Popular food vlogger Ninong Ry is known for his easy charm, his quick jokes, and the way he can make a sizzling street-silog taste like a feast on screen. But in a long, raw post this week he pulled the curtain back from the smiles and views—and laid bare what life really looks like for millions of Filipinos who live with floodwater as a constant.
“Buong buhay ko, binabaha na kami. Mahirap, pero naging parte na ng buhay namin,” he writes, and that opening line strikes like a simple, heartbreaking admission: this is not a temporary nuisance but a lived, inherited condition. He confesses the coping mechanisms—acceptance, adaptation, swallowing anger—but asks the question that keeps him awake at night: “Oo kaya natin, pero deserve ba natin?”
What makes Ninong Ry’s post so powerful is how ordinary details become evidence of an extraordinary injustice. He remembers cradling his newborn’s mother amid rising water, joking about carrying the baby in a basin, then watching prizes, family albums and motorcycles drift away. “Malaki ang perang nawawala tuwing baha pero pucha, hindi lahat nabibili ng pera,” he says—the bluntness cutting through any attempt to romanticize resilience.
He is honest about the grief disguised as humor. Online, his flood clips might look like laughing stock footage—“parang tinatawanan lang namin”—but behind the meme-ready smile is a man who has cried over losses that money can’t replace. He recounts doing the civic duty of following hearings and updates about the flood budget, only to feel “iniputan sa ulo” when alleged mismanagement surfaces. He does not claim to be an expert—he is a son of Malabon who knows what it feels like to rebuild, again and again.
There’s righteous anger, too. Ninong Ry rails against the repetition: “Isa, dalawang beses, baka ok lang e. Minsan delubyo talaga. Pero yung ganto? Yung paulit ulit na? Di natin deserve to.” He prays—part plea, part promise—that those responsible be held to account. And yet he’s clear-eyed about the reality: even when projects are started, budgets have to be found again, and who pays? “Satin pa din,” he writes.
This is not just one influencer’s catharsis. It is a civic document written in the voice of someone who reaches millions with lighthearted food videos but carries a community’s fatigue on his shoulders. It’s a reminder that behind every viral clip of knee-deep water is a person who lost a refrigerator, pictures, an irreplaceable memento—or a night’s sleep.
If the post does anything, it reframes how we watch: not as passive viewers of a spectacle, but as witnesses. Ninong Ry’s message is simple and urgent—Tama na to. Hindi natin deserve to. Ayusin nyo to. It’s a call for empathy, for policy that doesn’t reset each rainy season, and for accountability that treats recurring flooding as the systemic failure it is, not as folklore we laugh about until the next tide comes in.
In the end, the food vlogger’s words land like a plate set firmly on the table: shared, plain, and demanding attention. For his followers, his family, and the countless communities in flood-prone neighborhoods, the ask is straightforward—listen, act, and stop asking the same people to rebuild their lives again.