There is a now-forgotten quiz show in the 1970s with one unforgettable episode. One of the questions asked in the contest was: “What is the common name of sodium chloride?” The answer, of course, is salt.

The contestant, a housewife in her 30s, was starting to get jittery and that prompted the host to give her a clue. “Ito ay inilalagay n’yo sa itlog ng asawa n’yo tuwing almusal. (You put this in your husband’s eggs for breakfast.)”

The contestant’s eyes immediately lit up — like she finally figured out the name of the elf in the Rumpelstiltskin Brothers Grimm fairytale. With glistening excitement, she grabbed the microphone and shouted to the world: “TALCUM POWDER!”

Willie Revillame and ‘Wowowee’

In summer of 2010, Willie Revillame was doing his quiz show on Wowowee on ABS-CBN and this was one of his questions: “What is the name of the country where Canadians live?” One of the contestants answered: “CANADIA!”

Revillame simply laughed off the contestant’s wrong answer and dismissed it as one of the funny moments in the program.

Jobert Sucaldito, however, was not amused. Sucaldito was then hosting a radio program in ABS-CBN’s DZMM and denounced what happened in that Wowowee episode.

Revillame didn’t take Sucaldito’s criticism well. He threatened to resign from the show if ABS-CBN didn’t fire the radio host. Network executives didn’t take action and so Revillame left ABS-CBN and began his life as a Wandering Jew. He moved from network to network and is now seen on various platforms.

Robi Domingo and ‘Pinoy Big Brother’

In 2022, Pinoy Big Brother host Robi Domingo gave a quiz among teen housemates and asked for the acronym of the three martyred priests during the Spanish Occupation. The priests, of course, were Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora — collectively known as Gomburza.

Putting together the first syllables of the clerics’ given names, the teen contestants came up with this acronym: “MA-JO-HA.” Had there been a guillotine on the set that time, Domingo probably would have signed up those contestants for execution.

‘It’s Showtime’

On It’s Showtime recently, the segment “Laro Laro Pic” challenged a group of contestants to identify photos related to Philippine culture. The contestants failed to recognize pictures of arnis, Mayon Volcano, anahaw and the Philippine terno. But the most embarrassing moment came when a contestant couldn’t figure out a photo showing Malacañang.

Various clues were given, but the contestant, a 20-year-old student, dug her grave deeper and deeper with each try. “Municipio.” Of course, that was wrong. When one of the hosts gave the clue “Mala…,” the contestant said: “Malabon.”

That episode of It’s Showtime where the contestant failed to identify the photo of Malacañang is really the pits. She and the other game participants there who didn’t recognize the other images would have made a summa cum laude out of that housewife who answered “talcum powder” half a century ago.

The woman who didn’t know the scientific term of salt could actually be forgiven. Maybe she simply didn’t excel in Chemistry. But failing to identify a picture of Malacañang? No wonder netizens are now calling out the Department of Education. But which Education Secretary do we blame? The quality of education in the Philippines has deteriorated a long time ago.

The situation worsened with the advent of the Internet, which — ironically enough — was developed to make information more accessible. But not everything on Google and Wikipedia is accurate. And now, everyone has become even lazier with the introduction of ChatGPT.

Back in the day, people read books, magazines and periodicals. There were public libraries in every neighborhood. Book lovers relished every word, sentence and paragraph that jumped out of every page of novels and even biographies of significant people in the world.

People now read online. But it’s not the same. There’s something distracting about reading on the internet. Ads pop up every so often. Physical books feed the soul. Articles online don’t even stick to the brain that long for some reason.

Social media has damaged at least three generations: the millennials, the Gen-Zs and, now, the Gen Alpha. Instead of reading literary works, young people now follow the Instagram accounts of celebrities who have yet to prove anything concrete in this world. And why are they so entertained with the worthless pranks of content creators?

UST and the travel vlogger

Of course, there are also useful information on the Internet. At least, those posted by knowledgeable and responsible social media users. But beware of ignoramuses that populate YouTube.

Travel vloggers are all over. But be discerning about the YouTube content creator you follow. There is one American who visited the España campus of the University of Santo Tomas (UST). A click on Google will reveal that this Catholic school was established in 1611. And so, this American travel vlogger oohs and aahs while giving a tour of UST — marveling over these old buildings that were built during the Spanish era. If only those structures could speak, so he said. If those buildings could indeed speak, they would have called him idiot.

The UST campus in the district of Sampaloc wasn’t even there until 1927! For three centuries, UST was in Intramuros! Incredibly enough, there are some Filipinos who also believe that UST had been in its present location since forever. Sorry to disappoint you, but our national hero, Jose Rizal, never had the experience of “making tusok-tusok” the fish balls along Dapitan or in any of the “Hepa lanes” (Hepa for hepatitis) surrounding the campus.

Another travel vlogger and the US cemetery

More enraging is this nincompoop of a travel vlogger — another American — who gave a tour of the American cemetery near Bonifacio Global City (BGC). In his spiels, he claimed that the Philippines and the US are “BFFs” (best friends forever) because “the US saved the Philippines from invasion TWICE.”

Did he mean the Spanish-American war? But we had already gained our independence when the Americans came to our shores! And then came the bloody American takeover where US troops killed more Filipinos than Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War.

And by the second time, did he mean that period when America liberated us from the Japanese oppressors? But that wasn’t even our war to begin with!

Is it still surprising that most young people of today get all their information wrong? And let’s not even talk about the proliferation and peddling of fake news here.

The world is in topsy-turvy today — what with the ongoing war in the Middle East and in other parts of the globe. But there should be a silver lining to the oil crisis we are experiencing at the moment. Is the current global situation correcting whatever is wrong with humanity today?

With the price of fuel shooting up, maybe there will be less materialism in this world. And, yes, even less fake news. Air travel will be too costly that not every amateur documentarist will be able to do video content about tourists’ spots and, in the process, spread false information about these destinations.

Travel is another form of education. Those travel vlogs are welcome — but only if those contents are even just half as good as those churned out by Susan Calo-Medina on Travel Time in the past. The best travel/food documentaries are created by Erwan Heussaff and his FEATR team today. Here’s hoping they continue with their YouTube show in spite of the increase in the price of gas since they move from place to place.

But what about the other content creators? Maybe the oil crisis will weed out undesirable social media personalities — let’s keep our fingers crossed.

We all have to bite the bullet with this global crisis since the prices of commodities are already starting to soar. But this may be the universe’s way of saying we have to go back to simple, basic living and embrace only what is truly essential.

With those social media distractions gone, we may have to return to reading the classics instead of watching those cheap artificial intelligence (AI)-generated dramas that only have one plot: Some simpleton is maltreated by everyone — only to be revealed in the end that he is the CEO (chief executive officer).

Perhaps we will start to hero-worship again scientists, novelists and leaders who made significant contributions to the world instead of content creators who push us to be savages by eating mukbang style.

Maybe we will get interested once more in the study of geography — so that we don’t refer to the country where Canadians live as “Canadia.” Whew!

Finally, perhaps we can move on a slower pace — we’re short on fuel, after all — and take time to appreciate Philippine architecture — like Malacanang, for example. But most important of all — for us to be able to find the chance to get off social media for a change to clear our heads and be able to discern who we rightfully enthrone in that seat of power come 2028.