The smart way to look away

By Noel Galon de Leon

I am, without hesitation, a fan of Regine Cabato. I read her posts on Facebook the way people read field notes from a frontline observer who keeps her eyes open even when the rest of us are exhausted. I follow her writing projects with genuine interest, especially those that deal with journalism, information ecosystems, and the fragile architecture of truth in the digital age. There is something almost comforting in how she writes. She makes the chaos of our media environment feel understandable, even when it is overwhelming. In a world where everyone is speaking but not everyone is saying something of value, Regine stands out because she knows when to explain the noise, when to cut through it, and just as importantly, when silence becomes the sharper tool. That balance is rare. It is also necessary.

For those who may not know much about her, Regine Cabato is a Filipino journalist who has distinguished herself through rigorous and brave reporting on political influence, digital manipulation, and the machinery of disinformation in the Philippines. She spent years as a reporter for the Washington Post, where she covered some of the most urgent, sensitive, and uncomfortable issues shaping modern Philippine society. She has written about troll farms, propaganda networks, influencers who operate like soft power brokers, and the ways political campaigns weaponize online communities. Her work earned recognition from respected international journalism organizations because she examines not only the stories themselves but also the deeper systems that sustain them. In addition to journalism, she is an award-winning poet. Her Palanca winning collection reflects her experiences in reporting, as if each poem were a small window into the emotional and psychological toll of bearing witness. She has endured harassment and threats as part of her work, yet she remains steady, continuing to tell stories without theatrics but with unwavering clarity.

Recently, she shared something that has stayed with me more than any long article or poem. She mentioned a concept from misinformation expert Matthew Facciani called critical ignoring. In an age when everyone glorifies critical thinking as the answer to everything, critical ignoring feels like a revelation. Critical thinking tells us to evaluate information carefully. Critical ignoring tells us that sometimes the smartest, safest, and most strategic choice is to refuse engagement altogether. It reminds us that not every harmful narrative is meant to be confronted head on. Some are designed to trap us in cycles of reaction. Some exist solely to provoke attention. Choosing not to engage is not ignorance or cowardice. It is strategic discipline in a landscape built to hijack attention. In digital culture, this discipline is almost rebellious.

Many well-intentioned people believe that calling out disinformation directly is helpful. They quote it, repost it, and share it with corrective captions. They think they are fighting back. In reality, the platforms do not care about the user’s intention. Algorithms do not understand the difference between criticism and support. They only detect engagement. Every repost or quote tweet, even those meant to contradict a lie, can still amplify it. Disinformation thrives on attention. When you share it in order to debate it, you may accidentally become part of the distribution system it was designed to use.

According to Regine, two practices are especially important for anyone who wants to respond to harmful or manipulative content online. First, never directly share the original content. Even if you intend to correct it, sharing it increases its reach and strengthens its hold on the platform. The creators of such content rely on outrage, anger, and moral indignation as fuel. By sharing it, you might hit their engagement targets for them. You might be exposing it to people within your own network who are more vulnerable to manipulation. It is always better to avoid giving malicious content the visibility it wants. Second, if you feel that addressing the content is truly necessary, use a screenshot and then frame the issue in your own words. When your correction appears directly in the visual, your audience sees the truth first rather than the falsehood. They understand the context immediately without having to engage with the source. In this manner, you create distance between your audience and the harmful material. You remain in control of the narrative. Your framing becomes the dominant frame rather than the one created by the manipulator.

This approach aligns beautifully with how Regine Cabato practices journalism. She does not merely expose lies. She reveals how they spread, who benefits from them, and what machinery keeps them alive. She does not fall into the trap of giving disinformation free publicity. She analyzes it, contextualizes it, and places it in the larger story of power and influence. She teaches us that not every harmful message deserves direct amplification. Some deserve to be studied. Some deserve to be reframed. Some deserve to be ignored entirely so that we can redirect our energy toward more meaningful work.

The modern information environment is hostile. It is crowded, relentless, and designed to keep people overwhelmed. Every moment invites us to react, to click, to argue, and to accelerate something that should have remained insignificant. In this kind of world, critical ignoring becomes both a survival strategy and an intellectual responsibility. It is an act of choosing clarity over chaos. It is a refusal to let manipulative content dictate the tempo of our attention.

Regine’s work embodies this understanding. She writes not to contribute to the noise but to create spaces where truth can be examined with care, where discussions feel grounded rather than reactive. She reminds us that discipline in attention is part of public ethics. She reminds us that we do not need to respond to every provocation, and that the most powerful stance sometimes is measured quiet, redirected focus, or a clean refusal to participate in the spectacle.

I remain a fan of Regine Cabato because she is proof that journalism can be sharp without being sensational, courageous without being reckless, and humane without being naive. Her work shows how powerful it can be to stand on the side of truth while refusing to play the game of those who distort it. And so, I take Facciani’s concept of critical ignoring seriously, not simply as a digital strategy but as a philosophy of engagement. In a world desperate for our attention, the refusal to look, click, or share becomes an assertion of power. It becomes a way of reclaiming our time, our patience, and our capacity to think clearly. It becomes a form of resistance.

Not every lie deserves a spotlight. Not every manipulator deserves our outrage. Sometimes the strongest response is to step away, gather our clarity, and speak on our own terms. In that simple but deliberate choice, we protect not only ourselves but the people who trust us to share what is true, thoughtful, and grounded.

Sometimes the sharpest intellectual move is simply not to engage.