If you chance upon on Facebook quite touching testimonies of showbiz idols and other celebrities regarding certain products or services, don’t get hooked. Don’t patronize whatever it is the testimonies are selling. There’s a high possibility those testimonies are all fake.

And there seems to be a trend these days to exploit on those fake but quite touching narratives the popularity of mother and son (such as actor Coney Reyes and Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto), or mother and daughter (such as actor Caridad Sanchez and writer Cathy Babao).

But when an actor is unquestionably well-known by himself, they can be exploited by selling a product online. Senior actors who are thought to be already affected by either Alzheimer’s or dementia seem to be the favorite personalities victimized by those cyber criminals. 

One case we chanced upon just a few days ago is that of character actor Jonee Gamboa who was passed off as healed from Alzheimer’s. 

Gamboa is already 90 years old, mobile and moves around upright without assistance. He follows the high-protein, low carbohydrate diet prescribed by Dr. Robin Navarro who used to be very famous but has retired. (Take note that even if that diet is high protein, it does not include pork, crustaceans, and mollusks.) 

Gamboa never had Alzheimer’s, and he is still with the cast of ABS-CBN’s Batang Quiapo, along with Pen Medina, who is Gamboa’s workshop student in the past.  Gamboa still meets every now and then with many of his former theater workshop students (including this writer and the late Floy Quintos, the Palanca Award-winning playwright).

Not all senior citizens are afflicted with Alzheimers or dementia. Mayor Vico’s father, TV host-comedian Vic Sotto, doesn’t have it. Vic’s older brother, the politician Tito Sotto, has just been re-elected senator. Both brothers are way past 70 years old. But there must be a big number of persons who have Alzheimer’s or dementia so some greedy companies are opportunists enough to deceptively offer their products with fabricated stories featuring adulated showbiz celebrities. The FB posting on Coney and Vico even mentions a famous Filipino doctor whom we hope has become aware that he is being exploited by cyber opportunists.

Vico seems to be the only politician deserving to be exploited in fake Facebook narratives that conclude with an endorsement of certain products. We’ve never encountered fake moving narratives on Facebook from Vilma Santos, Lito Lapid, Robin Padilla or Bong Go.

And, oh, Facebook seems to be the only social media where the fake narratives appear most likely because FB seems to be the easiest to penetrate even with a fake account. The one on Coney and Vico was supposedly posted by Coney herself. That of Gamboa was passed off also as his own posting on FB.

No fake kilometric anecdotes appear on Instagram though many showbiz idols use Instagram Stories to crow about their fabulous lives. TikTok accepts only short reels and the real-life couple Jennylyn Mercado and Dennis Trillo post some comic scenes of one of them or both of them at least once a week. However, it’s Mercado’s FB post recently about an out-of-town trip they had as a family that elicited nasty reactions from some netizens regarding one of their son’s looking like he is on the Autism Spectrum and “malamya” (effeminate). Colleague Jeff Fernando has reported very recently in this paper on Trillo’s clapback on those heartless and mindless netizens. 

Mercado has confided in a previous social media post that her son with ex-boyfriend actor Patrick Garcia is part of the Spectrum. Trillo has also posted separately in the past about fully accepting Mercado’s son as his own, the same way the wife has accepted Trillo’s son from a previous relationship as her own. No one among them is in hiding due to the complexities in their lives.

Life eventually moves on joyfully in quiet or noisy ways when we’re willing to accept the seeming mess we have brought into it. The returning movie from 1998, Pusong Mamon, starring Albert Martinez, Lorna Tolentino, Eric Quizon, Matthew Mendoza, and Caridad Sanchez, illustrates that truth about how well life can go on amidst entanglements.