21/09/2026
๐๐ซ๐๐ฃ๐ฎ๐๐ข๐๐ ๐ข๐ฌ ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐ ๐ฉ๐ฎ๐ง๐๐ก๐ฅ๐ข๐ง๐
We can call out a student without turning their degree into a slur, and we can most definitely question an institution without hiding behind the safer confines of a meme.
Apparently, a licensed profession can now be reduced to a synonym for stupidity, and all it takes to make the insult palatable is the usual โeme lang!โ and, of course, a cheap laughing emoji. The viral โI feel so Criminology rnโ trend may simply have been for a good laugh, but not everyone found the joke, or the stereotype thereof, amusing.
This became especially apparent when an ABS-CBN-linked social media page reposted the trend, effectively turning an entire profession into the butt of a joke about being bobo, lutang, or technologically inept.
But then again, what exactly is funny about it if not the stereotype? Surely the audience is already well aware of what they are supposed to be laughing at, and that is precisely what should raise some eyebrows. Nobody needs to elaborate on the supposed incompetence, provide context, or even spell out the insultโ the stereotype had already done the insulting for them, reducing the entire profession to a mere word: idiotic.
The usual defense, of course, is that nobody actually means it. It is just a joke, after all. Fair enough. But that is a rather convenient excuse when the joke itself depends on everyone already knowing the stereotype. Nobody has to believe that every criminology student is incompetent. They just have to know that this is what the joke is getting at, and apparently, that is enough to get everyone at the table laughing.
And once someone actually has the balls to question it, suddenly they are the one who canโt take a joke, too sensitive, serious, or just another killjoy.
To be fair, the stereotype did not exactly materialize out of thin air. There are embarrassing clips, screenshots, and anecdotes of the aforementioned students struggling with concepts they should have already encountered in lower levels of education.
Some of them really do deserve to be called out, though the same sentiment can be applied for every other student, regardless of their degree. If you are already at the college level and still fumbling over something you should have learned years ago, people are most certainly bound to ask questions.
Yet somehow, the latter has become the easier punchline. That is also why it would be dishonest to pretend that this whole trend is solely a Criminology problem. โI feel so LPTโ, on the other hand, has already been dragged into jokes about grooming and pe******ia, while โI feel so Educationโ has its own set of jabs, and there will probably be another course waiting in line once the internet algorithm gets bored.
But perhaps the internet has made it far too effortless to make an embarrassing specimen for a representative sample. One screenshot of a student giving a boneheaded answer can tell us something about that student. It does not, by some miraculous Facebook feat, tell us what an entire course or discipline is capable of. The people who answer correctly, understood the lesson, or simply went about their day without making a fool of themselves are, unsurprisingly, nowhere to be found in the viral compilation, and that is because arguably, competence is terribly boring content.
Criminology, for one, is hardly some glorified exercise in knowing how to arrest somebody. Under Republic Act No. 11131, the profession covers criminal jurisprudence and procedure, law enforcement administration and crime detection regulated under the Professional Regulatory Board of Criminology and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).
So when a student cannot answer something painfully basic, by all means, question the student. But do not pretend that a professional field with a defined curriculum, licensure system, regulatory board, and standards can be reduced to the intellectual shortcomings of whoever happened to embarrass themselves in a clip.
There is also something telling about how these course names are used. Years of training and examinations, reduced to something you can type and defecate on in five seconds. Quite a feat.
And before the self-deprecation argument comes knocking, yes, people can make fun of their own professions. They can roast and insult their own courses, complain about their instructors, and laugh at the absurdities that come within their area of responsibility. But laughing at your own house does not mean everyone else gets a free pass to tear it down. Making fun of yourself doesnโt exactly give everyone else the autonomy to do the same.
Nor does โeveryone get stereotypedโ settle anything. If the internet can come up with a caricature for nearly every profession under the sun, that says more about its appetite for easy targets than the people being caricatured. A lawyer being called greedy does not make greed part of the job, just as one foolish answer from a criminology student does not make incompetence part of their course.
And no, the issue is not whether these jokes are allowed to exist. Of course they are. The more uncomfortable reality is that we have become accustomed to laughing at the fact that we no longer stop to think about what the joke asks us to assume. If the punchline primarily depends on a profession being stupid, pedophilic, incompetent, or otherwise defective, then the stereotype is hardly just decoration.
That becomes much more challenging to shrug off when larger platforms amplify it. An ordinary user making a joke and a media-linked page with a reputation for reputable journalism are not quite the same thing. The latter has an editorial choice to make, and quite frankly, an audience to consider. Reach does not exactly make stereotypes anymore truer; it simply puts more eyes on it.
If the student gave a foolish, or otherwise ridiculous answer, scrutinize the answer. If students are genuinely leaving school unprepared, then turn your attention towards the instructors, the curricula, and the institutions responsible for preparing them. If there is something rotten within the profession itself, then bring the receipts and call it out. But, dragging the course name into every embarrassing incident and dismissing it as a mere โgagโ to sidestep accountability is nothing more than cowardly.
And perhaps, that is what needs to change on our end, too. We do not have to treat every viral remark as harmless just because it ends with the typical โeme langโ. We can giggle at our stupidity without making an entire profession carry it on its back. We can call out a student without turning their degree into a slur, and we can most definitely question an institution without hiding behind the safer confines of a meme.
There is nothing bold about stapling one personโs mistake to an entire profession and calling it humor, for prejudice is not, and should never become a punchline.
Article by Nicholas John Vidal
Illustration by Christine Marie Cainong
Layout by Jill Leo Camarador
