Take it from us at GRP who have persisted in our mission to deliver top-notch insights on the Philippines and a variety of topics. The formula to longevity in the blogosphere is quite simple. The exit from this space of top pro-Duterte blogger and social media personality Sass Rogando Sasot is a case study on what not to be if you want aspire to timelessness.
In a Facebook post published today, Sasot laid out a manifesto on why she quit. If I was to summarise my key takeaway after reading this piece in two words, it would be this: great expectations.
See, in this space, the minute you expect people — specially close friends — to see things your way all the time, you are setting yourself up for abject disappointment. An example is the loyalty Sasot expected of her former crony Mocha Uson…
This [transgender] issue also made me lock horns with Mocha Uson, who reneged her promise to me that she would support the anti-discrimination bill. Instead, her team was undermining the campaign, even propagating FAKE information about it.
“Fake information” notwithstanding, in this line of work, one should be willing to courageously soldier on alone in one’s personal convictions if necessary. Mixing personal relationships with political positions is a liability as Sasot had found out the hard way. This is the same syndrome that degrades the quality of the Yellowtard cause — because their top “thought leaders” are too emotionally-invested in the quaint sisterhoods of like-minded amigas that they have entrenched themselves within. The effect is that they have lost any ability to engage in independent thought and lost the mojos to pursue lines of inquiry that could potentially lead them on paths that diverge from the dogma of their little cliques.
At GRP, our formula for success is quite simple. We are a community of lone wolves who are bound by nothing more than a shared ethic of free inquiry. Of one another, we expect no loyalty beyond this — only our individual convictions and the courage to stand by them until convincingly proven wrong in the free market of ideas.
Yet another cautionary tale and another tombstone in the poignant graveyard of disillusioned long-form communicators (which includes those who had succumbed to the easy space of social media “activism”). This is Sass Rogando Sasot who we all respect but, on this sad occasion, bid adios as she goes off and quits the game.
Webmaster of Get Real Philippines