Whatsapp Group

It is yet another Friday and we are feasting on this literature as per the Richie Online tradition. Hopefully your day and week were as good as mine.

I got a heavy barrage of criticism following last week’s article with people accusing me of personalizing it. Over-personalizing, is the phrase that was used. I could write a whole article on what the critics said, but I guess that should be a thing for another week.

I am pretty sure that some were expecting continuation of the “Be like a Tree” series. We have failed to bring that on today because the author to such things has been tied. Hopefully he will be free enough in the coming days.

It’s been long since I talked about the social media. I remember having written an article about the social network know-how deficiency syndrome and another article on Whatsapp. Those remain among the nicely appraised articles Richie Online has published because most people can relate to such. Tonight we will further narrow down and talk about Whatsapp groups.

Most of the people who read Richie Online articles get them via Whatsapp and almost every user of this app of the moment seems to be in a number of groups. The presence of these group platforms on the social media is a good thing for the information as it allows free communication and flow of information among people of common interests (ideally). People have made groups for classes, workplaces (I would have been off Whatsapp if not for the TEAM group at my department), churches and church groups, families and more recently drinking groups. I am also told that people with common tastes of sports, fashion and catering have been organizing themselves to form Whatsapp groups where they share on the same. This is in addition to the groups that are for advertising goods and services and groups for vacancies. What this means is that it shouldn’t be surprising for a normal human to be in 5 Whatsapp groups at the very least. In short, these groups create a certain level of convenience in information flow (as I have already said).

Having said that, the convenience and excitement that comes with Whatsapp groups does not mean that they are without flaws. The later days have seen people go a bit extreme with Whatsapp groups to the disadvantage of many. I might have talked about some of these issues in my previous posts but I guess a bit of a repeat wouldn’t hurt on the point of “ectopic posts”. Usually we do create a group for a purpose and it is not fair to post a Manchester United update in your local church grouping, in the same way it is very unreasonable to post devotionals in a recipe group. Some people simple have issues with playing along with this rule and they end up throwing everything everywhere. I could say a lot about this, but in as much as there is no limit as to what you can do with a Whatsapp group, there is a limit to what you should do with it. If it is a group about class work or for Kamuzu Academy, you might as well keep it as such as opposed to turning it into your local church group or your Manoma Nyerere Whatsapp forum. This we have heard before.

One thing I have noted of late is that nowadays people are taking the activity of Whatsapp groups beyond the social network itself. This has brought in mixed results, if you are to think of it.

In the first place, the carrying over of Whatsapp group activity to the real world (Whatsapp ndi virtual reality yachabechabe) has seen people in different groups do things ranging from poop in the pants drinking to donating valuable items to people in need. I have of the heard supporters of the Red Devils (achina Lukaku ndi alongo awo) donating equipment to hospital (and apparently they are pledging that they will not stop) and some church Whatsapp groups reaching out to people in orphanages and hospitals. Pretty awesome stuff. One the other end of the spectrum people have created groups dedicated to mapping out the routes to watering holes and everything of the sort on Fridays like this.

Still on the wrong side of things, there is this thing of promiscuity. Some people just can’t leave a person of the opposite sex with a good profile picture to walk free. There are those things of kulowerana ku inbox and before you know it what you hear is that people are doing things,most times without any commitment whatsoever. Some would say that this has more to do with the character of the people in question than it has with social networking but we have to acknowledge the role of the Whatsapp group in this case. To add the fuel to the fire, there are some Whatsapp groups that encourage regular introductions with updated pictures. Bwino nazotu.

Another vice that has come with these groups is the issue of playing the victim. Tikangomva zoti pali some people who are financially better off than us then all we want to do is ask for some khobidi. When we hear there is someone who works in the bank we suddenly become allergic to queues and when there is a doctor we want all our consultations and prescription via the same forum. Won’t say much on this one. Koma ndizoipa.

Last but not least, I have heard of one interesting thing happening in sports groups. I am told that Bullets and Wanderers supporters have a tendency of taking over each other’s groups. For those who are as blank as me, here is how it works. Bullets fan asks to be added to a Nyerere group. He pretends to follow the team and comments constructively. Then, on request (after investing a lot of time) he gets to become admin. One night he gets to invite fellow Bullets fans to the group, makes them admins, then removes all the Wanderers supporters before disbanding the group. I am not sure of how often this happens, but rumour has it that it happens a lot. Some of you would know better. One can only wonder as to why someone would do such a thing.

Having said all this, Whatsapp groups are still the useful thing they were meant to be. Once in a while there will be people posting unrelated things. Don’t be part of this bandwagon, but be tolerant. Anthu ndife osiyana and enafe sitimamva. As of this issue of taking things out of the group to the real world, it is a good thing so long as it benefits us and others but we can do better than being admins of groups that are dedicated to vice.

Some things need are meant for Whatsapp groups and strictly so. Let this stick in your mind.