The recent Kadayawan festival was a blast. Not for all Davaoeños though, especially after Ramon Bautista made a remark "madaming hipon sa Davao". Which provoked the ire of some public officials and stirred netizens to rage.

Okay, I understand where all that hate is coming from. I get it, that was offensive. But if we were to look at it the other way, it shouldn't affect us, right? I mean, why do we allow people to demean or belittle us? Because just by reacting to that, we are just validating his claims. If it isn't true and we know for ourselves that it isn't true, then we can just brush it off our shoulders and move on. We know better. If we haven't made a big fuss out of it, the issue would have died down before Bautista could step down the stage.

Bautista said something that earned him one way ticket to public stoning. But he already expressed apology publicly. Isn't that enough? I think calling for persona non grata is just too much. And people are just overreacting way too much. Yes, I intended that redundancy.


Apparently, most people who have reacted haven't seen shows that blurt out slurs worse than that, not to mention, even intended for international viewing. Take Family Guy for example, they can simply take on to any races. If you don't take it seriously, you'll find it really hilarious. Too bad, most of us take jokes by heart and cry foul like how Neymar (yellow) stumbles unnecessarily over a little tackle.

This isn't the first time we reacted negatively to a joke. Or the second. Or the third. So this is to say that generally, Pinoys, not just Davaoeños, are the worst audience to any kind of comedy style. Madaling mapikon, madaling ma-offend. Sad but it's true. If we could only learn not to give a damn about petty things, I guess the world will be a better place.


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For those who do not know, Hipon (shrimp) is a term figuratively used to describe people with nice body but ugly face (same as Murica's butter face).

But if I were to become a shrimp/hipon/pasayan, I'd be like this:


Hell yeah! \m/