I dropped my phone some time ago and the screen, while still intact, started deflecting commands. I would touch the Instagram icon at the bottom of the home screen and the phone would open the BBM app at the top Northwestern corner of my screen. I scrounged around for money and got told I'd have to wait some 48hours to get my screen replaced & the phone repaired. Those hours were particularly dreadful and I asked myself what the hell we did before these phones and these applications. Rid of my phone, it was as though my life had come to a standstill -- as I knew it.
Social media is aptly defined as: "..forms of media that allow users to interact with and publish to each other, generally by means of the internet"
By virtue of huge technological advancement some time in the 21st century, innovations have been made that have since served as alternate means of communication/dissemination of information/publishing/conduction of business AND interaction. As such, a substantial part of our daily lives are influenced (controlled) by happenings on these media, regardless of one's level of Luddism. I don't suppose office memos are as popular as they once was. These days, workers will get mails online. Broadcasts are sent online. Events are promoted (mostly) online. Announcements are made online & debates are made online. There are 83.3 million Internet users in Nigeria according to the NCC.
As with most things, there are facets to our social media. The human part of it all. The emotional part, specifically the 'anger' aspect of social media. Here are the ways of getting mad on these media:
1. STAY IGNORANT:
Don't read up on stuff, don't even bother to stay informed. Just follow click-baiting links with unverified news sources (and stories with no quotes) and believe every line. Then feel sick to your stomach, and recruit people to join in your sickedness by tweeting/facebooking the link. Just stay out of the know.
2. ISOLATION OF POINTS
Is there something you can be enraged about? Find it. Highlight it. Take it out of context and tweet, preferably with 'big, big grammar'
3. SELECTIVE MUTISM
As assorted as this sounds, it is not a medical condition. It is a way of unlooking pertinent stuff that could disprove your angst-filled narrative
OR
It could also mean you have a particular stance on an issue but can't voice it because you're afraid of victimization.
4. BEING CULTURED AND STUFF
To maintain your social media profile of an "educated person full of conviviality", when someone destructively critiques your work/view/stance & insults your person to boot, just laugh it off (LOL) and give a civil response -- ending the retort with; "..well, its only your opinion and we agree to disagree".
Deep down, in private, you're simmering and you know you want to decapitate a motherfucker.
5. FIND a social media personality you use as a barometer of correctitude AT ALL TIMES and align yourself with that fellow's train of thoughts. Because, em, well, because that fellow comes across as an educated & reasonable person, so that when your opinion and that of that fellow differs, you shut yours down, keep mum & echo the sentiments of that fellow.
Because, um, well....because you're uneducated yourself...
6. RECOGNITION OF THE TRUTH
In fairness to point5, some people are freakishly conversant with everything. Do not appreciate that.
7. GIVE IN TO POPULISM
Espouse the essence of the tweet/post with the most clicks/shares/retweets/favs...
Because, well, because its the popular opinion. Be afraid of examining a trend because you don't want to acknowledge that the popular opinion might be the wrong opinion. Listen to that girl that says on Nairaland that she can't cook for her boyfriend because she's not yet his wife. Take such advice and remain blind to the fact that she wrote that post while sweating in the aforementioned boyfriend's kitchen -- waiting for the yam to boil so she can pound...
8. BE MISERABLE... and without perspective. As a boy ba? Tell yourself you must make a move on a new girl that comes into your room JUST because you read on Twitter that 'bad, sharp guys' score all the time. Do not consider it in your calculations that even the greatest one of us, Mr Barney Stinson, didn't score all the time.
9. HAVE very little going for you in the real world (outside of social media). Make these apps your only source of entertainment and amusement and happiness. Just download porn, and fail to have real time sex. Or make lots of money on a virtual gaming platform and have zero account balance in real time. Have a reputation for being a player in a 2go room while you can't speak to women in the real world.
10. COMPARISON
View Instagram photos of a secondary school mate eating Lobsters and drinking Chardonnay in an expensive restaurant somewhere in America, try to load the next photo and get a text that your 10mb daily data plan has finished. Then put down your phone, add some more groundnut into the cup in front of you and cry into your cup of Garri.
Be hard on yourself because you don't look like the girl in the magazine and fail to see that even the girl in the magazine doesn't look like the girl in the magazine.
11. The last, and by some distance, the best way of getting mad on social media; LET THE WORLD DEFINE EVERYTHING FOR YOU.
Just because another half-naked Rihanna picture is captioned by GQ as "Rihanna looking STYLISH as she poses braless in a sheer gown for a photoshoot with..." doesn't mean its 'stylish'.
Ask yourself, is this stylish?
I'm sure you get the drift.
(11.5) Give irrational credence to every post you find on the internet. Like this one.
If at this point in this post, you're thinking of changing your social media ways by virtue of my admonishments in this post (without further scrutiny), we have both wasted each other's time.
--->>>Captaincue (Thank God for social media. How else would I post this...!)
