The power of social media is yet to be fully articulated. What is undeniable, however, is its capacity to make things viral. Case in point, Jeyrik Sigmaton became a viral sensation when stolen shots of him at work carrying baskets of carrots was posted with the hashtag, #CarrotMan. The life of the young farmer from Bauko, Sagada, Mt. Province changed overnight: He became the object of a number of online posts, was featured in various news articles, and hunted by local television networks. While happy for a kailian’s (Kankana-ey term to denote similar provenance) rise to fame, one cannot help but prod at the particularities of his sensationalism.
What comes forth is the realization that contained in most of the viral posts that featured #CarrotMan is surprise that Igorots can be good-looking. What is even more brow-raising is the fact that fellow Igorots felt the need to share the photos, as if to say: “See, I told you we are a handsome flock.” The problem is founded in how Igorots exist in the popular imagination of people from the perceived center, compounded with how these images have become internalized by the community itself. A deeper analysis of how Igorots are embodied in popular perception could bring one towards understanding why efforts to bring issues of indigenous people to the forefront continue to be a struggle.
We recognize honest ignorance. When tourists in Baguio, for example, non-jokingly ask someone walking down Session Road where the Igorots are because they can’t find them. Or when, last semester, a professor asked one of my classmates what they thought an Igorot looked like and she conjured an image of someone wearing a bahag, walking barefoot in search of a head to decapitate.
I don’t take issue with people thinking that we wear bahag and tapis, because we still do sometimes. What irks me is how reductionist these images are, how close they ring to how the colonizers described the mountain peoples as “uncouth” and “uncivilized.” The abovementioned cases exemplify how indigenous peoples are objectified in latent ways. The exoticization of indigenous peoples and cultures runs the danger of seeing us only as long-forgotten specimens and artifacts of the old ways instead of the dynamic people that we are.
Pushing the possibilities to extremes, exoticization coupled with sensationalism becomes the gateway to dehumanizing imagines and psychologies. These possibilities do not live in abstractions as they are exemplified in microaggressions most often felt in the objectification of indigenous peoples and the appropriation of their cultures. They are alive in online posts and tweets that are unapologetically surprised that there are handsome Igorots.
That we, as members of the group, often feel the need to ride these viral sensations to prove our worth does not help the community at all. The discourse flows under a current of specificities, which becomes problematic when we come face to face with the fact that not all of us conform to the also problematic, socially imposed standards of beauty. When we look at the mirror and see no resemblance with #CarrotMan, do we lie in wait for the rest of society to realize that we are worth listening to? Should we be defeated by internalized stereotypes? Of course not. The Filipino peoples’ struggle must begin with fighting ignorance and raising the level of discourse from superficialities.
