Beautiful piece there. But the author didn't ask nor answer a simple question: have we ever had truth? Tony, the professor of philosophy can help us here.
For years, various groups and gangs have come up to define not just the social media but its generation of users. I myself have described it as mass frenzy, the same breath Eco describes it. For Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, "barbarians have taken over social media", that it has been dragged down to the lowest common denominator and taken humanity backwards.
He claims platforms have been hijacked by a generation of "internet trolls" and individuals who profile and abuse others.
While he acknowledges social media's validity and reasoned engagement in other societies, he laments that in Nigeria, it lacks intellectual.
Dr. Rueben Abati in an essay, English language and the social media, laments on the death of the English language because of the type of creeping in of a social media English -abbreviations.
Earlier, he made headlines by saying, " They clear danger to public affairs commentary is that we have a lot of unintelligent people repeating silly clichés and too many intelligent persons wasting their talents lending relevance to thoughtless conclusions.
“THEY” in this piece refers to all the cynics, the pestle-wielding critics, the unrelenting, self-appointed activists, the idle and idling, twittering, collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria, who seem to be in competition among themselves to pull down President Goodluck Jonathan. This army of sponsored and self-appointed anarchists is so diverse; many of them don’t even know why or how they should attack the president."
Indeed, the social media has played significant roles in making, unmaking and molding governments, including the unmaking of the Jonathan government by the APC, which Abati actually directed his venom. It ignited the Arab spring, Iccupy America, Endsars among others. Social media is not free in China, Russia, parts of Africa and the Middle East. Governments all over are aghast and are struggling to tame it. Can they?
The big question our writer here didn't explain is, why has social media gained traction? Why has it displaced mainstream media and its gate keepers?
That's where democracy comes in. And it seems we have not seen anything yet. The bandits and terrorists in Nigeria and elsewhere have seen it.
Like many gatekeepers, Eco didn't see far. It's not just about misinformation or changes in governments, it's about a new creation devouring humanity in a scale never thought before.
And this is because for years, nations, groups and individuals have locked key information away from humanity. The mainstream media was owned and sustained by the powers that owned the information. And workers of this media were tied to the whims and caprices of their owners. And funders, of course, as we see here of some Nigerian journalists defending abracadabra governments and criminals.
Social media came like freedom and liberated humanity from the constraints of mainstream media and boulders blocking centuries of information from man. It bombed out the boulders to smithscreens to near anarchy.
Old groups, confused governments and tyrants are trying to cage the social media but it has already escaped.
It's already out there, as Foucault, Eco's contemporary and co theorist of post structuralism would say. The centre is no more there. The margin, which is the denied public, is now in charge of that center. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things must fall apart.
Because they are new in handling this new found freedom.
So, what do you expect? Anarchy.
And that's what we have now.
It will endure for now. Because humanity is yet to understand this new phenomenon. And it will gradually get there. Then it will call for a global conference on the social media.
The conference will achieve some respite but freedom once tested cannot be caged again. It's like an old star. It has departed. And cannot return. It has shed an epoch of its tyranny.
A whole new world is here still seeking meaning from the new truths unleashed. And that truth is here, among the rubbles and noise. Only the wise, the rigour and unbiased seeker can see it.
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