i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...

FOCUS ON FILIPINO YOUTH
ALECKS P. PABICO
I’M A CERTIFIED Nethead
and I can get down and talk
digital with the best of them.
But Rochelle Lazarte and her
five friends make me feel as
ancient as a rotary phone.
Formed only seven months
ago, their barkada is basking
in its newfound friendship that
traces its beginnings—the same
way that many relationships
among young people are being
born and nurtured today—in
cyberspace.
With today’s fast pace, my
own friends and I have found
ourselves relying on technology
to keep in touch, too. But our
friendships were forged long
before PCs and the World Wide
Web. Born in the late 1960s, our
peer interaction was primarily
face to face, complemented
by letters and telephone
conversations—well, that is if
your family was among the
fortunate lot to have acquired
a landline connection in the
pre-“zero backlog” era of a
telecommunications monopoly.
These days, people still
meet each other face to face.
But new technologies, very
much an indispensable part
of our daily social life, have
significantly influenced and
altered the way we interact and
communicate with each other.
a universe of possibilities
regarding a lot of things, it
hasn’t really changed the
nature of friendships and how
these are maintained. Which is
quite comforting for not-so-old
fogies like me.
Take Rochelle—better
known as Roch—and her
cyberkada. They may have
been all strangers pre-chat, but
except for Lei Cruz, they did
have something in common
from the start: they all went
or are still going to the St.
Joseph’s Academy in Las Piñas.
Roch is now a sophomore
English major at the Philippine
Normal University. July Tan
is in his freshman year at the
University of Santo Tomas.
Jeff Din is a senior at the
academy, while Jeric Aragon
and Margo Flores are both
juniors there. Only Jeric and
Margo were already friends
before that, although they had
been introduced to July when
he was still the editor of the
academy’s school paper and
they were contributing artists.
Actually, they have seen
each other only twice since
they officially became a
group—the second time being
when they had a physical gettogether
for this piece (minus
Jeff, who couldn’t make it).
But just like any other barkada,
they are in constant touch. The
twist is they do so virtually,
CYBER BARKADA. Teenagers (left to right) Jeric
Aragon, Lei Cruz, Roch Lazarte, Margo Flores,
and July Tan are the best of friends. They rarely
see each other, but the Internet and mobile
phones keep their friendship alive.
Virtua
This is especially true among
the so-called Generation Y,
or those born after 1979, who
have been “the first to grow
up in a world saturated with
networks of information, digital
devices, and the promise of
perpetual connectivity.” Yet
while technology has opened
meeting daily via the Internet
Relay Chat (IRC) in a chat
room called #rochy.
Begun in the chatter’s realm
of IRC’s Undernet late last year,
#rochy is obviously named
after Roch, who at 17 is one of
the oldest in the group and is
regarded as the ate, a role she
takes rather seriously. But it was
really the bubbly chinito July
who gave the channel its name,
which he says was inspired by
a lengthy private chat with Roch
via Yahoo!’s instant messaging
service about her musings on her
trip to her hometown in Batangas
during the last Christmas break.
Before that, most of what would
later make up their group were
only faceless denizens lurking
in #josephians, the chat channel
set up by members of Batch ’99
for fellow students—former and
current—of their beloved alma
mater.
“When she came back, she
immediately started chatting.
She sent me a PM (private
message) telling me about her
problem...something about a
budding romance. She met a
guy, two boys actually,” reveals
July half in jest.
In truth, the source of
Roch’s melancholy was her
pining for the extremely
Y
56 PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM I REPORT