#RP612FIC Is Back on Twitter With Hilarious Takes on Philippine History

(SPOT.ph) Independence Day is marked in many forms in today's world: roads, parks, and malls adorned with Philippine flags, various programs from historical bodies, and over on Twitter, when #RP612Fic starts trending.

Today we celebrate 125 years of freedom from Spain—and celebrate we did by scrolling through over a hundred #RP612Fic tweets. Not in the know? We got you. Essentially, “RP” stands for Republic of the Philippines, 612 is for June 12, and “Fic” stands for fiction. The hashtag offers a creative re-telling of Philippine history through the eyes of modern day Filipinos. With only Twitter's 250 character limit to tell a story, we can count on Filipino-coded images and videos to get the point across.

Though the hashtag is ripe with the latest pop culture references, the trend began over a decade ago by writer Paolo Chikiamco when social media was only beginning to take root in 2009.

Also read: Why Isn’t Independence Day in August?

The short history of #RP612Fic

It was at that time in 2009 when online campaigns via hashtags were on the rise, just as Chikiamco started to experiment with microfiction that could fit into Twitter’s former 140-character limit. Chikiamco told SPOT.ph in an interview: “I wanted to find a way to do something similar for writers…All we needed was a theme to celebrate and unify our work, and with the year’s Independence Day celebrations nearing, I proposed the first #RP612Fic—six-word micro speculative fic stories to celebrate Philippine Independence Day.”

The rest, they say, is history. Without fail, chronically online Filipinos flock to Twitter every June 12 to get a say in our nation’s history as a sort of annual tradition. The hashtag has since evolved over time and taken a life of its own, but Chikiamco said it remains unchanged at its core as a celebration of our shared past.

If anything, #RP612Fic shows us that what happened in the past wasn’t too different from where we are now—the hashtag bridging the gap between then and now through silly little tweets.

“People are still engaging with Philippine history on a day that is important to our history, reimagining and repurposing it—and in so doing, making it their own in some fashion,” Chikiamco told SPOT.ph. “I no longer follow the hashtag itself closely, but as long as it retains the elements of history, remixing, and enjoyment, then I’ll continue to be happy [when] it re-emerges every year.”

Also read: The Philippines Isn’t What It Used to Be

Best #RP612Fic tweets on Independence Day 2023

We round up some of the most hilarious tweets on #RP612Fic below.