i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...
i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...
i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...
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FOCUS ON FILIPINO YOUTH<br />
ALECKS P. PABICO<br />
I’M A CERTIFIED Nethead<br />
and I can get down and talk<br />
digital with the best of them.<br />
But Rochelle Lazarte and her<br />
five friends make me feel as<br />
ancient as a rotary phone.<br />
Formed only seven months<br />
ago, their barkada is basking<br />
in its newfound friendship that<br />
traces its beginnings—the same<br />
way that many relationships<br />
among young people are being<br />
born and nurtured today—in<br />
cyberspace.<br />
With today’s fast pace, my<br />
own friends and I have found<br />
ourselves relying on technology<br />
to keep in touch, too. But our<br />
friendships were <strong>for</strong>ged long<br />
be<strong>for</strong>e PCs and the World Wide<br />
Web. Born in the late 1960s, our<br />
peer interaction was primarily<br />
face to face, complemented<br />
by letters and telephone<br />
conversations—well, that is if<br />
your family was among the<br />
<strong>for</strong>tunate lot to have acquired<br />
a landline connection in the<br />
pre-“zero backlog” era of a<br />
telecommunications monopoly.<br />
These days, people still<br />
meet each other face to face.<br />
But new technologies, very<br />
much an indispensable part<br />
of our daily social life, have<br />
significantly influenced and<br />
altered the way we interact and<br />
communicate with each other.<br />
a universe of possibilities<br />
regarding a lot of things, it<br />
hasn’t really changed the<br />
nature of friendships and how<br />
these are maintained. Which is<br />
quite com<strong>for</strong>ting <strong>for</strong> not-so-old<br />
fogies like me.<br />
Take Rochelle—better<br />
known as Roch—and her<br />
cyberkada. They may have<br />
been all strangers pre-chat, but<br />
except <strong>for</strong> Lei Cruz, they did<br />
have something in common<br />
from the start: they all went<br />
or are still going to the St.<br />
Joseph’s Academy in Las Piñas.<br />
Roch is now a sophomore<br />
English major at the <strong>Philippine</strong><br />
<strong>No</strong>rmal University. July Tan<br />
is in his freshman year at the<br />
University of Santo Tomas.<br />
Jeff Din is a senior at the<br />
academy, while Jeric Aragon<br />
and Margo Flores are both<br />
juniors there. Only Jeric and<br />
Margo were already friends<br />
be<strong>for</strong>e that, although they had<br />
been introduced to July when<br />
he was still the editor of the<br />
academy’s school paper and<br />
they were contributing artists.<br />
Actually, they have seen<br />
each other only twice since<br />
they officially became a<br />
group—the second time being<br />
when they had a physical gettogether<br />
<strong>for</strong> this piece (minus<br />
Jeff, who couldn’t make it).<br />
But just like any other barkada,<br />
they are in constant touch. The<br />
twist is they do so virtually,<br />
CYBER BARKADA. Teenagers (left to right) Jeric<br />
Aragon, Lei Cruz, Roch Lazarte, Margo Flores,<br />
and July Tan are the best of friends. They rarely<br />
see each other, but the Internet and mobile<br />
phones keep their friendship alive.<br />
Virtua<br />
This is especially true among<br />
the so-called Generation Y,<br />
or those born after 1979, who<br />
have been “the first to grow<br />
up in a world saturated with<br />
networks of in<strong>for</strong>mation, digital<br />
devices, and the promise of<br />
perpetual connectivity.” Yet<br />
while technology has opened<br />
meeting daily via the Internet<br />
Relay Chat (IRC) in a chat<br />
room called #rochy.<br />
Begun in the chatter’s realm<br />
of IRC’s Undernet late last year,<br />
#rochy is obviously named<br />
after Roch, who at 17 is one of<br />
the oldest in the group and is<br />
regarded as the ate, a role she<br />
takes rather seriously. But it was<br />
really the bubbly chinito July<br />
who gave the channel its name,<br />
which he says was inspired by<br />
a lengthy private chat with Roch<br />
via Yahoo!’s instant messaging<br />
service about her musings on her<br />
trip to her hometown in Batangas<br />
during the last Christmas break.<br />
Be<strong>for</strong>e that, most of what would<br />
later make up their group were<br />
only faceless denizens lurking<br />
in #josephians, the chat channel<br />
set up by members of Batch ’99<br />
<strong>for</strong> fellow students—<strong>for</strong>mer and<br />
current—of their beloved alma<br />
mater.<br />
“When she came back, she<br />
immediately started chatting.<br />
She sent me a PM (private<br />
message) telling me about her<br />
problem...something about a<br />
budding romance. She met a<br />
guy, two boys actually,” reveals<br />
July half in jest.<br />
In truth, the source of<br />
Roch’s melancholy was her<br />
pining <strong>for</strong> the extremely<br />
Y<br />
56 PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM I REPORT