One blog that is apparently taking the nation by storm is the one started by an Aussie gay guy who was conned out of  U.S.$70,000  by his socialite Filipino lover.  Brian Gorrell, the spurned lover and con victim, was apparently threatened with deportation and/or liquidation, which in the Philippines can be bought by anybody with a few pesos to spare, so he flew back to Australia and resorted to the internet, where he cannot be touched by Filipinos, no matter how high up the social ladder they may claim to be.

He started the blog with the goal of pressuring his ex-boyfriend of one-and-a-half  years to give him back his life savings.  He claims to have documentary evidence of the numerous requests for money by his ex-lover, posting a scanned copy of a printed email as a proof.  Emails from people reading his blog also allowed him to launch into a list of cons that his ex was apparently involved in.  In the process, he also started spilling the dirt on all the people they apparently hanged out with during his high society stay in the Philippines.  This is where it gets interesting, when he goes out on a limb and reveals drug dependency, extramarital affairs, penis sizes, hints at the identities of married gay men, and basically bitch slaps the high society crowd that his thieving lover apparently rolled with. He vows to go on spilling the dirt until he gets his 70,000 smackeroos back.  His battle plan is to embarrass Philippine high society until they pressure his ex to pay him back.

The juicy blog is now one of most popular websites in this country, which according to a sitemeter, is getting 363,036 unique visits in eight days, topping 100,000 page views in one day.  It makes the Daily Star website, is already formidable at 7,000 plus unique visits a day, look absolutely rural in comparison. Brian is the newer, more entertaining Jun Lozada of the Pinoy Internet community.  Jun speaks of $130 million  kickbacks, borjers, a greedy group plus plus, and a COMELEC commissioner, First Gentleman, Cabinet Secretaries, and even the president herself, who are supposed to be the stewards of this country; while Brian speaks of a $70,000 scam, cocaine use, a Gucci Gang, fashionistas and socialites who are supposed to be the cream of Philippine society.

Jun is invading schools and opposition rallies, while Brian is registering an insane amount of page views and comments, even claiming to have received over 8,000 emails ever since starting the blog. The silence the people they are both accusing, along with the confidence in the challenge to take the issue to court is also eerily similar.  Both have a uniquely effective way of connecting with their audience, have named names, do not have much evidence on some of their serious revelations, do not trust the Philippine justice system, and both are steadily earning a cult following as well as a price on their heads.   

Brian Gorrel's way of getting back at his gay lover and pressuring him to pay up is not the legal way.  Nor is it the right way, because by doing so he has dragged so many more people into the mess that is supposed to be between the two of them.  But because it is so damn juicy, and has become so frigging popular, it has become a very effective blunt object that may just allow him to fulfill his objective.  On the net you are nobody if you don't get page views.  How Brian got his page views up to that insane level is a testament to the viral nature of the Internet.  Now that his blog is this popular, all the people that have been involved can only hope it will run out of steam soon or for a new scandal to take its place so it can be forgotten or pray that he gets paid real soon.

Its funny how in this country the people who brag that they know how to make the system work for them have painted themselves into a corner by the people that they have scared enough to refuse to bite their bait and go to court anymore.  It looks like it is currently more effective to subject public figures to the court of public opinion, where the judges cannot be bought off or the system manipulated in favor of the accused. 

The public revelations of Jun Lozada and Brian Gorrel are examples of just how damaged our institutions are.  They both had to resort to extrajudicial measures to "get their life back".  Those of us who are watching at the sidelines may never know if we are being taken for a ride and where the truth really lies, and until our crumbling institutions get repaired, more and more people will take to the streets, or the internet, to wage their wars against corruption and theft.