There are many forms of social mobility.
Some people want generational wealth.
Some people want a master’s degree abroad.
Some people want dual citizenship.
And if aspiration is merely a drag for the soul, then perhaps mine is embarrassingly simple.
I want to become the 10/10 girlfriend of a chopped e-boy new money tech bro.
This is not about romance. This is about ontology.
The chopped e-boy new money tech bro occupies a very particular ecological niche in the Metro Manila food chain. He is neither old-rich enough to disappear from society, nor middle-class enough to possess humility. His watch collection functions as a secondary nervous system. His IEMs cost more than some families’ monthly grocery budget. His eyeglasses collection resembles a small independent optical clinic.
You know the type. He has the posture of someone who accidentally made money before developing a personality.
I do not envy him.
What I envy is the frictionlessness.
The incredible freedom of waking up and deciding your next personality update will cost ₱240,000 — all before breakfast.
The rest of us possess character development. He possesses purchasing power.
People think the fantasy is dating him.
Wrong.
The fantasy is becoming the woman who belongs there effortlessly. The one who they would call a 10/10 girlfriend. Not merely beautiful, but someone socially fluent. The woman who can enter a luxury boutique without mentally converting every price tag into months of savings. The woman who understands whatever new hobby his disposable income has unlocked for the month.
The woman whose life contains no bureaucratic suffering. No registrar’s office. No government forms. No existential dread induced by enrollment systems. Only brunch. Only Pilates. Only ambient wealth.
Luck is not dating the kumag. Luck is inheriting his complete lack of concern.
Because there is a unique psychological serenity possessed by men whose greatest problem is deciding whether a Rolex or an Audemars Piguet best complements a depressive episode.
Meanwhile, I am fighting for my life in Morayta. Inside cramped jeepneys. Through faulty enrollment portals. Amid 17 different crises before noon. He knows the best coffee shops in three different cities. I know which routes have the least traumatic traffic. His inconvenience is a delayed reservation. Mine is a delayed future.
The chopped e-boy tech bro checks the stock market and develops a niche interest in Japanese denim. I check my calendar and wonder when life became an endless series of things I need to fix. We are not playing the same game.
Perhaps the real tragedy is that I do not actually want to become the 10/10 girlfriend of a chopped e-boy new money tech bro.
I want affordable housing, universal healthcare, reliable public transportation, and a functioning state. I want a society where social mobility is not primarily achieved through strategic proximity to wealth.
Unfortunately, those demands sound significantly more unrealistic.
So for now, like every good neoliberal subject before me, I will continue mistaking class aspiration for self-actualization.
And, if necessary, settle for the tech bro.
- Valerie Rose V. Ferido
(Illustration by Elysse Nicolle Duller/FEU Advocate)