QUARANTIMES

I have always believed that I am an optimistic. flexible, and adaptive person who have no problems coping difficult times but this 2-year-quarantine tested my mental and physical health like no other. I started to have fear of the future and all my motivations in life started to wear off. I had a hard time adjusting to my online classes and activities. All is not well with the fright that me and my family might be the target of COVID soon.

Thankfully, I had discovered a business opportunity, I established a small business online I named “PaliWow”. It is a online food business where I sell stuffed palitaw; cheese, yema cheese, ube cheese, mango, choco and coffee crumble and onion rings, potato balls, bread s’mores and more. Since people were not allowed to go outside to buy food, during that we have lots of customers contacting us to order.

I received a lot of love and positive feedbacks from doing my small business which help me get out of my depression and anxiety. I has helped me not only with my mental health but also with my finances. Although I’m still struggling because of the pandemic, I had something that would comfort me. 

It has also brought my social relationships together since I am working with my cousins, bestfriend and my boyfriend. My parents are also proud of me because I can now manage my own bills and it was helping them with our budget. I consider it hard work since we receive lots of orders and inquiries about our products. Also, we are all in college and sometimes we had conflicting schedules. Nevertheless, I became closer with my family because of this business that the pandemic brought about. 

In the present, I am working on new recipes and products that I could launch because the time changes and so the people’s preferences. I hope that someday, all these struggles brought by the pandemic will all subside and I can open a physical shop. It’s my dream to reach more of my friends with this business and let everyone have a taste of what we sell!

The pilot episode of “YTL: ‘Yung Totoo Lang Podcast” talks about the “love scams” or “catfishing” wherein people would fake their identities to extort money. I knew a lot of stories like this from Twitter, and most of the victims lost a lot of money from the people they met in dating applications. These victims are so emotionally invested with their online partners that they would send them money. since we are bound to our homes and the only way to socialize is through online platforms, more cases like this sprouted online in 2020.

Spotify is a great medium to entertain, educate, and earn money, it has become more effective in a pandemic where people are looking for something to direct their time. In my opinion, this episode will definitely sell for its strong advocacy to show how media literacy can fight against fake news. Along with their strong advocacy, catfishing is a sensationalized topic that will easily pique the interest of listeners.

Raffy Tulfo in Action videos become viral for it tackles the most conservative, most controversial and most sensitive issues that most media publications/ institutions are afraid to touch. All of the cases and people shown in the video have little to no censorship and privacy in telling their stories which make the viewers eager to watch . Aside from this, the program or specifically Raffy Tulfo was viewed as a “ray of hope” for the poor people who have difficulties in solving their legal and even financial problems.

Personally, I don’t like the way the program exploits the personal stories from people and just take away their privacy. I also dislike the fact that instead of filing their case in the court, the public prefers to hand their cases to the program but on the other side, I can’t really blame those people especially the poor ones for I know how much the government ignores the sentiments and cry of the public much more the poor.

As a part of Generation Z, gadgets, technology, and online activities has been a part of my daily life and the rise of these trends are no surprise for young people like me. I can relate most to the part that I want information delivered to me, I think most if not all people would prefer instant access to information. It is also better for if we can access information easier, we can search for multiple sources and verify the information we got as fake news is most prevalent this time.

In my opinion, we are the laziest hard workers, so among all these trends, the rise of mobile devices would be most preferred by Filipinos. How so? It’s the easiest gadget to use and the most practical to have; you don’t have to carry a heavy laptop for you can use a mobile phone as a substitute. In comparison to other gadgets, it is handy and less pricey: you can afford a local android mobile phone for as low as 2,000 pesos. It is also best for reading published articles online, it is faster to use specially if you have lots of searching to do.

This is just an exercise for our Digital Publishing class. Thanks for your understanding.