In the age of curated chaos, scandal has become our official soundtrack. It plays in boardrooms and beach fronts, in concert halls and congressional hearings. It’s the rhythm of revelation, the beat of betrayal, the chorus of collective gasp. We don’t just consume scandal – we remix it, meme it, suffix it.
And like any good pop song or political farce, it needs a hook. Enter Coldplaygate and Dolomitegate – two hits from different genres, both climbing the charts of public outrage. One is a ballad of betrayal caught on camera - the other, a bureaucratic beach party that turned into a floodgate in opera.
So, tune in, dear ATABAY Readers. The gates are open.
Welcome to the Age of Gatekeeping
Once upon a time, Watergate was just the name of a swanky hotel. Then came the break-in, the tapes, the presidential resignation – and suddenly, gate became the universal suffix for scandal. Fast-forward to today, and we’re drowning in gates. Some are open to corruption; others, to awkward intimacy. Some block literal water, others flood the internet with memes.
Internet memes
Storm in Coldplaygate and Dolomitegate – two scandals, one international and musical, the other national and political. One involves a kiss cam gone rogue, the other a beach made of crushed rock that may have turned Manila’s streets into canals. Both are now immortalized in the Hall of Fame great scandal suffix. And both, in their ways, reveal how public spectacle often masks deeper dysfunction.
Dolomitegate: When Sand Meets Storm Surge
In 2020, the Duterte administration decided that what Manila Bay needed wasn’t mangrove restoration or sewage overhaul – but a beach. A white one. Made of dolomite. Transported. Expensive. Melodramatic. As critics noted, about as valuable in flood mitigation as a paper umbrella in a typhoon.
Fast forward to present: Manila floods. The MMDA points fingers at the dolomite beach, claiming it blocked three critical outfalls. The DENR, in turn, blames climate change – as if the rain itself conspired against their beachfront vision. Meanwhile, citizens wade through waist-deep water wondering if the P389 million spent on artificial beach could’ve bought, say, a working drainage system.
Sniffing around, Congress is now asking whether the dolomite project was even part of the official rehabilitation plan. Spoiler: it wasn’t. But it did make for a great DDS photo ops. And now, it makes for a great metaphor – Dolomitegate, where the sand meant to beautify the bay may have worsened the flooding of the city.
Interestingly, we have a passage in the Bible tipping off the same foolishness of “a man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matthew 7:26-27)
Coldplaygate: When the Kiss Cam Kisses Back
Meanwhile, in the U.S., Coldplay was serenading 65,000 fans when frontman Chris Martin decided to play cupid with a kiss cam. The camera focused on a man and woman who looked cozy – until they realized they were on screen. The man ducked. The woman turned away. Martin quipped, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”
Turns out, they were having an affair. And they weren’t just any couple – they were the CEO and HR head of a tech firm called Astronomer. Both married. Both are now internet-famous. Byron resigned. Cabot vanished. And internet turned the moment into a meme buffet – sumsuman in Bisaya, pulutan in Tagalog, appetizer in English.
Thus, Coldplaygate was born – a scandal where music met misconduct, and the kiss cam became a surveillance device. It’s a reminder that in the age of viral everything, even a concert can become a courtroom.
A Tale of Two Gates
So, what do these two scandals have in common?
Both involve public exposure – one literal, one metaphorical.
Both triggered institutional embarrassment – one in government, the other in corporate tech.
Both amplified by media frenzy, satire, and the irresistible allure of a good -gate.
And both, ultimately, reflect our collective obsession with naming and framing. We don’t just want accountability – we want it branded, hash-tagged, and meme-ready.
We’re All Gatekeepers
Scandals, like maps, tell us where the fault lines lie. Coldplaygate raced the contours of privacy and power in the age of viral voyeurism. Dolomitegate charted the erosion of foresight beneath a layer of transported white sand. Both revealed what happens when spectacle replaces substance, and when institutions forget that optics don’t float.
But here’s the twist: every -gate is also a mirror. It reflects not just the missteps of the mighty, but the gaze of the many. We name these scandals not to bury them, but to brand them – because in naming, we claim a kind of control. We gatekeep the narrative.
So, let us be mapmakers of conscience. Let us draw the lines, not just around what went wrong, but around what must be made right.
And if that sounds too abstract, let me leave you with a fable I read a long time ago which I dredged up from the innermost recess of my memory.
The Fable of the Forgotten Gate
One day, the high-and-mighty organs of the human body held a bragging session. The brain flaunted its logic, the heart boasted of love and lifeblood, and the mouth waxed poetic about its power of speech. Each declared: “If I shut down, the body collapses.”
Out of nowhere, the butthole tried to speak.
Everyone laughed.
Embarrassed, the humble butthole quietly withdrew.
Days passed. The body began to bloat with waste. Energy faltered. Thought muddled. Breath strained. Doctors scratched their heads.
Finally, they discovered the truth: the butthole had shut itself down. The gate blocked, the system poisoned from the inside out.
The organs stopped laughing.
They had learned the hard way: you ignore the gate at your peril.
Dear Readers, let that fable be a cautionary tale – for Dolomitegate, for Coldplaygate, and for any body politic that treats minor players or messy truths as punchlines. Sometimes, the dirtiest floodgate is the most essential – and the stink it leaves behind is the cost of pride and neglect.
So, next time a -gate catches on, look beneath the headlines.
Something deeper down below might be clogging the flow.
Content and editing put together in collaboration with Bing Microsoft AI-powered Co-pilot and Grammarly
Head collage photos courtesy of Business Insider, Campaign Asia, YouTube, & Facebook; design by Canva
Still photos courtesy of St. Louis Cardinals, 23 XI Racing, Hyperallergic, Mayra@LePapillonBlu2, The Simpsons, financialexpress, Lego, Savanna Bananas, Day2Day Memes, The Metal Realm, Reddit, The Wall Street Journal, ABS-CBN, QuoteFancy, & Philstar
No comments:
Post a Comment