A recent vlog showing two young ladies about to pay for their dinner at a 5-star hotel in Bonifacio Global City had netizens spewing vitriol at corrupt officials and their ilk.

These young things, pretty though their faces may have been, practically turned monstrous in the eyes of those who could not stomach their little repartee about how much their bill might be.

“Um, I think 350,” said one. (That’s P350,000, plebians.) “No, maybe 500,” was the other’s cutesy guess.

“Aww, we’re both wrong!” when the bill finally came. “We were too conservative…it’s 750!” Titter, titter.

The comments section on X exploded.

Of course, it did not help that the caption mentioned names associated with a congressman who has become controversial once again after his construction company landed on the list of 15 contractors that cornered the bulk of flood control projects under the Marcos administration.

Of course, the vlog was made up! How could two little girls eat close to a million pesos worth of food? The post offered up a POV (that’s point of view, Baby Boomers, meaning they were acting out a part to make a point). It came out in bad taste because of the current heat government officials are getting for ghost projects and luxury watches, among other excesses.

In any case, bloodstreams boiled and Filipinos were once again reminded of the lavish lifestyles certain families have been living — mostly curated and presented in their Gen Z progeny’s TikTok feeds.

These accounts, by the way, may have already been cleaned up, after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered lifestyle checks on the entire executive branch, pronto.

Marcos Jr., we are well aware, has spent practically his whole life in the Palace. He knows about the trappings of wealth. He did not document them in vlogs to show off, no, but he received the best of the best that his parents could provide.

Still, how would such a check turn out? And even if this order should even see fruition, with parallel probes by other agencies tasked to check and balance, will we let the findings distract us from the real issue: who were responsible for those flood-control projects that were either sub-standard or nonexistent?

Lifestyle checks, kicking off with the outing of the statements of assets and liabilities or SALNs of officials, were practically barred by then-Ombudsman Samuel Martires, who thought these could be used by media and political rivals to destroy reputations.

Each past Philippine president seems to have had the threat of a lifestyle check figuring in their terms (Gloria Arroyo with her Presidential Anti-Graft Commission; Noynoy Aquino with his Office of the Deputy Executive Secretary for Legal Affairs; and Rodrigo Duterte with his Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission).

The Philippines has a law against graft and corruption: Republic Act 3019, crafted “in line with the principle that public office is a public trust, to repress certain acts of public officers and private persons alike which constitute graft or corrupt practices or which may lead thereto.” It is a document approved on 17 August 1960, and may easily be read by the public upon simple googling. If only the documents of public officials were that simple to access…

Corruption was — and is — a problem never before solved. Unfortunately, it has reached a level that overflows like a flood full of muck, straight back into our backyards.