Opinion: We Thought We Were the Majority

We once believed we were on the right side of history.

We opposed political dynasties. We spoke about accountability. We called out corruption—online and offline, without hesitation.

Then something began to change.

It wasn’t dramatic. There was no single moment you could point to and say, this is when it started. It happened gradually, in ways that were easy to dismiss. Certain posts traveled faster than others. Claims without sources spread wider than verified reports. The same phrases appeared again and again, across different accounts, as if rehearsed.

At first, it looked like agreement.

Over time, it began to feel like consensus.

And for many, that was enough.

I watched as people I knew—thoughtful, reasonable people—started sharing things they would have once questioned. Articles without authors. Quotes without sources. Graphics that carried outrage but no verification. The more these circulated, the more they reinforced each other, until repetition began to feel like truth.

Journalists and fact-checkers pushed back. They cited sources. They corrected the record. But their voices were quieter, and often unwelcome. Against the appearance of a majority, correction felt like interruption.

And interruption is easy to ignore.

There was a quote that circulated widely, attributed to a national figure, calling overseas Filipino workers “useless.” It was never said. It was disproven more than once. But it spread with such force that, for many, it became permanently attached to the person it targeted.

That is the thing about disinformation: it does not need to be true to be effective. It only needs to be repeated—and believed long enough to leave a mark.

What followed was not just a shift in what people believed, but in how they held those beliefs.

Support hardened into identity.

The more these views are expressed and defended in public, the more they harden—and the harder it becomes to step back from them.

Some once rejected politics in times of crisis. Now they embrace it—because the leaders they support do.

There was a time when political dynasties were widely questioned, even rejected. Now, for some, that standard has changed—set aside when the families involved align with the leaders they have come to support.

Criticism was no longer evaluated; it was resisted. Questions were treated as attacks. Disagreement became something personal. And those who challenged the narrative—journalists, advocates, even members of the Church—were dismissed not necessarily because they were wrong, but because they stood outside the growing consensus.

It was not uncommon to see informed voices brushed aside as “bobo,” dismissed with certainty by people who believed they were right—without recognizing how deeply misinformation had shaped their own views.

Over time, the distortion went deeper: people began to defend leaders with troubling records, while casting suspicion on those with competence or integrity—guided less by evidence than by alignment.

I began to notice how quickly reactions came, and how rarely they paused for verification. The speed of response started to matter more than the accuracy of what was being shared.

It was no longer just about information.

It was about belonging.

To question the narrative was to risk stepping outside the group that had formed around it. And for many, that cost felt higher than the cost of being wrong.

So the narrative held.

Even when corrections were available. Even when the evidence was clear. Even when the inconsistencies could no longer be ignored.

At that point, the issue was no longer deception alone.

It was persistence and choice.

There is an uncomfortable question that lingers beneath all this: how much of what we saw was organic, and how much was constructed? Were these waves of agreement genuine expressions of public sentiment, or were they amplified—carefully, deliberately—until they appeared larger than they were?

If narratives can be shaped this effectively in public, then a more uncomfortable question follows: what could be done with access to greater resources—and whether citizens, unknowingly, might be helping fund the very machinery that distorts their judgment.

And as the country approaches another election cycle, the patterns feel familiar. The same forces that benefited from distorted narratives have not disappeared. If anything, they have learned—and are preparing to return, more refined than before.

We may never have a complete answer.

But the pattern itself is enough to give pause.

Because what it produced was not just a divided public, but a distorted sense of where the public stood. It created the feeling of a majority—even when that majority may not have fully existed.

And once that feeling takes hold, it begins to shape decisions, loyalties, and the boundaries of what people are willing to question.

Recently, a man was asked whether a political figure was guilty or not guilty of the charges.

“Not guilty,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I am a supporter.”

No evidence. No argument. Just affiliation.

And in that moment, the shift became clear.

It was no longer about what was true.

It was about who we had chosen to stand with—and how far we were willing to go to remain there.

It does not have to end there.

But awareness is also a choice. And it begins with a single moment of pause—before the share, before the reaction, before the certainty settles in.

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