When hiya no longer applies to nepo babies

Bernadette Soriano

Hiya has long been flattened into the English word “shame,” but that translation does it no justice. In our culture, hiya is not just the blush of embarrassment—it is an intricate form of social intelligence, a finely tuned awareness of the invisible lines between self and others. It is, at its most profound, a recognition that we are always moving within shared space.

We call it huya in Hiligaynon, ulao in Cebuano, bain in Ilokano, but in every tongue it carries the same moral geometry: a reckoning with one’s place in the web of relationships, a willingness to temper personal desire so as not to rupture social harmony. This is not passivity; it is moral choreography, the discipline of being careful with the dignity of others.

When hiya is present, privilege bends toward responsibility. When absent, privilege hardens into spectacle. And in the influencer economy, where reach often replaces merit, hiya has been replaced by something shinier: branding.

The catwalk as inheritance

Their names are well-known in certain circles: Gela Alonte, Claudine Co, Jammy Cruz, Vern Enciso, Verniece Enciso, Jasmine Chan, Christine Lim, and an unnamed eighth, ninth, tenth, who could be anyone within the concentric rings of privilege. They are the “devils who wear Prada”—not for their sartorial choices alone, but for the machinery of advantage beneath them.

Gela Alonte, for instance, often served as proof that privilege can come pre-installed: daughter of Biñan Vice Mayor Angelo “Gel” Alonte and niece of former Representative Len Alonte-Naguiat, their family dynasty has been steering Biñan’s political ship for decades. Claudine Co, meanwhile, seems to have been born into corporate pipelines: daughter of Hi-Tone Construction co-founder Christopher Co, and niece of Congressman Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co, whose companies consistently land flood-control contracts from DPWH, almost as if an invisible scroll executed the bid results early. Jammy Cruz is whispered to hail from another construction-entrenched lineage, one that “decides winners before bids are submitted,” according to netizen commentary: ephemeral, unverified, yet telling how privilege leaves impressions without official documentation.

Then there are Vern and Verniece Enciso, the twin aesthetic of leisure entrepreneurship: ex-figure skaters turned mega influencers with a perfume brand (VV & Co.), globe-trotting wardrobes, and enough luxe editorials to fill a library of aspirational living. Their rise—stacked with romantic wedding gowns and hashtagged travel diaries—is less a biography and more a well-curated exhibit of inherited comfort. Public commentary breathes this tension out: as one Redditor mercilessly put it, “they neither offer value nor entertainment… purely narcissistic self-promotion”; another cracked that their sedate luxury seems tethered to the BOC, reminding everyone that for them, the privilege buffet comes with a taxpayer side. 

Their social media feeds narrate a self-made journey, but the backstory is threaded with the quiet constants of nepotism: family capital cushioning every risk, inherited networks smoothing every opportunity, surnames functioning as VIP passes into rooms others cannot enter without merit.

And yet, public reaction to this privilege is fleeting. When Kitty Duterte was accused in her viral post of “wake and bake”—an allegation that trended, inspired memes, and sparked moral debates—the noise lasted barely a week. No sustained calls for accountability, no deeper conversation about privilege and impunity. The outrage dissipated as quickly as it arrived, replaced by the next influencer trip or curated OOTD.

What allows this cycle to persist is not just the short attention span of online culture, but the absence of hiya in those at the center. A person with hiya feels the weight of the public gaze—the scrutiny, envy, and quiet resentment that come with standing in the space  where others cannot follow. Without it, visibility curdles into entitlement.

The fashion of forgetting

The cycle is predictable: online outrage flares, facts are unearthed, names trend and then silence. In the influencer economy, scandals have the lifespan of a limited-edition drop. By the time screenshots and exposés have made their way through social feeds, the algorithm has already moved on to the next spectacle.

This impermanence benefits those without hiya. The lack of lasting consequence means every misstep can be outwaited, every controversy replaced with a carefully timed brand launch, a glossy vacation reel, or a strategic charity appearance. The public, conditioned to consume novelty, rarely demands follow-through.

What is lost in this churn is the memory of patterns: the recognition that each scandal is not an isolated slip, but part of a larger structure where privilege repeats itself with impunity. Without the cultural discipline to hold the powerful in sustained scrutiny, hiya erodes not just for individuals, but for the collective.

Hiya beyond embarrassment

Here is the deeper failure: we have allowed hiya to be treated as a weapon for controlling dissent, rather than a compass for self-regulation. It is often invoked to silence — Walang hiya ka, meaning “how dare you speak up”—when in truth, its higher function is to keep one’s power from spilling into arrogance.

A public figure with hiya knows that privilege should move quietly, without needing to be flaunted. They recognize the imbalance in the room and adjust accordingly; not to hide their fortune, but to ensure it does not humiliate those without it. This is not about erasing wealth; it is about using it with an awareness that other people’s dignity is part of your own.

But in the curated world of the “devils who wear Prada,” hiya has been demoted to an aesthetic—the humblebrag caption, the charity gala photo op, the token “I’m just like you” post. It is no longer the internal check that governs choices; it is an external image to be managed.

The rest of the ‘devils’ is a reminder that nepotism is rarely an individual fault line; it is a system of inheritance that thrives where hiya has thinned out. And if sleuthing remains confined to Reddit threads and coffee-shop whispers, this thinning will continue until hiya becomes a relic, more nostalgia than norm.

To reclaim it is to reverse its misuse. It is to insist that hiya begins where it was always meant to: in the mirror, not in the mouths of those policing others. It is to make sure that the social intelligence we once prized is not drowned out by the noise of self-promotion.

Because without hiya, the runway is infinite—and those who walk it will never once think to look down.