If there’s anything the public’s unhealthy fascination with Carlos Yulo’s private life has underscored once more, it’s that social media doesn’t care about the quality of the information it shares. It believes its raison d’etre lies in the speed with which its churns out particulars, and the degree of interactions it spurs from users and practitioners as a result. Engagement is the end all and be all, never mind the chaos it creates and perpetuates in its wake.
Granted, Yulo’s celebrity status makes him a legitimate news figure. He is rightly looked up to for his extraordinary showing in the Paris Games, with his two trips to the top of the podium just the second and third of any Filipino in the annals of sports. That said, his private life should be off-limits. He may be an Olympic medalist, but he is, first and foremost, a person, complications and all, and far be it for all and sundry to believe every aspect of his being should be an open book.
Perhaps it’s human nature for observers to want to learn more about their heroes and, in the process, make the latter more relatable. All the same, the obsession with unimportant facets of outsized personalities serves no one and does no good. For instance, it should be enough for Filipinos to celebrate Yulo for winning gold, and twice. Instead, the very feats have been overshadowed as a result of a predatory insistence to focus on the parts of him that hold no glitter.
Yulo deserves to go about his days — and his relationships — in peace. He should be left alone to his devices, not be scrutinized as if he moves in a Petri dish. And it isn’t even that judgments are being made of him and those around him. It’s that they’ve already been made, and every bit and piece of a story digested in the wild serves only to amplify preconceived notions. In this day and age of algorithms in ubiquitous platforms spewing feeds that validate positions and do not promote, even provoke, beneficial discourse, everybody is a victim.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and human resources management, corporate communications, and business development.
