‘Noynoying’

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

A new word has been added to the always-interesting political lexicon of the country, where words like Brenda, TWA, We Bulong brigade has gotten in the decades past.

The word is “noynoying” and it refers to doing nothing, being clueless, unaffected, effete, and generally, being inert. It is supposed to refer to President Noynoy, whose enemies would want us to believe is really mentally wanting and has caused the slowdown in government. I don’t want to get into a discussion on whether that is true or not – that’s not my point here.

What is more interesting, to my mind, is the creative weight of the word and how it can be used in a campaign that will chip away at the support base of a very popular president. They’ve used all sorts of ttaditional and non-traditional means to demonize President Noy and nothing seems to have worked.

Now comes “noynoying.” Who among the enemies of the administration has thought of this is brilliant, because truth be told, this is something that can spin off into something bigger – if you are on the side against the President. It can grow into a full-blown campaign, and achieve what P-Noy’s enemies have thus far failed to achieve: to lower his popularity and pave the way for a take-over, perhaps and most possibly, by way of a coup.

“Noynoying” is inspired by the popular planking, wherein people would fall flat on any surface, usually public, and get photographed – the more dangerous, the more spectators, the better. People have planked on fastfood counters and lobby floors, in front of landmarks and on the edge of buildings.

For its advocates, “noynoying” can be done in any position – sitting down, lying, standing, whatever, done with a blank facial expression, perhaps with mouth agape. The bottomline is to act out “doing nothing” which is how his enemies want to paint P-Noy.

Already, photographs of people doing “noynoying” have surfaced on the Internet, and the sworn enemies of this administration have vowed to turn this into a fad, much the way planking is.

As a campaign to hit at the President, this is interesting. It is low-tech, is based on a popular fad, and pro-active. It gives people something to do as well as something to talk, and its all about how inept their president is.

This could get viral and big.

The only thing going against it, however, is the big question of whether people would in fact embrace “noynoying” the way they did planking. Will the public be as mindless to do “noynoying” as when they do planking? The thing with planking, you see, was people did not exactly know why they did it, they just did. Planking did not have political agenda – actually, it did not have any agenda at all – which was why it probably get that phenomenally popular. It was something people did just because…Will they have a similar attitude to “noynoying.”

Whether it develops into a campaign and whether that campaign succeeds remains a question, but it does say something about how politics have insinuated into our lives, it impacts even on our daily lingo. A few months back, I had to deal with a group which included a very intelligent, smooth-talking lady who defended a huge wrong she had done. She was so glib she nearly got away with it. A few meetings with her and one of us started calling her “GMA’s spokesperson.”

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