There is a scene in Mean Girls where Cady Heron realizes something horrifying.

She became Regina George.

Not overnight. Not through one grand decision. It happened slowly. One compromise here. One justification there. One small act she swore she would never do until she looked in the mirror and saw the very person she once despised.

The most terrifying thing about hypocrisy is that it rarely arrives with an announcement.

Sometimes, it arrives wearing pink on Wednesday.

For years, Nikka Gaddi built a platform criticizing public figures who transformed service into spectacle. She called out politicians who turned acts of generosity into branding exercises and treated communities in need as audiences for carefully curated images of compassion. She taught people to be suspicious of those who could not help without making sure everyone knew exactly who was helping.

Many followed her because she was right. Which is why this controversy feels less like a mistake and more like a contradiction finally made visible.

Because according to volunteers' accounts and transparency reports, donations intended for jeepney drivers allegedly funded stickers, tarpaulins, shirts, and tote bags carrying the name of the organization. Basic necessities reportedly carried organizational labels before distribution.

At that point, the question stops being complicated. How is this different?

How is placing organizational branding on rice and bread fundamentally different from the politicians she spent years condemning? How is using donor money for visibility different from the very politics of self-promotion she once framed as unacceptable?

Frankly speaking, the truth is that most people who do this do not think they are doing anything wrong.

Politicians who stamp their names on relief goods believe they are ensuring recognition. Officials who hang tarpaulins convince themselves that visibility builds trust. Nobody wakes up thinking they are exploiting people in need. That is exactly why this behavior survives scrutiny. It hides behind good intentions so comfortably that it almost stops looking like a problem at all.

But intent has never been the issue.

Impact is. And the impact is simple: people in need become part of someone else’s image. What makes this even harder to ignore is who the recipients are.

Jeepney drivers are not symbols. They are not props in a narrative about generosity. They are workers who have spent years absorbing rising fuel prices, economic instability, and institutional neglect. Every peso meant for them carries weight. Every diversion, even in the name of branding, comes at the cost of something tangible: another sack of rice, another meal, another day of relief.

Then came the Chips Ahoy moment.

It was never really about cookies. It was about the mindset behind it. The idea that the poor need to be introduced to “that kind of food” carries an assumption that poverty strips people of familiarity, taste, and agency. It turns working Filipinos into passive recipients of experience rather than people who already know what they need.

That is not compassion. It is condescension with better lighting. The poor do not need to be shown life. They are already living it.

A platform built on exposing performative service now faces accusations that mirror the very patterns it criticized. The language once used to question others now circles back with uncomfortable familiarity. Branding. Visibility. Image-making. The same concerns, only now attached to a different name.

At that point, principles are supposed to be tested.

But what often happens instead is substitution. What was once wrong becomes “complicated” when it benefits someone familiar. What was once unacceptable becomes “understandable” when intentions are assumed to be pure. The standard does not disappear, it just bends in the direction of convenience.

And perhaps that is the real disappointment of this entire controversy. Nobody expected perfection from Nikka Gaddi. But people did expect consistency.

The tragedy is not that Nikka Gaddi made a mistake. The tragedy is that she spent years writing entries in the Burn Book, teaching people exactly how to recognize performative service and self-serving politics, only to find herself accused of committing the same offenses. Like Cady Heron, she started out throwing stones at the Plastics and ended up taking a seat at their table. The worst part about becoming Regina George is that nobody plans on it. One day, you are criticizing the pink shirts. The next, you are wearing one.

Because if you spend years pointing at the Plastics and teaching everyone how to recognize them, you cannot be surprised when people notice that you are beginning to wear pink yourself.

The lesson of Mean Girls was never that Regina George was evil.

It was that becoming her was easier than anyone thought.

And perhaps that is the lesson here, too. The line between critic and hypocrite is frighteningly thin. One sticker. One tarp. One justification at a time.

Then one day, you look in the mirror and realize:

You became the Plastics.

The Frontman