If you are looking for human intelligence, if you are in search of originality, facts and brilliant submissions and guidance borne out of knowledge and experience, do not go to the social media platforms as your best bet.
The elitist Twitter and the Facebook are dumping ground of excess depression from the intellectuals and a fertile ground for sowing, at times, burnt, sometimes, half baked knowledge and information from the middle class of men and a reaping ground for the ignorant, the foolish and a scavenging college dropouts.
Other platforms, such as the Instagram and tik-tok are gutter that streams out the waste from the ever poisonous mind of human beings. To be fair, though, high class entertainment is abundant on these platforms. And business concerns reap big from there, too. Useful are these to the human mind or not depends on the societal and personal values of participators.
Please, don’t judge me for the generalisation. I’m not throwing away the baby along with the bath water. To me, when the bad is what weighs down the good and makes it little, the good and the bad all become bad; at least in reference sense.
Well, most Media Scholars say that the social media are not “media” and do not qualify to be. What I see myself are platforms of sharing views, experience etc by participators. It is generally agreed that the majority of those who participate are the Youth. Unfortunately, most of what they add there has no quality or value for positively developing the mind or the society.
They will reel out opinions and positions devoid of intellect, knowledge, experience or intuition. They will regurgitate what they read somewhere else without fully understanding it in the first instance. And they will vehemently try to defend it.
Significantly, too, they will use English words they don’t understand or fully understand. Most noticeably, they have funny words and phrases of English they use frequently and in common. Remember, they don’t have to know the meanings of these words they use.
It is on these platforms that age, position, experience, knowledge, are not respected. A Professor of History, for instance, will write on the evolution of modern Sokoto Caliphate and someone will make derogatory, abusive comment and try to rubbish the Writing. When you try to find out about the person, you find out that he’s a secondary school dropout who was never taught History!
In the same vein, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will, for instance, sign an economic policy and someone will abuse him silly, condemning the policy. When you try to find out, the person is only 17 years old, who has just failed his SSCE Economics Examination, and you begin to wonder when he has started knowing his left from his right?
It is on these platforms that you meet abundant teenagers, who have not read any history, comparing your present situation with what obtained forty years ago with trail of ignorant and hilarious submission all in their bid to rubbish their present leadership.
The worst part is you cannot observe this people. They are always “Mr Right”!
Here, on these platforms, every respected person or institution is not spared. From the Sultan, to the Emirs, to the Obas, to the Obis, to the revered Clerics and all opinion leaders…a child, from a corner of “his” room in his father’s house , holding an android phone is proving to be this lethal!
I do participate on these platforms. I write this because I do. I mostly participate in Facebooking. Whenever I make a post, I hesitate to read the comments on it, but I do, really. What I find difficult doing is replying to comments. Some of these comments are ignorantly made and disrespectful at the same time.
However, I don’t indulge myself. I expect anything coming from a market place or a motor park. Our elders say that even demons mingle with men in these two places. What, however, irritates me is how most of these participators understand nothing and are not ready to understand, instead, they will keep trailing West while you are trying to show them the right way to follow is the East.
The net has indeed, provided a converging school for the good, the bad and the ugly. You have to have a liver to enter this school. There’s amusement in it, there’s entertainment in it, there’s gossip in it, there’s news in it, there’s information in it, there’s knowledge in it and there’s friendship in it.
Equally in abundance is ignorance, hatred, bad mannerism, vendetta, show of cantankerous behaviour, truant attitude, disrespect to everything respectful, criminal attitude, deviant attitude, lurid display and lures, disregard for societal ethics and values, attempt at vengeance via public domain, etc.
This matter aptly qualifies the saying in Hausa when one is faced with a mixture of the wanted and the unwanted, “Hanjin Jimina, akwai na ci, akwai na zubarwa”. Truth is, we cannot do without participating in these platforms in this era. We can only cut off the poisonous intestine of the Ostrich, throw it distantly away and cook the safe part of it for our meal. That is all.
