‘We gossip. It’s the best Filipino pastime: to talk about other people when they’re not around. It’s a good opportunity to surface a lot of truths and it makes you feel better about yourself.’ This was delivered as if it were the most normal thing on earth, over a half-empty case of beer, to a foreigner who came to the Philippines in the hopes of a meaningful cultural exchange. I was on my fifth bottle but became starkly sober for a good two minutes after hearing one of my seniors launch into what would be the expected most interesting part of the evening. They checked who was still seated at the drinking table and who had already left. Noting that one of the company’s top choreographers was gone, that same senior started the discussion on what the group knew or didn’t know about the choreographer’s  “gayscapades.” And so the tsismisan began with most classic opening: “Alam niyo ba…”

It became a drinking game similar to poker or even Pictionary. The one with the juiciest details regarding the topic wins. Harmless talk, that’s all that it was supposed to be. Of course it was supposed to be harmless. What was there to do but air assumptions and impressions regarding a certain topic or a certain person and to have others affirm or negate the statements? It did not matter that the subject was not there to actually confirm the truth of things. For one thing, people already assume that the person being talked about will deny the others’ perceived truths. That’s the way gossip works and every normal Filipino is supposed to be aware of that. What matters is that they get to talk about certain things, never mind that there could be a teeny bit of exaggeration or that their biases based on their working principles of the moment taint their own views of the matter.

Asking me if “alam ko ba” that he was actually a virgin despite all his chika about passing out in every gay bar in Malate was actually more of an imposing statement than comparing facts with what I actually knew. If I knew that, no, he is no longer a virgin because he confided that he was molested and raped as a kid, it did not matter. The juicy truth of the moment was that he was still one. At that point, the truth is what is true for them. It is what they choose to believe. Alcohol is not a factor, gossip can happen anytime, anywhere and the rules of the game don’t change.

Interestingly, a few hours before the first bottle of beer was opened, the same group of people I was sitting with, and others who did not want to join the drinking party, were caught up in the discussion of truth and honesty – or lack of, rather – that has brought the country to its present turmoil. People were arguing about the authenticity of Jun Lozada’s statements and everybody was in eager and passionate agreement that the truth should come out. Everybody was sharing what they knew, read, and heard about the issue. How this person accused this person, or that this person was paid to reveal all these things, or that certainly the other person involved will deny all the accusations thrown at him. Thinking about that trial regarding the whole NBN-ZTE Broadband deal reminded me of something strangely familiar. I realized that how the person who denied his involvement in accepting a kickback worth the country’s annual budget for education became as simple as denying gossip about the existence of a kept woman.

What was more familiar and actually disturbing for me was how these people received the information fed to them or, rather, how they draw out their own versions of truth from what they have seen and heard from sources they are not sure they can even trust. It was no different from discussing Piolo Pascual’s gender or Mark Herras’ current love interest. Similarly, people can talk about how the first gentleman gets money from every source possible, legal or illegal, and even the seeming most trusted news reporter can be the perpetuator of another harmless side of the story. And if offered the truth, what happens? People will still take it as a multiple choice question instead of simply True or False.

This, apparently, is this nation’s illustration of truth. Or how every citizen chooses to perceive it and how those in power can manipulate it. Take the issue of the Spratly’s Island being sold to the Chinese government, for example. The moment it was exposed, even with hard evidence, the denial from those in power is taken as a dismissal of the issue. My landlady may know and believe what is true but, just like any tsismis, it gets waved off because, well, who would actually admit to any gossip? A part of our national territory was given away as if it was like a sack of rice. The treatment of the issue did not differ from pointing out what was wrong with giving away such a property. To most of the citizens of this country, the story was just another flavor of the month.

From the wooden benches of a sari-sari store to the carpeted floors of the most exclusive business offices, there is a different side to a story. And the different sides offer different ways of reacting to that story. What is the national situation? Just like mood rings, it varies depending on how the media depicts it, how the neighborhood chickadora illustrates it to the village’s househelp association (or, even worse, to her young alaga), how the academician would want to analyze it, or how the religious would parallel it to a biblical scripture.

The culture of tsismis which allows for multiple sides to the story has led the common Filipino to take in just one angle of the picture without even straining to see if there were other angles or dimensions to it. Even worse, the manner of illustrating a certain ‘truth’ makes it seem like the absolute truth. But is it really?

That drinking session happened less than a month ago and the country’s seeming national crusade for truth as of the moment have gone on before I heard that statement and realized that, well, what kind of truth are we, as a nation, really looking for? We see it happening and we are given the hard facts to prove that, hey, your anchorwoman did not make up that story or the daily broadsheet’s screaming headline is not an exaggeration of things. Do we really perpetuate a culture of gossip and talk about what we think is true of the situation without confronting the absolute truth? How many truths do we really need to surface and how can there be a lot of truths to one nagging issue? 

Hearing someone tell a foreigner that people of this country while away their time conjuring different angles to stories without necessarily separating fiction from fact allows a really distinct insight into our culture as a people. Something that might be working more to our disadvantage than we are aware. (Unless we choose not to see it, really.) The funny thing is, tsismis is tsismis and will never be a lie. There is still some truth to it, depending on who is saying it and how you choose to believe it. Drawing the line between truth and lies is the same as separating right from wrong. But if you dismiss the issue of conniving with a COMELEC official to win the presidential elections as if it was another tsismis denied by our current ‘president’ when you actually heard their phone conversation on every available source, how do you then arrest the crime committed? The whole nation waves its hand dismissively at every news story about politicians using government funds for buying their own cars and resthouses at some remote island. So what if it’s your taxes being used? So what if they kill to uphold their version of truth? So what if your child doesn’t know fact from fiction, right from wrong? So what? It’s all tsismis. Harsh stark realities become mere “kuwento-kuwento sa kanto.”  And about the search for truth and accountability? Maybe you know another kuwento about it, why don’t we just open another bottle and talk about it, too?