Keeping Up With Social Media

Keeping Up With Social Media

Social media is the greatest most destructive millennial development. It has turned the whole world into a global street so that you can access information and people with no fuss. Now while that’s mostly a good thing, you stumble on things that make you question your choices.

One of the very first platforms to reach Nigeria was Hi-5. I didn’t know about the Hi-5 craze until it was almost over and almost all my friends were on it. I wasn’t particularly crazed about the prospect of meeting strangers I couldn’t actually meet.

Then came Facebook, then 2go, then BBM now these I actively participated in. So I watched the metamorphosis of those platforms from media of connecting with people to a means of corrupting people. 2go was the worst.

People thought the most they could do was chat up friends and family, make new friends, try to lure people of the opposite gender into a flirting spree, exchange phone numbers etc. When I’d log on 2go and see the nonsense going on in different groups, I’d think that is the height of it. Little did I know that it was a saintly arena compared to the future decay.

Now many of those social media platforms are just mine fields of indecency, insecurity, narcissism, immorality and many mental ills.

People utilize it for social harm and gratification out of that than for social good and a free conscience.

The timelines of Facebook are marred with lies and time-wasting stories rather than important news and socializing.

The pages of Instagram are riddled with gossip and name-calling rather than sharing and catching up.

The streets of 2go are deconsecrated by immoral ideals and vapid talk.

Even LinkedIn, a professional networking site has more love and immoral proposals in the message sectionthan work proposals.

Youtube content helps you waste hours and plenty data watching people spew useless stuff which you won’t remember in a few hours time.

Snapchat affords you a chance to watch small children ‘live there best lives’ according to social aesthetics even if they aren’t necessarily happy about that and yes, you can follow everyone’s lives right up to the colour of their underwear because that’s the whole point. Then after that, gossip about what you watched in the Dms.

And then when they have adulterated the true use of the platforms, they meet on WhatsApp.

If you wish to maintain your dignity as a person do not be caught dead roaming the streets of some platforms because they are a one-chance street.

And to maintain your sanity in others do not believe a word posted or a smile splayed or a story said or a life displayed because anyone can take a happy picture, but only a few are truly happy after the shot.

Now all of these realisations took time and change to register. And according to the true nature of the platforms, it is a duty upon you to keep up with trends, literally follow the lives of the people you are following(because you have nothing better to do), suck up all the idealogies and propaganda they subtly release because that is about the aim of the apps and be a merry smartphone puppet.

Now all that notwithstanding, social media is an absolutely amazing tool for those who actually know how to use it for the best and that’s those who know how to develop themselves, network, form meaningful relationships or strengthen existing ones, be productive, impact others, source for jobs or further their businesses and generally positively develop themselves.

Just know that it should be more for keeping in touch than gossiping and stalking. It should be more for linking up with like minded people than negative ones, it should be more for putting your capabilities out their than putting your life and beauty none of which are your achievements.

The Season Of Moral Decay

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Life Makes No Sense? Sometimes, Mine Doesn’t Either.

Life’s not meant to make sense all the time.

Sometimes we don’t make sense and life has no sense and nothing makes sense.

It’s a topsy turvy world. An hourglass kind  of place, today you are high up the contentment scale and tomorrow, rock bottom.

I won’t tell you that you can do it and you’ll be fine and you should pick up the fallen senses and build a six story mansion in the sky because then I’ll just be like a con-artist motivational speaker.

I’ll tell you that in my years on earth (which might seem not that much) I figured that you are entitled to your plenty ‘life is not making sense periods’.

It’s not necessarily teenage years or mid-life crises, everything in between counts and should not be downplayed.

If life makes sense 24/7/4/12 then I doubt life will even be any fun or interesting. I mean you’ve figured everything out, move on to the next level.

There’s a reason why we need God , there’s a reason why we need to confide and seek His guidance, if everything is spelt out then I hardly think we will.

The figuring out part, the contemplation on direction, the part where you are trying to reconcile who you really are, who you thought you were and who you’d like to be , the confusing part (who should I be with, what’s best for me), the unraveling part, the puzzle-solving part of life is actually 80% of it and eventually it gives life meaning and keeps you on your toes and growing.

So life doesn’t make sense? Yup, mine too most times is jumbled up but las las, we go dey alright.

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My Heart Is Sulking Today

My heart is throwing tantrums today

Telling me to make it stop

Make her stop feeling the varying dark emotions

Which cease her at random moments

Like many different cards slotted in the same money machine.

 

 

My heart is sulking today

She said I didn’t swipe away

From the photos of dead bodies that lay

Strewn everywhere on the streets of Israel.

 

My heart has gotten herself a pair of muffs 

To shut her ears to all the stories told

About pain and struggle and torment children face 

My heart looked at my lifestyle and said ‘theirs is no way to live’

What my heart fails to get is that it touches me too

It shakes my soul the stinks of this world too

But I can barely do anything to alleviate it

And that makes my heart agitated.  

She said she can’t believe I can be so heartless.

 

 

Today my heart is shedding uncontrollable tears

A small girl, barely an infant tore her life to an end

A baby who can not say Mama has been raped 

A man was told it isn’t his place to feel any pain

And try as I may

To calm her down

Tell her that I just can not scream for them stop

My heart has a mind of her own

So she cries some more

And I wonder

Who is a bigger coward

I, who’d watch sorrow play

And do nothing thinking I can’t stop it

Or my heart,  who’d shut her ears 

To the cries of the world

Believing she can do nothing to make it stop.

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Wrapped In Ribbons

I
It came wrapped in ribbons
Bright red ribbons and cheap glossy paper wraps
The first time it came
My mom beat me up blue
She said you are only in primary 5
What do you know about love
I still hate that boy till today
His unsolicited attention caused me pain
I remember it was on a valentines day.
II
It came wrapped in spiky ribbons
This time it had a face
And a very beautiful face I must say
It placed itself in my way all day
Till I took notice of it and called it bae
And bae made sure he left my heart a wreck
III
It came wrapped in a brown sheet
With a tie hanging from it’s square neck
And it had a voice of authority
Which affected me like a placebo
It was time, they said
To accept the gift that came
But they didn’t know I had already accepted me.
IV
We are to ourselves, gifts
Others, a bonus
Large bonuses
Negative bonuses
Beautiful bonuses
Life-changing bonuses
But first, you are the gift
And without them, you still exist
But with them, life has a much deeper meaning
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Wattapad- Hansatuu
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When Love Hits

She was in a rush.  She was in an extreme hurry trying to unmangle the mixed up chatter of instructions in her head of what to buy and what to do and who to call and what to say and what to cook and… long what to’s.
She hardly slept the night before and had to leave home early the next day because the curtains are not in the right colour and the carpet which was purchased months ago had the wrong pattern and it could be overlooked but that was the same pattern for the custom-made sofa fabrics so… Oh and the gown for the second dinner was an inch too lose on the top and an inch too tight by the knees, bride could fall while walking. Somehow, brooms and packers for the brides house had been conveniently forgotten and oh!  Match sticks and ingniters, with coals please, you know, for incense.
Her brain was buzzing with a long list of instructions as she manuovered through the market with the expertise of one who went only once in about 4 months. She hadn’t taken her bath, she felt uncomfortably sweaty, she hadn’t even brushed and the long hijab was whooshing all over her. She cut through lanes and somehow always ended up in the vegetable place. She sighed in frustration and turned back through the same place she came from. Her sister was in full bridezilla mode. The ugly kind.
She finally located the place where the nuts and screw people where. She needed screws because some screws for the bag hanger were missing. She opened her wallet and got a wink by emptiness, no cash.
She sighed in frustration and opened her mouth to ask to transfer, but how could they, they barely have a standard wheelbarrow.  She decided to try her luck still.
“Please um!. Please do you accept transfers?”. She asked in a small voice. She felt suddenly so nervous
 and stupid.
The old man with the screws turned to his counterpart,  a young man selling shoe polish and brushes. ‘Ka gane me take nema?”. Old man had no idea what she was proposing.
‘Transfer? As in can I transfer to your bank account?’.
Young man caught the word ‘bank’ and hissed. “
You want me to keep my money in the bank so they can use it to fund Buhari’s election?” He said in Hausa. ” You people think you are wise but you are the ones being fooled”.
She left without the screws, afraid that maybe a screw in her head was loose.
She quickly hurried to the ATM ignoring 30 missed calls from her sister, mother, her Aunt and her sisters friend.
She waited on the line for ages before it was her turn. And then the card decided it was comfortable inside the ATM so it stayed in. Frustrated,  she left the card inside noting to file a complain after her self-promised 24 days of hibernation after the wedding.
She had just exited the bank gates when she caught sight of him. She had just concluded that her day could only get worse when she saw him, she couldn’t have been more wrong. Her sister had always said she’ll meet her ‘the one’ during her wedding. She was right but not in her wedding.
He was standing on the opposite side of the road looking all shades of manly gorgeousness. She knew it then, in the marrow of her bones she knew she had to look no further because if the way he reacted to the sizzle of tension that sparked for those seconds their eyes clashed was any indication, he was also suckered. Then she felt the pull.
It was an unexplainable force of attraction like a hand slowly luring her forward towards the half of her soul. She was oblivious to the world around, to the people passing and life moving- they all were mere blurred edges in her story. The light was his smile as he edged nearer to her too, the moth was she, both to each other.
And then it hit her, from nowhere. The car tried to screech to a halt but it was going too fast and the lady in long hijab was deaf to it’s honks.
She felt nothing but a sense of somethings presence.  Or someone.  She tried to pry her eyes open, she knew he was beside her where he was meant to be but caught only a glimpse of those dark intense and very familiar eyes before the pain took over racking her every sense and she could feel her soul depart.
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Taming Of The Shrew

She got up all bleary eyed and puff faced when she heard the locks turn. He was back.
He stepped and shut the door behind him before looking at her. He almost sighed in welcome frustration. It was going to be the same routine again. A routine he enjoyed because of the sheer rush of power it gave him.
‘Are you okay?’ She asked. She was torn between reaching out to touch him and staying within the invisible boundaries he had put up which only he could cross. Maybe if she didn’t push it, he will start staying with her.
She wrung her gown with unstill hands and waited for him to reply. She wasn’t sure when she became nervous near her husband, he never beats her, he doesn’t even raise his voice not to mention a finger. But that made her more nervous , the calm.  The roaring thunder is always more peaceful than the silent lightening.
‘Come come here. I’m fine. Of course I’m fine’. She moved slowly towards him and he embraced her. She was feeling the tears lodge in her throat, when he was affectionate, which was most times, she always felt the tears. But she never let them fall, he may think her a weak woman who is being too clingy and needy, she didn’t want that. She knew that he married her for a certain appeal in her independent spirit and a thrill in the long chase she made him do. What went wrong -what made her so shrunk in size and spirit, so dull and slow, and so frail in ego was beyond her. Love probably.
‘Have you eaten?’ He asked. She shook her head. She hadn’t eaten since the hour he left home.  Never seemed to be able to eat or sleep when he wasn’t home. He left three days ago.
‘But why? You look starved.  Let’s get you something to eat, have your bath and rest okay?’ She nodded.
I’ve told you, whenever I am not home, it’s because I’m working and the network in the office is bad, I never seem to connect with your line. Don’t worry about me okay?’.  He said as he laid her to sleep after she was full and refreshed.
‘Now let’s give you your shots. Less worry, more healthy. Okay?’ She nodded again her eyes wide in anticipation. She had a disease too complicated for her to comprehend and he took care of her, only he was willing to stay with her and give her her shots of injection. After that, the whole world seems alright again and she honestly never cared about what he did. She was always in a state of unexplainable euphoria and to the outside world,  she was a perfectly happy housewife.
‘There there’ he said and patted her arm where the needle was just pulled out  ‘You’ll be alright. I’ll be right here’
He waited for her to sleep then pulled out a box from the top of the dresser, the shots were about to finish,  he needed a larger dose to keep her high and off his case. He loved his wife, at least he loved knowing he had a wife, it made him more appealing to other girls and the fact that he had tamed such a wild shrew to become his personal powerless pet was a mighty boost to his ego.
Besides, he was sure that was the only way she could ever remained married to him. She wouldn’t have it that he was a man for many women and he had vowed never to be divorced, it was sign of failure.
He packed up some fresh sets of clothes, some wads of cash dropping a bundle of hundred thousand naira beside her and dropped two tablets of rophynol into a bottle of water beside her. Then as a second thought,  added three more.
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All Inconsistent People Gather Here For Cheesecake.

How inconsistent are you? Are you like me, better or worse?  Do you also start a project with soooo much energy and spirit you feel like a space ship running on a million gallons of fuel. Then the fuel level starts dropping, and you start eyeing Earth. Then it drops, and drops till the only thing keeping you up are mere drops and fume. You chute up but there’s no steam and down you come crashing to Earth… and reality. And there goes the tail of the project… away and onto the next.

It’s always a good idea till it becomes hard work and only very few things you are truly passionate about pass the test of time.

You went to a make up class all geared up, you learned the art, you feel like in 3 months time you’ll be Mamza effortlessly gliding your brush against peoples faces accentuating their beauty and making it bold. You are the real deal. Then three months come and you don’t even like the sight of an eye pencil. ‘Makeup might not be for me’, you say ‘I’ll open a website today’.

I know your likes, you are like me. A free spirit. A tester of everything. You crave newness, your soul needs refreshing so you jump from a tree to another never quite letting the last one to fully grow.

It’s not as glamorous as it sounds, sad in fact that we have focus yet what we lack most is focus.

Close in for a group hug… and a plate of cheesecake.

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Back and Better!

I live in phases. I phase in and phase out. 5 years ago, I started my blog. It was my not-secret diary. I write stuff that mattered to me. It was liberating… but that was just on one part because on the most rewarding part; people read.

People actually read my scribbled thoughts, my thrown-together muses, my detachable imaginations and they appreciated it. Some even sent DMs to express their appreciation for reading my diary (weird when I say it like that) but I was happy I wrote.

Then I stopped, I had phased out of open diary writing stage and moved on to the next ‘thing of interest’. Looney human.

Anyway my loyal and ever-willing blog hadn’t seen an update for 2 years plus and yet, it never gave up on me. Thank you blog bae, I’ll be more caring now In Sha Allah.

So after reading tnene.com, a blog kept by a fellow lawyer who had contacted me about liking my write ups some 4 years ago my motivation came back and I found myself DMing her about hers. Check out her blog, it’s insightful… very.

I just hope this is a phase I can maintain. I intend on making the posts short and sharp.

So, all my poems, short stories, worries, crazy thoughts, perspectives, humor, satirical writing and anything writing from now on (to the duration of this hopefully forever phase) will be on my blog.

Do keep up with the escribbler and let me know what you think always.

See you (more).

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