Usually I leave the blackandwhite movement and their supporters alone. Not only because they are sincerely passionate - a trait I always respect - but also because I have a few friends and family members who are part of it. But ever since I found this post on their "sister" site, blackfridayprotest, I just had to fall off my chair, point a finger, and laugh until I choked. Ladies and Gentlemen:THE BLACK FRIDAY MOVEMENT
Bulletin # 1 - Details of Flash Protest for March 3
Designated time and place of flash protest for March 3:
Any Starbucks Cafe, 6 to 7 PM
Plan of action:
1) Wear black.
2) You and your friends proceed to any Starbucks Cafe near you anytime between 6 to 7 pm
3) Buy a drink. Each person should queue up at the counter, instead of just one ordering for the group.
4) After getting your drink, take a seat or just stand up outside the cafe and hang out for about 30 mins.
5) When your group decides it's time to leave, someone should give the cue and everybody should do the "thumbs down" sign
6) Disperse as peacefully as you came in
Suggested preparations:
1) Invite as many friends, or officemates, as you can
2) If you're an employer or a manager, invite all your subordinates to join you. Offer to "treat" them, if you can afford it.
3) Agree to meet in a place (not Starbucks), or if you're from the same office, arrange for carpooling
4) From the meeting place, proceed to Starbucks as a group. This will have more impact than just agreeing to meet at Starbucks individually
5) If you're staying in a city where there is no Starbucks, any other "cafe" or restaurant will do.
Invite as many friends and colleagues.
Let's paint Starbucks BLACK on Friday.
God bless,
Enteng
Omigod. It's so ridiculous I don't know where to start. It's so gloriously stupid it mocks itself. It's already a parody.
And there are soooo many layers to mock as well. The (unintentional?) faux intellectualism of dressing in black and sitting in a café as protest. And then the double-faux of that café being a Starbucks. The mind boggles. Or maybe its performance art: a parody of protest, an ironic, nonsensical commentary on deconstruction-as-rebellion! Let's call it "Derridadaisme". (Jaques Derrida. Dada.)
It's simultaneously lazy: "Since we hang out already in Starbucks na, why not make it a protest also nalang!" - and ambitious - "Tell your friends, Tara! Let's make it a movement!" Shet, pare. It's so blatantly elitist and unintentionally moronic, that it really makes the mind spin. It at once shows disrespect to local political authority: "Down with GMA!" - and yet is oh-so-respectful to a multinational corporate authority (or locally, the Tantocos): "Buy a drink so the Starbucks people will let you hang around!" In the words of the Aiza Seguerra circa 1990: "Ngek!"
It's so committed to an abstract idea: "Dictatorship! Naku! What about our people's welfare!" - while at the same time so very disconnected to reality. You're spending HOW MUCH for a stupid drink in order to show your "concern" for people's welfare? And I thought it was all just to ironic to be true until I learned that people actually went! Not just a few people, but around "80 to 100 people...enough to cover the outside seats". Wow. So if Manila has 10 million people at the least, they mobilized .001(?) of the population. Someone help me with the math here.
And I still would have left this all alone had they had not ERASED MY COMMENT ASKING IF THIS WAS A JOKE from their blog. And they have the audacity to bitch about 1017 censoring free speech: "Let's fight for free speech - Just as long as you don't make fun of us." Hypocrites. Jessica Zafra was right, we are an irony-free country and a gift to ironists everywhere.
Idiots all. Look up the word "Irony" if you got the time, guys.And to all the people who say that we who are not on their side "don't get the point": I say, it's you - the protesters who don't get the point. You obviously don't have enough numbers to get the anti GMA ball rolling. So please try to find another more constructive way to prove your love for country instead of through pseudo-anarchy. Not everybody wants to join your little noisy party OK? So please...Please.
I put this post here lest they erase it from their blog once again. They so totally missed their window to kick Ate Glue out. Poor things are desperate and it's showing.
