because they breathed in the same rarefied air.

There was so much hate being fomented already by the blog, which I attribute to the classic class struggle between the have's and have-nots. The scandal may have validated some people's conclusions about how the rich (mis)behave, and of course, made them feel better about their own selves. Unfortunately, most of the blog's targets aren't even actually rich, but belong to families of political has-beens, poor relations of the few privileged families in the country, social climbers, and users, who all backstab each other all the time. But when emotions run high, and the stream of consciousness tkes over, such distinctions will hardly be even considered.

Well boo-hoo! The public has lost another entertainment outlet. Pretty soon, we'll all start talking about the ZTE-NBN deal again. Perhaps, it's all well and good. There are other more important issues for us Filipinos to grapple with.