Me
I can’t wait to escape the walls of uni. Scaling them has crossed my mind. Once or twice. If only they are visible. I’ve also thought of doing stuffs that will make the school authority throw me out. But erm…I no just fit.
School
work can really be a distraction. It looks attractive. Especially, when it is
in the bikini of ajebutter schools. It
is when you are done with it that you smell the reality it has always shielded
from you. The fire that smokes out the rat-of-the-potential-in-you. That’s not
my problem anyway. I am not waiting for the distraction to clear off. I’m
facing reality. Head-on.
I
allowed the internet and its trappings spill out of my life for some time. Passively
o, because I could not but part the curtains for peeps sometimes. This was
after Vero’ and when I discovered that my undergrad Literature texts were piling
up.
In
no time, Facebook, Blogger, Google+,
Youtube and Twitter gave way to GoogleScholar and JSTOR. SparkNotes, on those
occasions when I fail to meet the deadlines for the reading of certain texts.
That didn’t prevent me from joining the Caine Prize arguments (‘brouhaha’ will
be unkind) though. I read the five shortlists and fortunately, the only story I reviewed (and kept on my PC) won the
prize. Don’t even try inferring anything from there. Of Caine Prize, miracles and
the cocoyam tubers thereafter, I’m saying no more. E yaf end like that.
Of
book reviews? That’s another part of me that suffered during my un-internet-ed
days. I did one though. I read Chimeka Garrick’s Tomorrow Died Yesterday and did what a friend called an ‘exo-skeletal
review’ here.
Gat to say something
now!
I’m
back online. And bored. The silence here is killing. It is too loud. I’ve got
to hush it.
I’m
back online and it’s like I’m seeing stuffs I don’t see before. Or maybe I’ve
been insensitive all this while. The Facebook updates (I haven’t noticed it on
Twitter though) I see these days are devoid of the intellectual depth I expect
from this generation of ours. It annoys me; makes me feel that the internet has
become a RANTOSPHERE. Log in. Post your personal rubbish. Earn likes and
shares. Comments, sometimes. Log out!
That
is not to say folks don’t put up reasonable stuffs on this medium. They still
do (and I love group discourses, like those that happened while waiting for the
announcement of the 2013 Caine Prize winner as well as those on the #childnotwife
blah). The occasional irrelevances that feature just get on my nerves.
I’ve
always thought that aside the social function the internet serves, it should
brim with ideas meant to transform the cosmos. But what do we see? Updates on
how delicious somebody’s last meal was; how a new pair of bum shorts stands gidigba
on some ass…
Abegi!
What significance lurks in those?
I
am reading The Diary of Anne Frank,
and I can’t but wonder what a thirteen year old would do with his or her device
if s/he was to be in little Anne’s situation, in this Facebook era. Here is a
possible update:
‘Just
checked into the bush to do a number two. Gush! My backside’s shrinking!’
‘So?’
is not always far from my reach when I see such. I make a long face, hurling expletives
at an imaginary poster.
Linda Ikeji could have passed for an imaginary character in some dreamer’s fiction,
some ten years ago. The internet has made her realistic. Through her, I’ve come
to realise the power the internet has in checking certain excesses in the
society. My premise is contained in the fear big shots have for bloggers.
I
wonder what people think when they say Linda is aproko. I ask them to take the
nearest route to hell. She is making all the money from the internet and there
you are, wearing your teeth and saliva, complaining that Nigeria is no good. You
are no better!
She
is making all the bread and there you are, spending on chatters that don’t
fetch you a dime in return. BBM. Whatsapp. 2go too!
See!
I know a friend who was outlived by his BB. It happened on a highway. He was
smiling, fingering lols and SMHs into his qwerty-key-ed device. A car kissed
his ass. And its driver honked: lol lol lol. He sped off. That’s all!
After
singing the last hymn at his funeral, I said lol in place of Amen. His end, not
the hymn’s, was funny. So is this generation. It perpetrates vices and
nuisances with what it could have channelled into earning itself a distinctive
voice. It’s the ‘no time’ generation.
The
‘no time’ generation conjures so many polopolo
(forgive Olamide’s patois) to produce speedy results. They gat no time. They
laugh scornfully at the old-school-ness and sluggish-ness of generations
running before. Daddies and mummies will never understand them. Try tracking them.
You’ll find them wandering aimlessly in the labyrinth that is them.
Excuse
Them!
They
own improvisations. Shortcuts. They avoid the sweat of the cursing Gawd of Eden,
yahoo-yahoo-ing to fame. They prefer internet porn to the fun derivable from
intellectual enterprises…
Though
I exist in the same temporal space with them, I am not one with them. I am not
of them. I hold a different view in matters that concern the internet and the
social media:
The
internet is a gift (certainly the best) to this generation; the symbol of a cunt
with many orifices. Like Farad, it is
a head made of many other heads. You do
it well or otherwise. I’ve seen folks give it orgasms. Don’t ask me how. Do it your own GOOD and PURPOSEFUL way.
***
Lit ‘n’ Life wishes our Muslim brethren a blessed Ramadan. Follow me on Twitter
