But these are not times for detachment. These are times to take sides.
This is not the time to be a fence-sitter. Filipinos are riled up online over the latest spate of plunder, impunity, and systemic corruption enabled by rotten institutions and dynasties. While the prevailing mudslinging is not helpful, the most effective weapon remains a well-informed argument—tied to receipts (evidence and history)—not the usual trollish name-calling.
Yet I encountered something worse than a troll: that smug posture claiming everybody is in the wrong, that we all act like we’re in a cult. This collapses both sides into one, pretending to be wisdom when it’s really laziness. It’s not the “smart and intellectual” take that the vapid, self-satisfied cynic thinks it is.
I call this smarmy, childish approach “Antagonistic Apathy.” It is a brattish posture of disengagement disguised as critique, where individuals claim that “all sides are equally bad” or “everything is corrupt.” Yet in this odious declaration, they hold everyone hostage—not to open space for solutions but to collapse complexity into resignation.
This stance performs opposition without imagination, producing noise without alternatives. It masquerades as neutrality but is, in truth, a kind of whining—an indulgent refusal to commit to possible change. It’s like Eeyore, but louder, more irritating, and never constructive.
This attitude is normal for teenagers drunk on hormones who think they know it all. I’ve seen this. I’ve rolled my eyes at this. I’ve shrugged it off. But these are not times for detachment. These are times to take sides.
The accusation that everybody is corrupt is a lazy shorthand that disregards context and history. And this is exactly what authoritarians want: weak, performatively disillusioned spectators enamored with their own cynicism.
Saying that all are equally abhorrent is not heroic; it’s pessimism on crack. It pretends to be above it all, yet it directly benefits the violent plunderers. It is inebriated with irony, devoid of rigor, and helps perpetuate the very cycles of plunder and violence it claims to disdain—because it is too cool to confront monsters.
Antagonistic apathy is performative coolness, like a half-baked Diogenes who mocks everyone while proposing nothing. At least the real Diogenes was clear: for all his displeasure, his provocations had ethical purpose.
Diogenes poked all sides not out of boredom but out of moral engagement. His cynicism sought the “honest man,” not to condemn humanity as hopeless, but to remind us to resist corruption and live truthfully.
Grow a spine. Pick a side.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social.
