IN cyberspace, everyone can hear you scream. Or whisper. Or tweet about sucky bubblies at an overseas state function. Or vent about sucky tourism campaign logos that resemble Poland?s and ?80s-na-?80s Island Souvenirs typography (according to facebook.com/carlosceldran or twitter.com/ carlosceldran or somewhere in the archives of www.carlosceldran.com). Or repost gleefully and impudently ? without the niceties of permission, authorization, or dull copyright fringements (as opposed to in) ? photos of a) the saddest picture in the world (a group of formally-posed, unsmiling jejemons making heart signs with their fingers, with others raising their middle fingers to the camera); b) the awful, awful stills from the Ampatuan massacre; or c) someone looking a lot like Mikey Arroyo buying a bottle of wine during the havoc of Ondoy. And let?s not get started on viral videos of what Hayden Kho?s hidden camera caught, or of cats playing the piano.

The web is, according to comedian, actor, and author Patton Oswalt writing in Wired magazine, on the brink of a phenomenon known as ?Etewaf: Everything That Ever Was ? Available Forever.? (Insert semi-colon and closed parenthesis here to indicate that the wink is as good as a poke in the ribs or what was known in the olden days as irony.)

Etewaf means that even if presidential speechwriter Mai Mislang deleted her tweet ? nah, deleted her Twitter account ? following her terse pronouncements on the quality of the wine in Vietnam and the papa-bility quotient of the guys there (?walang pogi?), they are captured in screencaps of the tweet for all eternity. (In the same way that Katrina Halili remains dolorous over the dismissal of the case vs. Hayden Kho, Jr., who videotaped them having sex without her knowledge, because, as she said in 2009, ?Patay na ako pero may video pa rin at Internet.?)

Etewaf means that we can instantaneously reblog, retweet or repost the real-time away ng mga artistas (Cristine Reyes vs. Sarah Geronimo and Ate Shawie), the photo of a well-known party girl hoisting a dainty spoon filled with powdery stuff up her left nostril, spot not-very-blind-items (@itsmekrisaquino ?Thank u Direk Lino [Cayetano]! U have my eternal gratitude. Be good to L?she?s my sister!?) or track the whereabouts of a friend who, two minutes ago, just checked in for brunch at Paris Delice in Makati.

Etewaf means the whisper is a scream, the needle is the haystack, and yet, we? just? can?t? help? ourselves. We must overshare and tell our followers in 140 characters or less what?s happening (maski na hindi siya happening) and get our Facebook friends to like every Asian pose we upload. There?s a site to post our secrets, another one where friends and lurkers of all stripes can ask any question they want you to answer, and YouTube to document friends who passed out after last weekend?s binge drinking and, oh, shenanigans in the operating room.

Etewaf threatens critical mass with the steroidal rise of microblogs and Tumblr. The former also known as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and the latter, a web universe driven by users posting random refuse pulled from the cloud: gifs, clips, memes and knowing drivel. The old school blog that mimicked analog journals, essays, reviews ? sentences, what a concept! ? has been distilled into acronyms, webbytes, images, a terse retelling of a crappy day (or simply, WTF) and the nth reblog of something someone said better.

Etewaf knows if you?ve been bad or good or banal? but that?s for the HR Department, potential employers and the rest of us glued to our screens, phones and tablets to decide. Etewaf may upchuck your post two years ago about the pointless story behind ordering extra rice with your Chicken Joy at 12:37 p.m. of May 18, but it is also the indelible scarlet letter, swelling angrily like a fresh welt every time it?s uncovered to serve articles like this. And so, Ms. Halili, as the man you accused hawks his new line of eau de eww, you are not alone in the shame (or, in the case of others, the glory) that will forever be cached in the ether.

Brian Gorrell vs DJ Montano and the Gucci Gang

One example is the serialized Wiki-eeks of Australian Brian Gorrell accusing alleged boyfriend DJ Montano of defrauding him of $70,000 in sham investments and purloined personal effects. Unable to collect on the debt and humiliated by a supposedly staged police arrest, Gorrell fled to Australia and hammered out his best revenge.

In March 2008, Gorrell?s blog, titled ?The Not SO Talented Delfin ?DJ? Justiniano Ocampo Montano II? (www.delfindjmontano.blogspot.com) exploded on the web. Aside from skewering Montano, he also sideswiped Montano?s friends, the so-called and fecklessly-named ?Gucci Gang,? a posse of party hardy socialites. He detailed their drug-taking and dissipation, their ridiculous reverence for designer anything, the freeloadism, and willingness to engage in man-on-man action in public elevators.

Gorrell not only named names, posted photos, and doled out his pasabog in daily increments, teleserye-style, he actually named himself as the source. Montano and his posse tried to brave the firestorm by disappearing from view, hoping the controversy would die down. When it didn?t, Montano resurfaced to explain himself on national television. The rest resorted to contacting lawyers and the NBI. Gorrell reported waking up one day to have the Australian police at is door, inquiring about his blog.

In the end, no one could clearly invoke their legal claim on what was spurted online. Gorrell, who said 30 million had read his his blog at one point, lost his luster after the nth regurgitation of his original claims.

Today, he has kept the URL of his webpage but renamed it ?Pure Advocacy.? Gorrell who is HIV positive, posts links and comments to HIV- and LGBT-related stories. On September 12, he reported in his blog: ?Charges continue to be filed against Delfin Justiniano Ocampo Montano II in America including falsifying documents (much expired visa as well) and multiple counts of ID fraud in TWO states! And GRAND THEFT LARCENY! We are ALL patiently awaiting DJ?s mug shot. (For what you did to me DJ... this pay back is a real bitch Montano) Your stealing days are well and truly over now Delfin.?

The Gucci Gang seems none the worse for the wear. One still edits and writes for a national newspaper while occasionally appearing partially-clothed on the cover of a glossy magazine, while another continues to expand his media and lifestyle empire as I type.

Chikatime

Before Gorrell thought of hogging infamy to himself, he contributed a few of his DJ Montano bombshells to the blog Chikatime. Now dead, Chikatime encouraged readers to post their compromising photos and unsubstantiated chika (gossip) online. The vibe was knowing and malicious, with a well-placed poke in the ribs and lots of kabaklaan to mitigate the hate.

Chikatime posted the aforementioned photo of a French cosmetics exec posing with a small spoon of coke. It published the ugliest vacation photos of a designer riding an elephant, declaring open season on the comments section. It posted the photo and blog entry of an Ateneo student so she could be identified and bullied publicly and anonymously by classmates who simply didn?t dig her.

The person who maintained Chikatime claimed to be a woman living in the US, privy to inner circle secrets. It took a member of the so-called Gucci Gang ? targeted, natch ? to nail Chikatime?s true identity: a well-known male blogger who ran around the same circles as the Gucci Gang. He was said to have been served an ultimatum: Take down the blog or be exposed and sued.

Unable to take a dose of his own medicine, Chikatime shut down. Today, both the exposer and exposee are still online, the exposer nicely chugging along, the exposee even bigger than ever.

The Confessions of Soozyhopper

The predecessor of Chikatime, Soozyhopper was said to be a magazine editor who posted the dirty little secrets of the nosebleed crowd in 2006. Gossip blogger Doña Victorina called Soozyhopper ?an avatar of society?s Beelzebub.? Sen. Jamby Madrigal, a target, called the man behind Soozyhopper ?the biggest drug addict in Manila and also a pedophile; he puts ruffies (Rohypnol, the so-called ?date rape drug.? ? Ed.) in the drinks of his young male friends and when they wake up, they are naked in bed with him.?

Mistaken to be the secret identity of Soozyhopper, fashion and lifestyle blogger Chuvaness sputtered:

?Guys, first of all, Soozyhopper is not me! I have never heard of Mariko Jacinto or Bobby Cuenca or Mely Ablaza. Bakit ko papatulan si Amparito Lhullier? I don?t hate Xeng or Tina.

?I think I know how to properly use apostrophe?s, hehe. I?m too duwag to write s__t like that. Look most of my entries are locked. But still I?m so addicted to Soozy.?

Most of those thrown under the bus during Soozyhopper?s brief reign are still out there, proving their cockroach-like imperviousness to the brief blip of scandal.

Ella Ganda

When Typhoon Ondoy bitch-slapped Manila in 2009 and Facebook served as command central for instant volunteers passing on info, coordinating efforts and broadcasting the panawagan of stranded and panicked cityfolk, a link appeared to the blog entry, ?Aanhin pa ang damo kung patay na ang kabayo? (A special report from a volunteer).? It showed photos of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) warehouse stacked to the rafters with boxes of sardines and relief goods donated by Unicef, Japan and Spain for the victims of Ondoy.

Blogger Ella Ganda, who was a DSWD volunteer, secretly took the photos and railed: ?WTF is the matter with these people? Mag-iisang buwan na mula nang masalanta ang mga kababayan natin. ISANG BUWAN!! ?. S__t. Anong ginagawa ng mga donations na ito sa warehouse?? APAT na warehouse ang nasa loob ng compound na ?yon. APAT na warehouse na punung-puno ng inaalikabok na relief goods! Relief goods na ayaw yata ibigay sa mga nasalanta. Halatang-halata.? She implored: ?I?m asking your help to spread the word. Tulungan po ninyo akong ikalat ito. Beyond this, we should also demand action. I disabled a plugin so you can copy the photos of relief goods rotting in DSWD warehouses. You can link this post to your blogs, facebook, websites, etc. You can also email the photos.?

The reaction was electric. The post went viral. Then Secretary Esperanza Cabral quickly tried to quell the outrage by saying the agency lacked volunteers. The lameness of her statement did not help. But volunteers showed up anyway to repack the goods. Later, the NBI would sue the blogger for libel for maligning the reputation of Dr. Cabral.

Today, Ella Ganda is still online (as is her DSWD post). Her latest entry, dated January 10, 2011, reads: ?Happy New Year, guys! Yup, andito pa rin ako. Matagal akong nawala kasi hindi ko naasikaso ?yung bayad sa domain ko. In other words, wala akong pera hehe. Naghirap akong bigla. Hindi pala magandang ikasal sa December.?

Malu Fernandez

Ah yes, who can forget those fateful words: ?The duty-free shop was overrun with Filipino workers selling cell phones and perfume. Meanwhile, I wanted to slash my wrist at the thought of being trapped in a plane with all of them.? Appearing in print (?Fierce and Fabulous,? People Magazine Asia, June 2007), columnist Malu Fernandez?s throwaway diatribe against the anointed modern-day Filipino heroes was quickly picked up online. Her column was scanned, reblogged and scorched OFW fora.

Seemingly oblivious, she elucidated her disdain in the column she wrote for a daily: ?I flew on Emirates via Dubai, completely forgetting that Dubai is the hub for all the Filipino migrant workers. Call me whatever you like but when you are trapped in economy class that is filled to the brim with migrant workers, the smell gets a little funky after nine hours of flying.?

Within days, she was the most hated woman on the planet, the substance of her column and her less-than-pulchritudinous form an all-purpose effigy for enraged OFWs, the more polite calling it ?bigotry at its purest.? She was flippant in responding to the firestorm: ?The magazine got a few e-mails from people who didn?t get the meaning of my acerbic wit. The bottom line was just that I had offended the reader?s socioeconomic background. If any of these people actually read anything thicker than a magazine they would find it very funny.?

Guide and blogger Carlos Celdran got as down and dirty: ?If I was an overfed, overcompensated, unwanted baby who was never as pretty or popular as her older sisters and parents, then maybe I too would end up bitter enough to demand an advance on my inheritance and spew out poisonous banter to no end. But I consider this current situation to be completely understandable in her case though. She really couldn?t help herself?. She is a victim of a social/sosyal disease and the friends who indulged her. After all, when she said her friends found her article hilarious, I believe her.?

Reporting subsequent death threats, Fernandez apologized for real and quit as columnist. A few months later, she was back on the job. Today, Malu Fernandez still writes her newspaper column (a recent one on Kate Spade and Jennylyn Mercado), while OFWs are still an economic and, prodded right, online force. ?