That video of a gas station attendant chasing a car has been shared like it’s entertainment. For some, it passed as light content. For me, it raised a basic question: when did putting someone in that situation become acceptable and funny?
The scene hits a nerve because it mirrors something real. In many fuel stations, attendants carry the risk. If there’s a shortage, they answer for it. So when someone runs after a vehicle, it’s not hard to understand why. That instinct comes from responsibility, not from a script.
Now the explanation has come out. According to LTO chief and assistant secretary Markus Lacanilao, the driver is a vlogger who owns the station, and the person chasing the car is his employee. The LTO has identified the driver and will issue a show cause order. The claim is that it was staged, a prank where the “customer” was not real.
But even that version is hard to accept at face value. Anak ng kamote!
Because what it shows, staged or not, is a willingness to use a worker’s position as material for content. There’s a difference between creating content and setting up a scenario where someone under your authority has to play along. The imbalance is obvious. One decides; the other goes along because he has no choice but to obey the boss.
This is where the issue goes beyond one video. It reflects a growing habit of chasing attention first, then thinking about the consequences later. The line between creativity and exploitation starts to blur, and before long, anything can be justified as long as it trends.
We should be more careful about what we normalize.
There’s no shortage of ways to entertain people without putting someone in a spot like that. It doesn’t take much to ask a simple question before hitting record: who carries the weight of this, and who benefits from it?
Strip away the captions and the background music, and what’s left is a worker running after a car. Whether it was planned or not, that image says more than the explanation that followed.
Taragisan naman, wala na bang maisip ang ibang vloggers at content creators?
