In almost every public issue, I often feel that I must always have an opinion. Perhaps that is partly a by-product of "being an academic" in a state university. Perhaps it also comes from spending years studying trust, culture, and public life. In many of my own circles, this impulse is hardly unusual. To share controversial posts, react quickly to unfolding events, or publicly “have a say” on political issues has become an almost accepted default of engaged citizenship.

I do not write this piece to celebrate or condemn that tendency. Nor am I interested in performing self-criticism merely for rhetorical effect. Rather, I want to reflect on something that social media often struggles to accommodate: the complexity of politics and public life itself. Real politics, as I have gradually come to realize through my own research, is often much slower, less spectacular, more contradictory, and frankly more boring than the rhythms of online discourse encourage us to believe.

Social media trains us to experience politics as a sequence of moral emergencies demanding immediate reaction. Every controversy appears urgent. Every silence appears suspicious. Every hesitation risks being interpreted as complicity. Yet beyond the accelerated temporality of online platforms, political life rarely unfolds through clean ruptures or decisive moments of collective awakening. Institutions endure despite disappointment. Citizens continue engaging systems they no longer fully trust. Publics argue intensely online while everyday political arrangements remain remarkably stable.

The recent online debates surrounding the alleged “massacre” of the Toboso 19 in Negros reflect this dynamic quite clearly. Almost immediately, the issue transformed into a surrogate battleground for much larger ideological disputes concerning armed struggle, revolutionary politics, state violence, democracy, and elite domination in the Philippines. On one side are those who insist that armed struggle has long become morally indefensible or politically obsolete. On the other are those who argue that revolutionary violence cannot be understood outside the enduring structural inequalities and exclusions that continue to characterize Philippine society.

But what fascinates me is not simply which side is “correct.” What fascinates me is the confidence with which online discourse often assumes that it already represents the real political sentiments of “the people.” A few trending posts, viral commentaries, or highly visible exchanges can suddenly create the illusion that the nation itself has decisively polarized around a singular issue. Yet social media visibility is not the same thing as political representativeness.

Outside the timelines, quote tweets, and algorithmic outrage cycles, many Filipinos continue living political lives that are far more ambivalent than online discourse usually admits. People may distrust institutions while still relying on them. They may criticize corruption while continuing to participate in deeply relational political systems. They may recognize structural injustice without necessarily supporting revolutionary violence. They may sympathize with the grievances that produce insurgencies while simultaneously fearing instability, conflict, or social disorder.

This is perhaps one of the things I have learned most from approaching politics through the lens of trust, culture, and public life: disappointment does not automatically produce rupture. Distrust does not necessarily lead to disengagement. Criticism does not always culminate in transformation.

Sometimes people simply endure.

And endurance, contrary to how social media often frames political life, is not necessarily passive. It can involve constant negotiation, compromise, recalibration, and moral adjustment. Many citizens navigate politics less through rigid ideological commitments and more through practical concerns: family survival, local obligations, employment precarity, interpersonal relationships, religious commitments, and everyday uncertainty. These forms of political navigation are often less visible online precisely because they are not spectacular.

This is also why I remain cautious about treating online political confrontation as evidence of immediate historical change. Filipinos, despite what social media sometimes suggests, do not always engage politics through direct ideological warfare. Public life in the Philippines has long been shaped by relational negotiation, indirectness, pragmatic accommodation, and moral calibration. Even moments of intense political scandal or outrage frequently end not in rupture, but in uneasy continuation.

To say this is not to romanticize political apathy. Nor is it to dismiss activism, critique, or public participation. Democracies need engaged citizens. Marginalized communities deserve to be heard. Structural violence and inequality remain deeply real. But there is also danger in mistaking constant opinion production for meaningful political traction.

Not every political issue can be resolved through immediate online certainty. Not every controversy demands instant moral performance. Sometimes the pressure to rapidly declare allegiance flattens the complexity of situations that require historical understanding, caution, and reflection.

And perhaps this is what I increasingly find exhausting about the contemporary culture of online political engagement: the assumption that every citizen must constantly perform clarity even when politics itself remains profoundly unclear.

There are moments when silence is indeed dangerous. There are moments when neutrality becomes complicity. History teaches us that. But there are also moments when slowing down, withholding immediate judgment, or recognizing the limits of one’s understanding can itself become a more responsible political act.

To admit uncertainty is not always cowardice.

To refuse instant outrage is not always indifference.

To recognize complexity is not necessarily moral weakness.

Real politics rarely moves at the speed of social media. Historical transformation is often uneven, contradictory, and painfully slow. Institutions do not collapse simply because they become unpopular online. Public trust does not disappear overnight. Democracies often endure not because citizens remain fully convinced by them, but because people continue navigating disappointment, fragility, and ambivalence in ways that allow everyday life to continue.

And maybe that is precisely the uncomfortable truth social media struggles to accept: politics is not always spectacular. Most of the time, it is procedural, repetitive, compromised, frustrating, and deeply ordinary.

In other words, real politics is often boring.

And that is okay.

Image note: The accompanying visual for this essay was generated with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence (OpenAI ChatGPT Image Generation) based on the author’s conceptual direction and editorial framing.