The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Alvin I. Dacanay
A week after popular noontime show Eat Bulaga’s “Sa Tamang Panahon” (At the Right Time) 36th-anniversary charity concert—which saw young performers Alden Richards and Maine “Yaya Dub” Mendoza, better known together as “AlDub,” meet unhindered in person for the first time—broke ticket and Twitter records, United States-based Internet media company BuzzFeed joined the growing list of foreign media firms that have featured or reported on the months-old fictional love team.
In a BuzzFeedBlue video, titled “Americans respond to #AlDub” and uploaded on the video-sharing site YouTube, four pairs of unnamed Americans are shown watching the first episode of the Eat Bulaga kalyeserye (a combination of the Filipino words for “street” and “series”) featuring Richards and Mendoza, and expressing confusion, amusement and admiration throughout.
“I feel like a detective trying to figure out what’s going on,” one man says in the video. He later compares AlDub to Pat Sajak and Vanna White of the long-running American game show Wheel of Fortune.
“Two young, good-looking people with interesting personalities—I think they’ll hit it off,” he says.
“He’s cute,” a woman in the video says of Richards, to which her partner remarks, “He’s hella hot!”
“She’s fine,” another woman says admiringly of Mendoza.
A few of the Americans jokingly copy AlDub’s trademark pabebe handwave, with one likening it to Queen Elizabeth II’s. Another tries to mimic Mendoza’s exaggerated, Jim Carrey-like facial expressions.
All have trouble pronouncing pabebe and the name of the enduring GMA network show correctly.
“We’re watching an unlikely couple go through the early stages of a romance,” a second man explains. “That awkward phase, where it’s like, how do I communicate? Should I text? No, wait. I’ll send her a dubsmash (video).”
After watching the video, the same man gives this mock advice: “Say goodbye to your Desperate Housewives, your Parks and Recreation,” referring to hit situation comedies that already ended their runs on American primetime television.
“Throw that shit out. Eat Bulaga is coming to the (United) States,” he says.
The comments posted below the video are mixed. Some commenters, obviously ardent AlDub fans, expressed their devotion to the couple, while others say the video left them baffled. A few tried to explain the AlDub phenomenon, posting links to articles about it.
On its website, BuzzFeed describes itself as a “social news and entertainment company.” It says it “is redefining online advertising with its social, content-driven publishing technology,” adding that it “provides the most shareable breaking news, original reporting, entertainment and video across the social web to its global audience of more than 200 million.”
The two-minute, 10-second video came after various foreign media outlets featured AlDub. Last Wednesday, the website of the venerable British broadcaster BBC News published an article by Heather Chen, titled “’AlDub’: A social media phenomenon about love and lip-synching”, which featured interviews with media personalities Daphne Oseña Paez and Rico Hizon.
That article has been shared on social media countless times by the love team’s fans and was cited in local news reports.
Last Thursday, Bloomberg Television program Trending Business focused on AlDub and its impact on Philippine sales and marketing in an interview conducted by host Rishaad Salamat with Ehden Llave Pelaez, social media manager at iSentia Brandtology, during its “Brandstanding” segment. The video of that interview was also shared on social media.
Also, it was reported by InterAksyon’s Edwin P. Sallan that Richards and Mendoza “are set to grace the cover of the December issue of the Asian edition of” Reader’s Digest, “the 93-year-old general-interest magazine that originated in New York in 1922.”
The international attention AlDub has received came after the “Tamang Panahon” concert, held at the Philippine Arena in Bocaue town, Bulacan province, on October 24 sold all its 55,000 tickets and the #AlDub hashtag generated more than 41 million tweets—a new record for social-networking site Twitter