GHORL. Nabasa na nimo?
Girl, ang lala.
***
Being out of social media for months now, I had no idea what they were talking about. Then, I read the article.
The article was written by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta and published by ABS-CBN News under ANC-X. Commissioned by the mentioned media outlet, Katigbak-Lacuesta was supposed to interview Lang Leav in lieu of the latter s book tour in the Philippines. What came about wasn’t pleasant to say the least. Instead of writing about the interviewee, Katigbak-Lacuesta made passive-aggressive jabs on Leav as a writer. Leav took her disappointment to Twitter and called it a “cringe-worthy article”.
To see Leav and Katigbak-Lacuesta’s names in one article got me thinking of a boxing match. And a bout did happen online. People were quick to defend their favored author and posted a portion of their works for good measure.
I will not delve into the article’s content nor will I defend one over the other. Rather, I’d like to make sense of it all.
Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta is also the author of "Hush Harbor: Poems" published by UST Press in 2017.
As for Lang Leav, I have encountered her work during my early days as a poet. I liked them. They were easy to understand. My heartstrings were pulled. As a young reader, that was my only basis for appreciation.
It wasn’ t until I hung out with writer friends, attended workshops, and literary seminars that I learned how to read works and appreciate literature not just by how my feelings were affected, but also the craftsmanship laid into it. As with any craft, I understood that poetry has elements that need to be met. A clear imagery and persona are two basic requirements to make a decent poem.
Does Lang Leav’s work meet the bare minimum? I’d leave that up to your judgment. Even if it didn’t, does it discredit her fame? Well, that’s where social media comes in.
Platforms like Tumblr, Wattpad, and even Instagram have given aspiring writers the venue to share their works. Unlike the traditional route of publishing where publishers and editors control who gets published or not, social media has bypassed such gatekeeping and gave writers direct line to their readers. These readers then share the writers’ content through their personal accounts which then goes viral. This is where Lang Leav and other Instapoets have succeeded.
“The rapid rise of Instapoets probably will not shake up the literary establishment...,” Alexandra Alter said in her 2015 New York Times article, Web Poets’ Society: New Breed Succeeds in Taking Verse Viral.
But, it has shaken up the literary establishment. Some authors who have gained their fame online have been offered publishing contracts by traditional publications. Lang Leav is such an examples.
“...and their writing is unlikely to impress literary critics,” Alter continues. True, critics do show aversion to their works. Even then, their works are widely read by the millions. So, what gives?
Instead of using the usual frameworks and criticisms other critics used, I’ m using a different approach. I read up on sociological criticism and find that it is the best way to make sense of their work. First, I wanted to understand how they create their works. Since they make it in social media platforms, their outputs do need to cater to the audience’s short attention span. That means short, sweet, readable, and easily “relateable” content to make it shareable. But that doesn’t guarantee wide readership.
Second, unlike traditional publishing where publishers act as endorsers and gatekeepers, social media has “influencers.” Just as the name suggests, influencers are online entities who hold power and influence in public opinion, taste, and a lot more with millions of followers online.
Case in point, celebrities like Sophia Bush and Kim Kardashian have re-posted works of RM Drake, an Instapoet, who totals almost 2 million followers.
Looking at it, there is a shift that is happening. Some say the good thing about it is that the public is finally reading and appreciating poetry. Some point out it isn’t poetry. And again, I will leave that up to your discretion. What I do see is social media’ s democratization of publishing works and with that is the difficulty of finding quality literature in a myriad of written works. How do you find it? Well, you read. And in reading voraciously, you’ll develop a keen sense of what’s good and bad. It is much like eating food.
***
Months ago, I saw my 13 year-old niece reading a novel through an online platform. Instead of snatching her phone, I went to our bookshelf, took Collier’ s Junior Classics, and opened it to “Appointment with Love” by S.I. Kishor. I gave it to her and said, “First story nga nagpa-kilig nako, dai.” She glanced at the opened pages, showed mild derision, and continued reading through her phone. “Kini ra ako kay sayon.”, she said.