In the world of FOMO and “first” or “pertamax” (do people still do that?), I decided to… comment on things after days, or weeks, or months, of thoughts. As Terry Pratchett said: “First sight, second thought”. The reason being: I can be really explosive when voicing out my opinions, be it orally or in writing, so… yeah.

(Still no second thoughts/“take days or weeks to think on how you say it” on genAI and Palestine, though. As someone said on Threads: “Mereka yang masih ignorant sangat perkara genAI dan Palestine ni memang patut kena kecam”)

More than a couple of days ago, a well-known Indonesian public figure got into a public backlash over her video on “staying mindful in the middle of bad news”. Her video on opinions, thoughts, and tips on stepping away from “the bad news” a.k.a. Reality, specifically realities in Indonesia, were met with pure hot-white visceral rage from the netizens. It didn’t help that she made the video while enjoying her western-style breakfast consisted of (IINM) cottage cheese, Omega-3 eggs, and Hass avocado, with the latter’s price could mark a minimum wage of a county or a village in Indonesia.

Of course, there were, and still are, some thoughts and discussions on empathy, whether the excessive anger was due to the fact that this public figure is a woman as it seems like women tend to be blamed twice harsher than men/witch hunt, the risk of voicing oneself as a public figure with millions of followers, and communication skills (context and the likes. IDK, I’m not a formal student of communication, and a lot of my knowledge in communications and PR were from my years as a Marketing Management student with 4 credits of Marketing Communication class and my previous job as a PR consultant.)

For me, at this point, it’s not about gender, although I won’t deny the fact that there have been some examples on how the criticism was harsher when the object was a woman/women. I always believe that it’s always on how you say things. Of course, there are words that I would say it harshly point blank, such as anything related with genAI, but girl, you don’t say, “you can just turn off your phone and take a walk in the Nature when things feel too much!” when the said Nature is literally blazing with fires that takes months to put out. You can’t tell people to turn off their phone and choose not to see bad news on the Internet when they actively living in it, breathing the air with >300 AQI reading with their babies dying. Especially not when you are a public figure and an Oxford AND Harvard graduate.

Do I think the public’s anger could be directed better to the men in charge with their (stupid) decisions caused this whole mess? Absolutely. Do I also think that this public figure could do better? With her education and accolades displayed on her Wikipedia page, I honestly feel that she could do better. Hey, public figures are supposed to have some kind of PR training or PR staff, right?