ma me mi mo mu

CAPTCHA, Whatcha, Gotcha the Whatchamacallit of Telling Machines I’m Human

Hung like a horse

I’m Filipino by birth. Filipinos are funny, except for Jo Koy on Easter Sunday.

As a child, we learn early on in school, a quote from Jose Rizal, our National hero,

He who doesn’t love his own language is worse than beasts and smells like a fish.

And that Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda are gods that came out of bamboo.

You see why a generation of Filipinos is a little bit, let me just say, ‘funny.’

If only Steven Spielberg and Jo Koy had asked me what is Filipino-funny, then Dreamworks’s Easter Sunday would have lasted in theaters a few more Sundays.

In the movie, ‘Minsa’y Isang Gamu-gamo’ or Once a Moth in English, the Filipino movie classic starring our National Artist Nora Aunor, had this famous line,

My brother is not a pig!

The movie wasn’t about being overweight, or a life of a pig as in Babe, it was about America’s military presence in the Philippines. Heavy stuff.

You see, animals are a sore spot in my Filipino identity. Between a rotting fish and a pig, I’m triggered every time I see a CAPTCHA that asks me to choose horses in a challenge-response test.

And even if I get it right the first time, I would be asked again and the reason for it is that I have to prove ‘I am human.’

What is CAPTCHA?

CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is a type of security measure known as challenge-response authentication. CAPTCHA helps protect you from spam and password decryption by asking you to complete a simple test that proves you are human and not a computer trying to break into a password protected account.

A CAPTCHA test is made up of two simple parts: a randomly generated sequence of letters and/or numbers that appear as a distorted image, and a text box. To passthe test and prove your human identity, simply type the characters you see in the image into the text box. — Thank you, Google, for that lovely answer.

But because of bad actors online, Google had to step up its game. You see, CAPTCHA is actually doing the world some good, think of Greta Thunberg's level of good.

And if you want to know more about CAPTCHA, read Clive Thompson’s Why CAPTCHA Pictures Are So Unbearably Depressing.

What has it done to humanity, to be forced to regard these images, for years on end? Cloudfare recently calculated that we humans collectively spend 500 years, every single day, looking at CAPTCHAs. It’s now common to chuckle over the deep irony that we’re all forced by robots to prove that we’re human

But these pictures? These pictures erode the soul. — Clive Thompson

I am human

Well, the last time I checked I am. Again, as a law-abiding netizen, I never had a problem with CAPTCHA. It is what you call necessary evil like paying taxes and watching the Kardashians.

It used to be letters, then it became images like choosing traffic lights or fire hydrants, then it became buses or planes, but only recently that Google is serving me — horses.

And just like the smelly fish and the pig, horses bring back painful memories.

Every time I see the CAPTCHA with a horse, I remember my ex-boyfriend, the one I wrote about in — The Terrible Price of Being an Asian Gay Man in a Relationship With a White Gay Man

When I caught him cheating, the reason he gave me was that I’m as cold as a Polar bear. Long before the movie Frozen, he told me I was like a block of ice in bed, meaning, to him I wasn’t human, but the Queen of England.

CAPTCHA, Whatcha, Gotcha

I can choose to be bothered by CAPTCHA or be thankful that each time I check this website, I have to prove to the world that I am human.

Because as a writer it is what makes us different from the rest,

to be able to see the beauty in humanity when there is none, to offer a glimmer of hope when all we see is defeat and to cast light when there is darkness.

If that sounds too cliché, it is but if I ever had the chance to join Ru Paul’s Drag Race werkroom, that would be my opening statement, as I sissy that walk while I ‘serve fish’.

Yes, if you are to meet my drag queen alter ego, I’m a fish, and she doesn’t get triggered by a horse, in fact, she likes her men — hung like a horse.

“Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.” — Some random quote from Queen Elizabeth II.

Thank you for reading, because as Mama Ru would say — reading is fundamental!

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