francis eloriaga,
Recently, tragedies have become more commonplace — from natural disasters like earthquakes, typhoons, and tsunamis, to man-made problems such as bombings, mass shootings, and war crimes. The world is plagued with these problems, and humanity is forced to deal with them.
The gravity of these tragedies, however, does not deter people from making jokes about them.
This outright disrespect for those affected is made in the form of memes and tweets in social media making fun of — and in other cases, glorifying — parts of the tragedy.
It is not necessarily wrong to make light of tragedies; in fact, it is a way of coping with them. However, with this blatantly offensive form of trivializing such events, we are becoming a society in which these tragedies are no longer taken seriously, sometimes even being buried under the offensive content. Unless such practices stop, people will keep barely batting an eye to tragedies, unless they are affected directly. While it is alright to make light out of a serious situation, people take it a step too far by laughing at the problem, sometimes being outright callous to victims.
Take the recent death of OFWs, for example. Their overseas plight is well-known, with their friends and loved ones and even their communities seeking help from authorities, while raising awareness among the masses. For instance, an OFW named Joanna Demafelis was found dead in a freezer inside an abandoned apartment in Kuwait. While her death enraged a lot of Filipinos, jokes started to surface on social media about finding her corpse in freezers and refrigerators inside homes.
Not to mention the most recent Florida school shooting that occurred last February, where a 19-year-old named Nikolas Cruz gunned down 17 students and injuring many others in the process. The internet’s response? Making the entire scenario look like it came straight out of a shooter game, while making the corpses either looking like drunk people sprawled on the street, or corpses that needed to be “revived” by the player.
While there is the expected backlash from people, these jokes have attracted others who also participate in this sort of thing.
These kinds of jokes have no place in any medium. They are not only offensive to those affected by tragedies, but they also act as a bad influence on people who don’t know any better and will think that these types of jokes are okay. Such practices should stop before further damage is done.//by Francis Eloriaga, Philip Jocano
Opinion: Trivializing Tragedy
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| Photo Credit: Ezra Bustamante |
Recently, tragedies have become more commonplace — from natural disasters like earthquakes, typhoons, and tsunamis, to man-made problems such as bombings, mass shootings, and war crimes. The world is plagued with these problems, and humanity is forced to deal with them.
The gravity of these tragedies, however, does not deter people from making jokes about them.
This outright disrespect for those affected is made in the form of memes and tweets in social media making fun of — and in other cases, glorifying — parts of the tragedy.
It is not necessarily wrong to make light of tragedies; in fact, it is a way of coping with them. However, with this blatantly offensive form of trivializing such events, we are becoming a society in which these tragedies are no longer taken seriously, sometimes even being buried under the offensive content. Unless such practices stop, people will keep barely batting an eye to tragedies, unless they are affected directly. While it is alright to make light out of a serious situation, people take it a step too far by laughing at the problem, sometimes being outright callous to victims.
Take the recent death of OFWs, for example. Their overseas plight is well-known, with their friends and loved ones and even their communities seeking help from authorities, while raising awareness among the masses. For instance, an OFW named Joanna Demafelis was found dead in a freezer inside an abandoned apartment in Kuwait. While her death enraged a lot of Filipinos, jokes started to surface on social media about finding her corpse in freezers and refrigerators inside homes.
Not to mention the most recent Florida school shooting that occurred last February, where a 19-year-old named Nikolas Cruz gunned down 17 students and injuring many others in the process. The internet’s response? Making the entire scenario look like it came straight out of a shooter game, while making the corpses either looking like drunk people sprawled on the street, or corpses that needed to be “revived” by the player.
While there is the expected backlash from people, these jokes have attracted others who also participate in this sort of thing.
These kinds of jokes have no place in any medium. They are not only offensive to those affected by tragedies, but they also act as a bad influence on people who don’t know any better and will think that these types of jokes are okay. Such practices should stop before further damage is done.//by Francis Eloriaga, Philip Jocano
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