Social Media Hype

It is a wonderful day and I understand some of you may be visiting this blog for the first time. Well. You happen to be reading the 100th post on the Richie Online blog. A lot of liberal posts on this blog, if you are to check the previous articles.

Those who have been following this blog may relate to the fact that I have always talked of my love for the social media. I have at some point signed up for any social network you can mention (except for Waplog and Mxit) and while I mostly stick to Facebook and Instagram, I take do take peeps at my Imo, LinkedIn, Twitter, Skype, Viber, BlackBerry Messenger and WeChat.

Social networks have made the world smaller and along with that have come many goodies and baddies. I have to admit that I love both sides of the coin. I just love all the politics in the social media, the hoaxes and the ignoramuses who believe them, people trying to gain religious mileage and wannabe atheists on the other end. It is all just awesome. And then there are these people called success coaches who think they can go into the business after listening to a few motivational talks by Zig Ziglar and reading a bit from Robert Kiyosaki plus their friends who are all over writing things as if they heard that God was on Twitter. Yes, we cannot forget those who believe in the instant change of their fortunes after commenting Amen on some Man of God’s post and those who think that they can win a Range Rover Evoque by sharing a picture from a “not-so-official” Range Rover page. Koma zonsezi nzabhobho. I will not mention team every status about bae for reasons best known to myself.

I might have taken a swipe at many people with what I have just said but to be honest, I feel like people have taken social networking to another level to an extent that many of us hardly have a life outside the various social platforms. It has come to the level where people have gone on to say that if it wasn’t uploaded on Instagram it might as well not have happened. I remember there once was a hoax circulating that Facebook might be shutting its doors for good and closing the site for good. That literally sent chills down some people’s spines because they could not imagine life without these social “things”. At the end of this article I will probably sum it all and the lesson will be that there is more to life than social networking, but before I go there I just want to throw a couple of random thoughts (hopefully not nukes).
In the old days, there were very few social media vices; kufunsira akazi oti sitikuwadziwa mma inbox (and they would respond by writing long posts about it because we did not have screenshots then), unnecessary stalking (stalking a girl mpakana ending up on the page of her ex boyfriend’s sister), posting nudes and all that. People do not do those stupid things nowadays and they have switched to more positive things like charitable works, entrepreneurship, evangelism, testifying , educational posts and my favorite activity of all; activism. I do not have issues with all these, but I think we have a lot of people making noise about things they really aren’t (about).

Entrepreneurs and success coaches seem to have taken the centre stage in the social media nowadays. These are people who preach about success through business and go about labeling all who are on a job as people who are giving temporary treatment to the chronic illness of poverty. While there might be a point or two in their message, I find some of these messages repetitive and offensive. I am one of those people who believe that the best way of getting someone on board on any meaningful course is to guide them by the hand; showing them how better they can be, and not by telling them how bad things will be if they keep with their ways. Some of you are into this, and your messages could use some adjustment. Talking of success messages, some have shamelessly lifted off posts of some celebrities and pasted them on their timelines as their own. Success coaches plagiarizing from American rappers and all. Do we hate motivation? We surely don’t. But we do not want to be demotivated with the boasting people call motivation. All this unsolicited advice doesn’t work when you have little to show for it, by the way. Ndangonenapo.

Then there are those who are into activism. We have people who criticize systems (government and otherwise) without offering alternatives. The interesting thing is that they hardly do anything other than write long posts on Facebook talking of how wrong things are with this country. They are the same people who go on criticizing ESCOM and the President (those are the most criticized along with Water Board and University Councils; and the national football team), only to stay indoors when demonstrations against the things they cry about are being held. You just got to love the excuses that come out in such situations. I am pretty sure that if we all took half the action we brag about on the social media, this country would have been better off. My views, eti?

This article is getting too long so I will spare those change agents who flood the social media with pictures over the so called charity works and all that they are doing in our villages, schools and communities. I will not talk about the companies that are all over town teaching people in areas of project management and proposal writing. They are probably doing some good around (I hope), but I wish the publicity was proportionate to the work done.

Signing off...

I promised to give a lesson that there is more to life than social networking. Here it is. I have said it again.

If you are one of those who are educating us on the various social platforms, you are doing a good job. Just add some action in your own life and make sure you add a bit of something to show for. It’s good for both leaner and teacher. If you are doing some activism, front line politics, ministry, music, charity works and all, you have to understand that not all the things require publicity. You also need to know that there has to be a good motive behind social media publicity and that if there is a true need for such, the publicity needs to be proportionate to the efforts on the ground.

I look forward to the day when the ideals we share on social networks will actualize in real life, otherwise tiyeni tizingochezapo apa.

Ndalemba ndi Ineyo; The Richie of Richie Online.

Feedback: rgkamwezi@gmail.com