To Live in America

July 10, 2016July 10, 2016 ~ livelytwist ~ 49 Comments

At the height of a restless phase in my life, I lived in The Netherlands at the time; a friend asked if I would be interested in relocating to The States. I replied that I had a teenage son and he is black. It had been years since I visited America. Where did I get the idea? Think of a country that you have heard of but never visited. What picture comes to mind? Now, ask yourself why.

Yesterday morning, during my ten-kilometre trek, S, who is black American talked about the recent racially motivated police shootings in her country. There were times we slowed our pace subconsciously to match the heaviness in her heart. She made the stories more than news I followed on social media, still they were not near enough. I shared her sorrow the way I do when I hear of bombings with casualties somewhere in the world—pain, anger, helplessness, and resignation.

My plan was to rest after the walk and then complete the short story I had been working on for my blog. However, when I sat at my desk to finish the story about two women and a boy called Yellow Pawpaw, desire had fled from me. Since writing is 80% discipline and the plot lay pencilled on post-its around my desk, desire was inconsequential. I battled feelings of irresponsibility. Do you sleep when your neighbour’s house is on fire? At least not with both eyes shut because fire is greedy for oxygen, sucking oxygen wherever it finds it.

But I had not written about the fire in my backyard either. Is it not hypocritical to write about what you do not know, a phenomenon miles and miles from you?

Here is what I know. I think about America the way I do because of what I see, hear, and read. Despite the negative portrayal of Nigeria in the news, I do not buy into all the hype because I have lived in Nigeria and interacted with Nigerians.

I write in general terms, why do white people feel threatened by black men and why do black men feel anxious around the police? Is it not unreasonable to tell people to overcome their fears when we keep feeding them fearful images? The notion of independent thought is a fallacy. You believe what you see or hear all the time and under pressure, act it out.

So, would I relocate to America?

I should know better because I am familiar with the power of the pen or images to shape opinions and the insidious ways narratives are concretized. But fear is an irrational thing.

Perhaps, it is time for a new kind of summer blockbuster. Aliens can take a break from invading the earth; they have not succeeded so far anyway. Humans can take over IMAX screens to confront problems in our communities that resemble chewing gum stuck to the heel of shoes—messy, sticky, and tricky, and we should make superheroes of the men and women who bridge the divide.

Am I for real? Will such films require jaw-dropping special effects or guarantee millions at the box office? Why change a winning formula?

©Timi Yeseibo 2016

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Mass Media in the Internet Age

March 20, 2016March 20, 2016 ~ livelytwist ~ 49 Comments

People who “proudly” state that they aren’t on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, or any social media platform, baffle me. I told someone statistics show that one in five couples meet online and she retorted that Facebook was the leading cause of divorce today, so she and her husband had deleted their accounts. I explained that people have been unfaithful since time began and the marketplace had simply changed. If Facebook were a country, it would be the largest country in the world by population, but she shook her head.

When it comes to social media, I maintain that the rules of engagement are still being written and should continue to be written. A gun in the hands of a soldier inspires confidence that our country is being protected. The same gun in the hands of a teenager walking down the street, inspires fear. I was social media shy once, then I started blogging. I now embrace social media and by extension the internet.

In the fifteenth century, Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press system that aided the rapid mechanization of bookmaking and led to mass production of books. The implications for mass media were astounding.

According to Wikipedia, “the relatively unrestricted circulation of information and (revolutionary) ideas transcended borders, captured the masses in the Reformation and threatened the power of political and religious authorities; the sharp increase in literacy broke the monopoly of the literate elite on education and learning and bolstered the emerging middle class. Across Europe, the increasing cultural self-awareness of its peoples led to the rise of proto-nationalism …”

Sound familiar? Yes! The Arab Spring, various hashtag advocacies e.g. #bringbackourgirls, viral videos, the Occupy movement, etc.

Some say the advent of the internet and prevalence of social media is similar to Gutenberg’s work, which democratized knowledge and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy. The internet is rightly called the information super highway.

We’re living in exciting times for anyone, yes, anyone who has something to say. Social media provides an accessible platform to disseminate information and make possible bilateral intimacy, where audiences can engage with producers of content.

Not everyone is delighted with this development or taking advantage of it. A video producer grudgingly pointed out that the cutthroat business of producing videos has been made harder by social media because people and companies can upload videos made with their cell phones on YouTube. The same could be said for writers who compete with free content online. However, when trends shift, smart people look for new opportunities or create them.

I’m increasingly convinced that someday in the distant future, paper books, CDs, and DVDs will become antiques, displayed in museums and purchased in vintage stores, with articles in Wikipedia written about the history of them. These articles will be read, listened to, or watched on devices that support online content, think tablets and the Apple watch. Don’t believe me? Maybe it won’t happen in my life time, but history is on my side.

©Timi Yeseibo 2016

Blogging 109 … Word Travel: combating prejudice

March 13, 2016March 13, 2016 ~ livelytwist ~ 20 Comments

Mark Twain’s quote from his book, The Innocents Abroad, rings true.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

My travels overseas have shown me how little people know about Nigeria and the African continent and revealed my prejudice and penchant for stereotypes. If you never travel and watch only one TV channel, you may conclude that Europe is awash with refugees, America with gun violence, the Middle East with terrorism, and Africa with war, poverty, and disease.

But hopping on a plane, train, or bus and going miles and miles away from home can be expensive. However, we’re not limited by budget if we can read. Literacy and internet access provide cheaper alternatives to confront narrow-mindedness.

Like most of my friends, I remember travelling to faraway places as a girl through the books I read. The writers stimulated our senses as we journeyed with them, so we were familiar not only with the sights, sounds, and smells of places, but also with their peoples and culture. We lived in Mallory Towers and were Famous Five detectives.

What we enjoyed was a kind of unilateral intimacy. But now, the internet has not only made content readily available, but also fostered greater connection. In his book, Platform, Get Noticed in a Noisy World, Michael Hyatt says that social media has taken connection to a whole new level. It makes possible bilateral intimacy—engagement. This means our virtual travel experiences are richer since we can confront a writer’s bias as well as ours in conversation. We can also give feedback and receive more insight from the contributions of others.

To me, one of the coolest things about blogging is the opportunity to travel—to journey along with readers to their worlds in the comments they leave behind. Every time I write, even on a subject I’m an authority on, I learn from the myriad perspectives readers bring. Sometimes I pour my jumbled thoughts down just waiting for readers’ comments to make sense of my thoughts.

It’s difficult to approach most topics with an ‘empty’ mind because our minds are usually already ‘full’. But if we’re willing to engage, we’ll see that we don’t have to agree with another viewpoint, sometimes all that’s needed is, “Oh, I see where you’re coming from; I’ve never walked that road before.”

Blogging has made travel—broad, wholesome, charitable (and uncharitable), views of men and things, possible for me.

©Timi Yeseibo 2016

Photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/sign-places-travel-information-429419/

What Do I Look Like?

November 8, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 45 Comments

The mirror in an uncrowded elevator is an invitation to look at myself, as are the floor-to-ceiling display windows in the mall. Rarely do I say no. Ever notice that when presented with a group photograph, your eyes search for you first? Is this vanity or normal self-absorption? I have sixty-one selfies on my phone. Perhaps I should not call them selfies. The Oxford Dictionary defines a selfie as a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media. Not one of my digital self-portraits is uploaded on my social networks.

My favourite ‘selfies’ are those where I employed the tricks my eighteen-year-old friend taught me to make a selfie not resemble a selfie. All that posing and angling, so I look as though my photo is the view from another’s lens, why?

Apart from a desire to pretend that I did not tilt my head, tuck in my chin, suck in my cheeks, and find the best lighting, before stretching my hand to click, I want to try to replicate an unguarded moment—what others see when I am unaware that they are looking at me, an honest picture of me. But a selfie is manipulation, a digitally enhanced, filtered, and cropped representation of how I want to see myself and how I want others to see me.

I find selfies useful as picture diaries to share privately with friends, but too subjective to tell me what I really look like. Sam Anderson captures this paradox in his New York Times‘ article. He begins by asking: What do you look like?

You are the world’s leading authority on the subject. You have studied your face for many years, with life-or-death intensity, in almost every mirror and tinted car window and unrippled pond you have ever passed. You are the Sir Isaac Newton of your own face: the one true discoverer of its laws of motion, its particular gravity.

You are also, simultaneously, the very least qualified person in the world to know what you look like. You have no idea. You have never actually seen your face — not truly, from the outside, the way other people see it. This is because of a nonnegotiable quirk of the human anatomy: You have to use your own face to look at your face. You are both observer and observed.

Is this why we ask others, “How do I look?”

As a child, my mother was the first yardstick I used to measure my looks by. When people called me little Gina, alluding to our resemblance, I realized I was beautiful. External validation aids self-perception. I have wished on occasion that I could step out of my body and see myself. The next best thing is my reflection in the eyes of those I trust, a realistic picture that transcends the selfies on my phone.

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Oh Dolly

October 18, 2015October 18, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 23 Comments

My affinity for conspiracy theories ballooned and adopted a sophisticated veneer when I first moved here. In 2012, I sold my lucrative practice and waited for the Mayan apocalypse and the downfall of Facebook and the internet to no avail. Reading the Conspiracy Times halted my dejection. Through the mag, I joined a classified mission.

After three years of training, it was time to recruit others. I asked Tyrone to help me set up a Facebook account. He arrived one October day, wearing a navy hoodie with UNLV emblazoned on it.

“Was it easy making your way here?” I asked as I led him to the study.

“Why do you live in this wasteland, surrounded by solar panels? He sighed, “This is beyond frugal, man.”

“UFO sightings, global warming. It is going downhill faster than we expect—”

“Bullshit!”

The teak bookshelf in the corner housed the latest statistics, which proved my point. But I needed my Facebook account more than I need to be right.

“A coat of paint never hurt anyone.” He grumbled and pulled his seat closer to the table. “Choose a password; think alphanumeric.”

“Done.”

“Time to connect to people you know. Friend me.”

“What?”

He showed me how to send a friend request.

“Okay. Let’s hook you up with old friends—”

“But I haven’t kept in touch—”

“That’s what Facebook’s for.”

I searched for friends and sent requests. I was excited when my requests were accepted and I messaged some buddies from long ago.

We took a break on the porch, eating sandwiches and swigging from cans of root beer. I asked him about the layoffs in his company since the merger.

He shrugged. “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.” He sprang from the bannister and the porch creaked. “What’s that,” he pointed.

“Satellite dish; they track Martian invasions—”

He shook his head. “Let’s go inside and connect you with some babes!”

I cleared our paper plates. He had created an uneven circular map on the bread slices leaving the bread crusts bereft. Earthlings were so wasteful.

Back in the study, he asked, “Names please?” and cracked his knuckles.

I looked away. “Just show me other things I can do.”

He whistled. “You don’t? . . . For your sake, I hope there are babes in your Mars.”

How could I explain transmutation? The world wasn’t ready for us yet. I hoped to build a small community on Facebook. I pointed to the screen.

“Oh that, look . . . find people you know. . . You can have up to 3000 or 5000 friends, I’m not sure—”

“I don’t want many friends.”

“This is Facebook. You don’t know what you want. Just add all the good-looking people . . .”

I examined each photo and then checked out the Timeline.

“You are too slow. A snail would have reached Utah and back!”

He took over from me and began to add friends at random. His definition of good-looking was at variance with mine. I winced.

“Wait a sec . . .” I placed my hands over his to stop the mouse.

“What?”

“That’s Dolapo!”

“Who’s she?”

“She . . . she . . .”

His impatience ruled. “Okay, I’ve added her.” And he continued adding. My mind journeyed back. What if?

He patted my back as he left, “You’re all set now. Facebook can be quite addictive. Maybe it’s what a hermit needs. ”

I thanked him and as soon as he drove off, I raced to Dolapo. Nothing on her Timeline indicated that she was married. She was still very pretty. But what was with her name, Yvonne Smith?

I kept checking to see if she’d accepted my friend request, reminding myself that I had joined Facebook to seek out fellow believers. The truth was, I had walked into Dolapo’s magnetic field and become her prisoner. She rewarded my two-week devotion by confirming my friend request. I wrote a message and deleted it.

I went to bed, but threw the covers after four hours of false sleep attempts. She was online. My heart strained against its cage as I typed.

Hi there!

Dolapo? Is that Dolapo?

I am the artist formerly known as Dolapo. I’m called Yvonne now.

Are you related to Prince… who discovered the extraterrestrial bases on the moon?

???

Are you?

My performance gives me visibility and I accept many people as friends. No one has called me D for years. How are we connected?

Can’t you see my name?

I can, but it doesn’t ring any bells . . .

You’ve forgotten me so soon?

Pls I meet many people in my line of work…

Can’t you see my profile picture?

I waited. She had seen my message, but failed to reply. So, I went to bed and dreamt about asteroids colliding with the earth. A group of us from the classified mission worked with friendly aliens to rescue people. I scooped Dolapo in my arms and carried her to safety. She kissed me and called me her hero.

The next day, I kept checking to see if she was online. The minute she was, I messaged her.

Hi there? Dolapo?

It’s me David. Have I mistaken you for someone else? Is this not Dolapo? Dolapo Smith? Tani’s sister?

Her silence stung. I carried hope like deflated balloons. I still had not sought out other believers on Facebook. Two full days passed before her response came.

Hi David, please remind me again how we’re connected…

My emotions unsettled me. Love was corrosive, reversing the effects of transmutation. But how could I let this opportunity pass? My hands trembled as I typed.

UI … set of ‘89

When she responded minutes later, I was still sitting in my study panting like a dog.

Ah, that was over 20 years ago. Please provide some context.

What more context do you want? Haven’t you seen my profile picture?

Is that how you looked 20 years ago?

Give me your number, let me call and tease you …

She didn’t respond. My joke had fallen flat. I was wondering how to remedy the situation, when I saw notification for a new message. I clicked greedily. She had sent a photo.

Who did she think she was? A mere Earthling!

Dolapo, I used to visit you in your hostel on campus. And during the holidays, I would buy suya and bring to your house in Ibadan.

David, thanks but I don’t remember.

What do you mean, you don’t remember? A man who came to your room every day and to your house many times? So all this while, I wasn’t even existing for you?

David, have a nice life, I’m out.

Look Dolapo or Yvonne or artist, a man can’t be after a girl for twenty-six years. Enough is enough. You too have a nice life!

I deactivated my Facebook account and picked up the latest copy of Conspiracy Times. The cover stole my attention: Uncovered D-Day 2016. I scanned the article, a familiar excitement racing through my veins. I pulled the receptor from the bookshelf and set it on the table. Then I tinkered with the transmitter. It took a while, but I found the frequency.

I ran outside and stood in the force field created by the satellite dishes. The dot of light in the black sky grew bigger. The grass swayed and plants shook. My legs quivered as the flying saucer hovered above. The blood moon prediction was a hoax, but 2016 was sure. Despite NASA’s denials, the pole shift had started.

I smiled, closed my eyes, and waited for the pull. That will show Mark Zuckerberg and Google and Dolapo. Yes!

The phosphorescent beam penetrated my being. I held my breath for as long as I could. My reflection in the giant eye of the alien who steered the saucer, shocked me. The outline of my human heart appeared first and then throbbed like a living thing. The verdict came through the speakers of the spacecraft.

Abort Mission. All Systems Abort Mission.
Love Spell. Transmutation Unaccomplished.

The saucer rose and receded, twinkling in the night sky. I fell on the ground and cried, “Oh Dolly!”

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Twice Played

October 11, 2015October 11, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 22 Comments

I thought he was a nutter. But it was either him or the girl spooning rice from a white paper bag with wagamama embossed in black. The smell of fried rice caused the contents of my stomach to heave. I turned away from her and walked towards him.

He was leaning back, one shoulder edging the window. Two fingers formed a V beside his head, while his other hand went to work in rapid movements. He set his face this way and that.

“May I?” I looked at the rucksack on the seat.

His eyes met mine and blood rushed to his face. He mumbled something and gathered his rucksack.

I sat down and resisted the urge to judge. People take selfies all the time. Outside the window, the fields and rivers rushed by. I stretched my legs and closed my eyes.

“Cou . . . could you do me a favour?” he rubbed my arm.

I swallowed my irritation and produced a sitting-next-to-another-homo sapiens-in-the-train smile.

“Please can you take a selfie . . . with me?”

“What?”

“A selfie together . . . I . . . I just want to make me girlfriend jealous . . .”

Behind his glasses, his eyelashes were long and straight, reminding me of the fake lashes Sharon wore. Dark curly hair and full lips, a geek like the one I had once loved.

“Will you, please?”

“Eh . . . How old is your girlfriend?”

“I’m twenty-four and she’s your age, twenty-one.” He held out his phone and leaned towards me.

I leaned away. He looked twenty and I had guessed his girlfriend was eighteen. I am twenty-seven. Numbers mean nothing. I remembered twenty-one and pleasure stroked something inside me. That geek from long ago. I leaned in.

“But, why do you want to make her jealous?”

He put his head on my shoulder. Before I could blink, click.

“Ssssh!” A silver-haired woman sitting across us put one finger to her lips and gestured to the silence icon on the window. Her frown finished her sentence.

We muffled our laughter like teenagers reveling in our youthful secret. His right hand snaked along my shoulders, drawing me closer. I started to protest, but the woman looked up from her book and glowered at me. So I stuck out my tongue at her and mouthed, “Twenty-one forever.” His left hand worked faster—click, click, click.

As we disembarked, he said, “Thank you so much.”

“For the optics, right? Good luck!”

He smiled. I waved.

Two days later when I saw his friend request, I hesitated. Then confirmed. He messaged me immediately.

hi…

it’s me

i know

how do u know?

ur photo? duh? 🙂

oh 🙂

how did you find me?

ur name on ur train card

oh hmmm. K. was she jealous?

ummm

change ur rship status

so she’ll believe

believe what?

brb …

I tapped my foot, perused my news feed, liking this and that, willing the message icon to turn red. After forty minutes, I sighed and liked one more cat photo before going to bed. The next morning, I had 107 notifications; likes and comments on a photo I was tagged in. My heart raced as I clicked on the post. The caption: my girlfriend likes it hot. I screamed. Just then, one new message.

hi 🙂

WTF is wrong with you? Take down d photo now!!!!

y? u don’t like coffee?

that’s beside the point!

everyone likes starbucks.

I.Am.Not.Your.Girlfriend.

brb …

I called in sick and seethed through a day of brb-conversations; dead ends that made me curse. I fielded unhelpful comments in response to the disclaimer I put up on my Timeline. The Support Team recommended untagging myself, since the photos did not violate their community rules. Meanwhile, they would investigate. Every spare minute, I lived on his page. Five hundred and twenty-seven comments. Who the hell was this geek!

Sharon believed in shaping destinies. “Good things don’t come to people who wait. Sh*t does,” she said.

She asked around and found this guy from Serbia. People whispered that his large hands, which now tended roses, had done things during the war. We met him in the alley where the back doors of restaurant kitchens opened and rubbish bins stood in rows of twos, three figures bathed in darkness. When I handed him the cash, he didn’t count it.

“Just teach him a lesson . . . no more.” I looked up, but not at his eyes.

He didn’t reply.

That night, I slept sitting up in bed with my laptop on my thighs. By the next morning, the post had disappeared. I returned to work.

Two days later, my boss called me to her office. Two men in black suits sat at the small conference table. They introduced themselves before escorting me to the police station.

The man from Serbia was already there. He crossed his arms and wore a scowl. My tormentor stood a few feet away, a gash on his forehead and one eye swollen shut. I glanced away. The detectives offered me a seat.

“Wait here,” the taller one said.

I wondered if I would wake up to my life and tell Sharon about my dream, but someone tapped my shoulder. I shrieked and jumped. She was five feet two with slanted eyes under a black fringe bob. Twenty-two maybe, but numbers mean nothing.

“I, Anita,” she stretched her hand.

I paused and then took it. Could it get any worse?

She pointed with her chin to the man from Serbia. “You not his type. Why you do it?”

Who was she? Leather jacket, skinnys, knee-high boots—

“I writing a book. My life f**ked up now. Photo on internet and Instagram. Tell your story. We make book; sell to publisher. America publisher? Quick money. Or Kindle.” She shrugged. “Which you like?”

Wait; hang on, internet, Instagram? “Your photo is where?”

“Yours hot. More likes. Men like blonds.”

Images of my head photoshopped on a body with huge breasts and captioned, Date Girls from Russia, floated in my mind. No way!

She stretched her phone towards me and I grabbed it. Compared to this, the photo of me drinking coffee on geek’s lap was timid. I was lying in a bathtub. Red rose petals tried to make me decent, barely. I shook my head. The account belonged to one Don Serbia. Hang on, the profile picture. His f**king profile picture! I looked at the man from Serbia, rage seizing my heart.

“This one pretty. You see more?” She retrieved her phone and began scanning.

I backed her and called Sharon. Sharon listened and then said, “Don’t panic. I know of a guy from Armenia—”

“Very funny! Is he on Pinterest?”

I closed my eyes so my tears didn’t fall. My promotion was due in two weeks—the first person under thirty to make senior manager.

Slanted eyes tugged my sleeve. “Why you do it? Evly publisher want know . . . what’s your story?”

The detective returned and motioned to me. I stood and swept my hair to the side. She looked at my wool-blend coat and fingered the Armani label as though she had found gold.

“I wait for you. You smart; speak English like native. We make good team—coffee and cream. America publisher, yes?”

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Time to Read

August 2, 2015August 2, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 32 Comments

Blog articles on my WordPress Reader started appearing with an estimated reading time (ERT) tucked at the bottom left-hand corner, about two weeks ago. So, for example, my blog posts looked like this.

Many writers I know, including myself, lean towards verbosity. We are in love with our words. When you are in love, words are harder to kill. A blog post may therefore take hours to complete. As Samuel Jackson notes, “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” At first, it was jarring to see work that took me seventy-two hours to produce reduced to a three-minute read, word count notwithstanding. But this is the reality of life online; writers have much to share, readers have little attention to spare. Erik Qualman caps the average person’s attention span at seven seconds, one second less than a goldfish’s eight seconds.

If the first three sentences of an article is followed by: read 1827 more words, only several things make me continue reading—familiarity with the author, curiosity occasioned by a superb opening line, the title, prior knowledge or interest in the subject, or a referral.

Time is like a loaf of bread, there are only so many slices I can cut. My life is characterized by acute time rationing—ever heard that time waits for no man? It is as if the world is spinning faster and faster on its axis and I am getting dizzier and dizzier from information pollution. How long, thus becomes a valid question.

I mean, if completion is my goal, then time is often the decider between a three-course meal and a sandwich-to-go at lunch break or between a 500-page novel and a collection of short stories on a one-hour flight. Would you watch a YouTube video without checking its length?

I find myself liking ERT appended to blog articles. ERT on platforms like Longreads and Medium helps me narrow my plethora of reading options. ERT even trumps word count in my view because it makes mathematics unnecessary i.e. dividing total number of words by average reading speed.

Similarly, in making a case for why we find listicles appealing, Maria Konnikova notes that an article written as a numbered list, “. . . promises a story that’s finite, whose length has been quantified upfront. Together, these create an easy reading experience, in which the mental heavy lifting of conceptualization, categorization, and analysis is completed well in advance of actual consumption—. . . And there’s little that our brains crave more than effortlessly acquired data.”

She writes, “The more we know about something—including precisely how much time it will consume—the greater the chance we will commit to it. The process is self-reinforcing: we recall with pleasure that we were able to complete the task (of reading the article) instead of leaving it undone and that satisfaction, in turn, makes us more likely to click on lists again—even ones we hate-read. The social psychologist Robert Zajonc, who made his name studying the connection between emotion and cognition, argued that the positive feeling of completion in and of itself is enough to inform future decisions. Preferences, goes his famous coinage, need no inferences.”

I cannot help but draw parallels, unscientific they may be, between these observations about listicles and the value of knowing ERT upfront. Hampered by time, ERT helps me choose what to read now and what to save for later.

When Slate introduced ERT, this 3.5-minute video mocked Millennials’ propensity to want to know everything now.

http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/ppx1hm/slate-s–minu tes-to-read–feature

Two years on, and I think Slate was on to something. Do you think blog articles should display estimated reading time?

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

We The People

July 26, 2015July 27, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 51 Comments

Imagine a school playground thirty years ago. A girl in a white blouse tucked into a maroon skirt, shares an opinion with four others dressed like her. One of them starts to make fun of her accent, mimicking her speech. The others laugh and join in. The girl soon realizes that raising her voice to defend herself prolongs the caricature. She stomps off to a corner. When they walk down the corridor to class, she lingers a few paces behind. Her classmates are still giggling and acting as they enter the classroom. They incite the whole class to uproarious laughter.

Fast-forward to today. Same incident, only that one kid would have recorded it with her smart phone and then shared it on social media. This time, as the girl walks down the corridor, there’s more laughter and pointing as students look down at their phones and up at her. She would eventually watch the video and her sympathisers would assure her it isn’t that bad. Compelled by curiosity, she would read comment after comment and die a second death.

Humans are the common denominator in both stories. In a previous post, I suggested that maybe technology is neutral; it just amplifies who we already are. There are humans behind the inanimate internet. Give a fool money and you magnify his ability to do foolish things, but money isn’t the real problem. The internet can provide a breeding ground for our worst impulses to flourish.

In his 2015 TED Talk, Jon Ronson begins by pointing out, “In the early days of Twitter . . . voiceless people realized that they had a voice, and it was powerful and eloquent.” He then tells how people used their power to effect change, saying, “This was like the democratization of justice. Hierarchies were being leveled out. We were going to do things better.”

However, the major part of his talk centres on our own misuse of privilege, the opposite of democracy. He traces how one ill-advised tweet by Justine Sacco, a former New York PR officer with 170 Twitter followers, incited a Twitter storm that not only made her the worldwide number one trending topic on Twitter, but also cost her, her job. His talk is titled, How One Tweet Can Ruin Your Life.

Sacco’s story isn’t new to me. But, Ronson’s story telling made me uncomfortably aware of how gleefully we applaud another’s fall. According to Ronson, our desire to be seen to be compassionate is what led us to commit this profoundly un-compassionate act. Although I did not participate in the Sacco mob action, there was no moral pump fisting from me. I could picture myself in another time and setting, in a white blouse and maroon skirt.

Social media is now and the future. It is the platform where I share my thoughts with the world and interact with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Because the rules of engagement continue to evolve, talks like Jon Ronson’s hold my interest. Kudos to those raising their voices against social media shaming and calling for better internet policing. But who is going to police the place where it all begins, that is, the human heart?

I share details about Ronson’s talk and other innocuous social media faux pas with a friend. She says, “You see, that’s why I’m not on Twitter and hardly do Facebook.” I nod but after she leaves, I think about how Ronson concludes his talk, “The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people, but we’re now creating a surveillance society, where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless.”

Surely, abandoning social media isn’t the answer?

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Jon Ronson’s TED talk is shy of 18 minutes. If you’re reading this, you do social media and listening to it is worth your time.

Forging Connections through the Internet

June 14, 2015June 14, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 64 Comments

A friend shares a story about a CSI-style drug bust sans gunfire in her apartment building. When the police question her about her neighbours who are involved in the crime, they are surprised that she knows so little about them. I am not. Once, I saw a man fitting a key into the lock of a front door two houses from mine. He waved as I walked past and I nodded in response. I hadn’t seen him before. Maybe he is a neighbour. Maybe he is a thief. This is city life.

It is against this backdrop that I wonder if the internet and social media and the technology behind them are responsible for the distance and disconnect among people living in the same physical space. Before cell phones, Facebook, and Twitter, we insulated ourselves from each other with newspapers and earplugs on the bus or train. Maybe technology is neutral; it just amplifies who we already are.

In his 2011 TEDx Talk, Simon Sinek argues that nothing replaces human contact. He says, “. . . technology is absolutely fantastic for the exchange of information and the exchange of ideas. Technology is absolutely wonderful for speeding transactions. It’s wonderful for resourcing and finding people, but it is terrible for creating human connections. You cannot form trust through the internet.”

Since that talk, human interaction via the internet has been steadily rising as evidenced by increase in social media use. When I emailed people whom I had only ‘met’ on the internet and asked them to each write a 300-word piece on some aspect of motherhood for my blog, I was asking them to trust me with their stories. How could they be sure I would treat their stories with integrity? How could I be sure that they would deliver the stories they said they would?

For me, transactional trust began by examining their digital footprint—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or blog profiles, and the writing on their blogs. I suspect the converse is true for them too and that having mutual digital friends played a part. Working together to polish stories necessitated questions about word choice and sentence structure, which fostered meaningful connection. It was humbling to hear their backstories.

In the end, you read the finished story, and all our worlds became smaller because story mirrors life and life mirrors story. Every story on your phone or tablet or laptop was an invitation to trust and an opportunity to forge connection.

Writing can create empathy and establish credibility. If trust is a function of the part of the brain that has no capacity for language, causing people to look at empirical evidence and still say, “Something doesn’t feel right,” then some kind of digital intuition is vital to navigate the future because we are using technology to form human connection after all.

I agree that nothing replaces human contact; nothing should. However, until I meet you in person, I hope technology continues to connect us through words.

I cannot thank you enough for knitting your heart with ours as we shared what motherhood has meant to us this past six weeks.

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

p.s. Thank you Ozoz, Afi, Eileen, Elaine, Taye, Yvonne, Joxy, Brina, Unathi, and Tamkara!

Photo Credit: Kaboompics/ http://pixabay.com/en/technology-laptop-keyboard-computer-791029/

Stats, Search Engine Terms & You

April 26, 2015November 3, 2017 ~ livelytwist ~ 45 Comments

WordPress spared me the trouble of spreadsheets, charts, and graphs by providing Livelytwist’s annual report for 2014. Here are some highlights to mark Livelytwist’s second anniversary.

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 26,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 10 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

In 2013, Livelytwist was viewed about 13,000 times. By 2014, this doubled. The growth in number of views reminds me of a chorus sung in some Nigerian Pentecostal circles, everything na double double! What’s in a number? I publish articles once a week about subjects that don’t involve Kim Kardashian—the numbers tell me people still care about what I say.

At least one person in every continent, in 105 countries, viewed Livelytwist in 2013. Come 2014, Livelytwist travelled farther, touching down in ten more countries. Although we complain about the internet, it remains the universal passport, which defies visa restrictions. It is how I met you. Most visitors came from the United States. Nigeria and United Kingdom were not far behind, and The Netherlands and Canada made a strong showing as well.

These posts received the most views in 2014.

1. The Love Languages of Nigerians [posted July 2014]

2. The Body Magic [posted April 2013]

3. Open Letter to Akpos [posted May 2013]

4. I am Not Looking For Love, I am Going to Work [posted August 2013]

5. A Father’s Love [posted June 2013]

According to WordPress,

Some of your most popular posts were written before 2014. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.

To me staying power is distilling current events in a way that transcends the present so an article remains relevant, year after year. Search engine robots also drove traffic to these posts judging by the most popular search words. Search engine terms are words and phrases people enter into various search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing that land them on Livelytwist.

A random sampling of the search terms shows my indebtedness to the creators of Akpos, a male character around whom many Nigerian jokes revolve, and to Ardyss for their corset, Body Magic. And yes, to romance and love. Below, I make my case.

A self-deprecating post about my struggle with weight and the Body Magic may be what bring these die-hard seekers to Livelytwist.

Search Engine Terms

magic chant for a round butt

When you find it let me know so I can retire early!

how to wear a body magic despite the pain to hide belle fat

Lol, vanity involves pain; just do it.

anything similar to body magic but cheaper

E.x.e.r.c.i.s.e maybe?

i hav flesh coming out from under my arms after wearing a body magic?

What did you expect? To drop 2 or 3 dress sizes?

A tongue-in-cheek stab at the ubiquitous Akpos, means that Akpos, and all things Akpos, are the search terms that bring the most traffic to my blog.

Search Engine Terms

akpose comedy – na we dey here

What can I say? Akpos wins year after year.

what will i do so that i can be receiving akpos joke every day as text message on my phone

So, someone actually typed this into Google?

i have a dream by akpos

That one day _ _ _ _ (fill in the blanks)

naija jokes that will thumble the girls and make them shout

Girls beware!

Naija loaded akpos comedy

There in four words, the problem with Nigeria!

Every time I write about love, my stats go boom boom boom! But, what’s love got to do with these search engine terms?

Search Engine Terms

social network to find girls phone number or pin that are ready for marraige in nigeria 2014

This is not a dating site.

i am looking for love

I repeat, this is not a …

i want to friendship nigerian in mumbai

This is not a 419 site!

when will a female want a male to stop stroking

No comments. My lawyers are already writing Google. #DefamationOfCharacter

when a woman acts up it means you pull her hair and show her whos boss

Osanobua! I haven’t even watched, not to talk of reviewed Fifty shades of Grey. I reject it!

i am tired of her in nigerian language

I apologise on behalf of all good Nigerian men.

timi yeseibo married

Get a life, read The Economist!

Thankfully, these search engine terms reveal what the others may or may not: Livelytwist actually offers something intellectual.

Search Engine Terms

third world cultural profiles

Sociology majors welcome here.

what are the relationship between satire and social transformation

Satire can act as an agent of social transformation. Next question?

let there be peace in the land of my birth ( nigeria). Essay

Indeed peace is a necessary ingredient for growth.

can an enemy be killed by splashing holy water on its picture

Like seriously? It is well. Blame it on my post, Your Enemies Shall Never Succeed!

And these search engine terms remind me of why I do what I do…

Search Engine Terms What I Think

am bored..keep me lively pls

Came to the right place, read on.

latest blog by timi yeisibo-lively twist

Aw, sweet. People want to read Livelytwist!

livelytwist timi

So glad you found me!

A report tells one side of the story. I would love to hear your side. So what brought you here? Search engine? Facebook? Twitter? WordPress Reader? Other? And if you blog or have a website, what search engine terms drive traffic to your blog?

WordPress 108: Liking, Following or Not

April 12, 2015April 12, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 125 Comments

So here’s the deal. I upload my 600-word article on my WordPress dashboard, use the proofreader to make last-minute corrections, and then publish. Fifty seconds later, my phone beeps; so-and-so liked your post. I’m a slow reader, but even if you’re a pro at speed-reading, you could not have read my blog post that fast. Haba!

The ‘numbers’ game, no longer holds the same fascination for me as it did two years ago when I started blogging, and yet, I’m in awe of the numbers. The number of people who engage my posts by liking, commenting, sharing, or leaving a message via my contact form is one way I measure the effectiveness of what I do—entertain, inform, inspire, or provoke thought.

I cannot ignore the numbers. When someone stumbles on my blog, he may not know what to read. If the Top Posts & Pages widget on the sidebar does not woo him, the number of likes and comments may resolve his indecision. In that sense then, a fake like is better than no like.

One evening between 8:42 and 8:44, my phone throbbed with the force of too many notifications. After the climax, so-and-so had liked nearly fifty of my blog posts. I was not flattered. It is like a man telling me how intelligent I am while staring at my chest; it just doesn’t add up.

Okay, I understand that sometimes a like on WordPress is like a poke on Facebook. It’s another way to say hello or get your attention—oh boy; that was one long poke! It is an invitation to come out and play, which I honour by visiting the Liker’s blog, as time permits. It is not an indication that so-and-so has read and digested your writing. Hmmm, very well then.

But there’s a nagging ring of deceit to this thing, this game of like tag. So far, I have been unwilling to like a blog post that I did not read or appreciate, as if my like has a price tag, as if anyone would know. If quality feedback is important to a blogger, then this promiscuous liking distorts perception; it certainly feeds ego.

In a way, social media is about numbers, number of likes, comments, follows, and shares, because no one wants to have a conversation by himself. The problem with the like button on some social media sites is that the conversation with others may be illusory.

This post would have been unnecessary but for an encounter on WordPress, involving likes and follows. After reading a blog post I enjoyed, I liked it. In response, the blogger who only recently followed me informed me that a like without a corresponding follow was an insult. See me see wahala. Are we now back to high school?

Following a blogger on WordPress means that new posts from the blogger will appear in my Reader or I will receive an email notification when they publish a post. It seems dishonest to have my Reader flooded with hundreds of posts, which I will not read, but like. To me, a follow is a commitment to read your posts.

I am commitment shy. In a world awash with information, but limited time, you and I cannot read every blog post. If yours is a niche blog about DIY, for example, it would be spurious for me to follow your blog because I don’t like DIY and don’t want to get better at it.

Perhaps I will throw this textbook idealism out the window to monetize my blog or market any book I may write in future. Time will tell. First-world problems, heh?

Still, the highest compliment I could pay you isn’t necessarily to follow you, but to read and engage your writing. It is the highest compliment you could pay me too.

The Price of Shame

April 5, 2015November 29, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 52 Comments

The price of shame is seventeen years. Seventeen years is the interval between when Monica Lewinsky’s affair with former US president Bill Clinton became public and when she received a standing ovation at the end of her TED talk. The period following the disclosure was a time of intense disgrace for all parties involved, Mr and Mrs Clinton and Miss Lewinsky.

The media rehashed the stories to the point that the name Clinton is perhaps indelibly linked to Lewinsky and vice versa. Hilary Clinton’s political career, Bill Clinton’s public speaking and humanitarian work, and now Monica Lewinsky’s advocacy for victims of online humiliation and harassment, notwithstanding.

Seventeen is the number of years it took for Lewinsky to mount a public podium and declare, “it’s time . . . to stop living a life of opprobrium; and time to take back my narrative.” And so far, over 2.5 million people have viewed her talk.

Why did the TED audience rise and clap at the end of her talk? One reason may be her opening question, which hit home: “Can I see a show of hands of anyone here who didn’t make a mistake or do something they regretted at twenty-two?”

I am reminded of a meeting I attended where the preacher, speaking on the importance of a wholesome thought life, asked how many people would like the contents of the thinking they had done the previous day to be displayed on a billboard in Times Square. Every hand remained down, including that of the preacher.

She admits that she deeply regrets what happened. Whether the affair was for love, in love, through love, or about love, affix any preposition to love, and we still say wrong, wrong, wrong. However, by throwing stones at her, the ensuing spectacle of derision that has continued, with radioactive endurance, for a decade and a half, have we become like the people who brought only the woman caught in adultery to Jesus?

As I watched Bill Clinton reinvent himself over the years and become to my mind, charismatic Bill, the notion that it is a man’s world concretized. Yes, I can only imagine the PR machine behind such a powerful figure. But we live in a male-dominated culture, a patriarchy, where men are hailed for sexual adventures and women are shamed.

The positive press Lewinsky has recently received indicates that perhaps after seventeen years, we have become magnanimous—okay Monica; you may go and sin no more. But being human, suspicious, and armed with conspiracy theories, we point two fingers to our eyes and then at her: We. Are. Watching. You.

Talking openly about shame, especially the modern cyber variety, how it can cripple, destroy, and lead to suicide is good. Broadening the conversation to include honour killings that assuage family shame is welcome. We do well to adopt a more empathetic response to public shaming.

And yet humiliation, a synonym for shame, in small doses, can be a wake-up call. A few years ago, I finally scored an interview that I’d been angling for. It couldn’t have been scheduled at a worse time. Exhausted from travelling, I slept with my notes (which I was reviewing for the first time), on my chest Sunday night. In the flurry of Monday morning, I had no time to revise and little time to get to the venue.

I hoped to bluff my way through. I could not. I read the impatience in the interviewer’s hands as he flicked through my résumé while listening to me. I perceived his thoughts, rubbish; I cannot believe she came highly recommended. From that moment on, the ability to think on my feet deserted me. Shame made me forget things I knew.

The memory of that humiliation goads me to over prepare for interviews. I have other memories, secrets, too painful to share, which still stain my cheeks red. My shame has filled my compassion vaults, so now I have compassion to spare for others.

Although you and I haven’t endured public humiliation, we are acquainted with shame and its incapacitating effect. There exists the looming danger of a single story if we remain paralyzed. Not of shame, but of regret being our single story.

I think that to change any narrative from shame to glory, we must do time. No, not seventeen years, but a season away from the ‘limelight,’ burrowing underground to learn lessons from humiliation. In time, we may re-emerge with fresh purpose and tell inspiring new stories.

Photo credit: Nile/pixabay.com/en/hourglass-time-hours-sand-clock-620397

Happy New Momentum

January 4, 2015January 4, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 45 Comments

Momentum:

the strength or force that allows something to continue or to grow stronger or faster as time passes
The impetus gained by a moving object
The impetus and driving force gained by the development of a process or course of events

About 300 metres to the junction, the traffic light changes to green so I do not need to stop. I cruise past the cars queued on the right lane, which are rousing from varied states of slumber. I do not remove my foot from the gas pedal on my way home, save once. My confidence grows at each succeeding intersection; red does not faze me. It is that kind of day; every light turns green as if anticipating my approach. “It’s a sign,” I say to myself, “So this is what momentum looks like?”

Traffic on Tuesday is unexpected. That cars on the slow lane crawl faster than cars on the speed lane bemuses me. I am undecided as to where I should be. I fix my lipstick and smack my lips using my sun visor mirror. The man in the car on my right smiles at me. I smile back and ease my Toyota in front of his Nissan. Life can be as easy as changing lanes. At every crossroad in my life, someone on the ‘fast’ lane has allowed me cut in ahead of him. Riding on their momentum, I arrived at my destination faster than I otherwise would have. Later, I look at the rear-view mirror and my eyes collide with a strange pair. It is as if the man who made room for me was never there.

When I receive a notification from WordPress that my stats are booming, I am surprised. On Saturday, even I rarely visit my blog because it is a distraction from the business of writing. Facebook is the culprit sending viewers my way. It happened that an acquaintance stumbled on a story on my blog and shared it with her friend who is a person of influence. He enjoyed the story and shared the link on his Timeline. Then his crowd came to see. In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell writes that we are actually powerfully influenced by our surroundings, our immediate context, and the personalities of those around us¹. We rely on them [connectors] to give us access to opportunities and worlds to which we don’t belong². Your friends, after all, occupy the same world that you do³. The number of views rise like the tide over the course of the evening. I reflect that the only thing I did was agonize over every single word of a short story for five nights before publishing it on a Sunday, weeks ago.

In the mythology of various cultures, man supplicates assistance from deities who guarantee success or reverse fortunes, from Zeus to Thor to Sango. If one subscribes to the Biblical narrative, one encounters a prophet, Elijah, running behind a king riding on a chariot. The king should arrive long before Elijah does for man is no match for horses. However, Elijah receives a boost in momentum from his God. He runs faster than the king’s chariot, a sight that may have made it to YouTube and gone viral, if it were today. Technological advances make reliance on deity a primitive concept for some. Man and the machines he has made have created momentum that carries him beyond the moon and back. But what is momentum for you? Wherever you anchor your belief, I wish you what I wish myself: that you consolidate the gains from the previous year and ride a new wave. Happy new momentum.

Gladwell, Malcom, The Tipping Point, How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference, (London: Abacus/Time Warner Books, 2001), 259.
Ibid., 54.
Ibid., 54.

Photo credit: Acatana/ http://pixabay.com/en/highway-night-traffic-spotlight-409126/

Let’s Just Agree to Disagree

November 16, 2014April 5, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 76 Comments

And there it was again at the end of a well-written piece by an African-American about how his trip to Africa changed his worldview; the insults and tacky comments. I did not agree with what in my opinion were romanticized notions of Africa, and I intended to say so. I scanned the piece for points of agreement to acknowledge, so I could begin commenting. However, the vitriol in the comment section from those who agreed and disagreed, whether with the post or the ensuing comments, put me off. It would not be easy to defend myself from people like sixpackpower and beautifulbetsy. Moreover, my gravatar is a photo of me my boss would recognize and my name is Timi Yeseibo.

Is anonymity on the web like mob action? Normal people abandoning good sense to loot, rape, devalue, to the beat of crazy songs sung by thousands high on hysteria like LSD? Does an IP-address unshackle responsibility from freedom?

Beyond anonymity as gasoline for cyberthuggery, in a world of six billion people how can we all agree? Someone said, if only everyone were like me. I say no. Biko, do not populate the world with more people like me—do you know how boring I am? Our differences are not to be feared, but harnessed. You stretch my thinking and make me re-examine what I believe. In the end, we may find common ground, or you remain on the right and I on the left, all with respect. Can we just learn how to agree to disagree? Must web discussions on politics, sports, entertainment, religion, in other words, life, bring out the devil in us?

Sadly, some websites promote these kinds of verbal boxing matches and just as in ancient Rome, people troop in for a good fight, to watch gladiators at work. At its worst bystanders careen into the ring and die.

Our challenge is to find the compassion for others that we want them to have for us. That is emotional correctness. – Sally Kohn¹

A few days ago, I read an engaging post advocating several candidates for political office in the 2015 Nigerian elections. To broaden my knowledge, I sought out opinions in the comment section. Two brilliant minds with opposing views held my attention. As the comment thread lengthened, their commentary lost substance and devolved into name calling as if their intellect had come to a full stop. When commenter one accused commenter two of shouting in capitals, commenter two defended himself by pointing out that his magnanimity was on behalf of the visually challenged.

I laughed until I belly-fulled, then navigated to a less popular political website, where comments are permanently closed, as if to say, “Read, finish, carry your trouble and go!”

Hieroglyphic symbols may have sufficed eons ago, but since the web is predominantly text-based, our ability to decipher tone, mood, and body language is limited. Emoticons only go so far.

After trading points for a while, a friend and I deadlocked on the value of prayer. He said, “Let’s just agree to disagree.” I nodded although I thought a couple more points would push him to my side and a consensus. His hands, folded across his chest, told a different story. If he had written, let’s agree to disagree, in the comment section and put a smiley at the end, would I have stopped?

Having a quick wit and a repertoire of words at my disposal meant as my mother used to say, before you talk one, Timi has talked three, oya, go and study law, that is, winning arguments mattered more than winning hearts. Here’s something I’m learning that has lost me several arguments, but gained me friends or acquaintances and kept the discussion open longer: let the other person save face. Argue passionately for what you believe to be right—strip your “opponent” of logic, but leave his dignity intact. The converse is true, save your own face, don’t comment, even when you are right—walk away with dignity.

Despite our best efforts, we may be misunderstood because people read and process through filters. It helps to first suspend judgement and then seek to understand.

Finally, if you must insult me, if my post or comment inspires your disdain then confound me with your intelligence, charm me with savoir faire. At least do it with style.

1. “Sally Kohn: Let’s try emotional correctness” YouTube video, 4:25, posted by “TedTalks,” on Dec 4, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCJTV5KaJJc

The Lost Art of Conversation

August 24, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 46 Comments

I sat with my friend Toyin to talk about nothing. She mentioned sales at Debenhams. I went on about Monsoon, the clothing brand. She said she wanted to go to the beach. I talked about the three books I left on her coffee table. She pointed to the little boy in wellies splashing in the mud. I reminded her about our childhood, playing in white sand and filling our hair with it.

To me, conversation is pleasurable when we leave judgement at Heaven’s gate and manage to stop the clock from ticking. Multitasking, not to be confused with shared activity that carries conversation from point A to B, and multithinking are the bane of good conversation because if conversation is a way of telling our friends, “Please understand me,” then inattention is their way of saying, “We don’t want to.”

Toyin and I rambled until she checked her phone, “Thirteen notifications!”

I checked mine. “I miss my data coverage, I’m sure I have many notifications as well!”

She looked up and craned north, south, east, and west. “No free Wi-Fi in the park, sorry. Hey look!”

I looked at her phone, at the photo of the man and let my giggles collide with hers. “I’ve seen it before!”

Sometimes her thumbs moved over her keypad with the dexterity of a clerk from an era gone by. Other times her index finger slid across her screen, and she dropped odd bits of information here and there, like a child throwing pieces of bread to ducks at a pond. I kept my phone in my bag. Scrolling through old newsletters from writing, editing, and marketing groups, which caused my inbox to swell to 200 unread mails only made me determined to cancel my subscriptions. I drew circles in the ground with my sneakers.

She sighed and put her phone in her bag. “Why do we do this?”

I knew what she meant, why do we interject our conversations with episodes from social media as if our lives do not sizzle enough?

“Boredom?” I offered.

“No, we were really talking; then I wondered what other people were up to.”

“Curiosity then?”

She saw the twinkle in my eye. “I’m serious! It’s rude.”

“It’s not rude when everyone is doing it. It’s culture.”

“You sef!” She pushed me, but she did not apologise. “It’s possible to do without social media.”

I nodded. She told about how she forgot her phone at the office the weekend that her laptop also crashed. She couldn’t believe she’d survived that weekend without the internet.

“What did you do with all that time?”

“I slept, I read a book,” she shrugged.

We laughed.

Squeals from the family playing Frisbee in the distance caught our attention.

“In this time, we need another kind of fast. Food fasts won’t cut it anymore. We need social media fasts,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because if the purpose of a fast is to eliminate distraction and quieten the mind, then social media provides non-stop stimuli, from one link to the next. My appetite for the internet trumps my appetite for food.”

I nodded. The swings were finally free. I walked over, tugged the chains, and weighed their strength. Then I sat and had a go. She joined me.

“On your marks, get set, go!”

I rose higher and higher. I was winning. Then I thought of all the things that could go wrong. I slowed down and let her triumph.

Another kind of fast? I don’t know. Doesn’t the driver determine the speed of the car? Conversations on social media can be meaningful as well. Whatever the medium, the most expensive thing I can give anyone these days is my full attention.

In Defense of Satire

May 25, 2014June 1, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 44 Comments

“[I]n whatever department of human expression, wherever there is objective truth there is satire.” Wyndham Lewis in Rude Assignment

To write this post, I read about the origin of satire, about Aristophanes (c. 446 BC – c. 386 BC ), a Greek comic playwright, and the Roman poet Horace (65 BC – 8 BC), whose works inspire and form the model for writing modern-day satire. But sha, na dem sabi, I know that I know that I know that satire originated in Nigerian culture. How do I know?

After I ran across a road without a zebra crossing or traffic lights or a pedestrian bridge, just missing that crazy driver who sped out of nowhere, a woman selling oranges by the roadside exclaimed, “You dey craze? You wan kill persin?” so I turned around to look at the yeye driver who’d almost cut my young life short, and then realised she was talking to me.

She could have blasted the government for not providing infrastructure. She could have cursed the driver for failing to observe common-sense speed limit. The irony was that she chose me as the subject of her satire. She exaggerated my role as a potential killer, exposed me to ridicule with her loud gesticulations, and criticized my lack of judgement. And the humour? Well, here I am writing this piece and laughing retroactively, twenty years too late.

You can describe the human condition with white chalk on a blackboard, spacing your letters evenly and clearly, but people may yawn and rub their eyes after a while. You can show how the problems of the world are at once “un”trivialized and brought into sharp focus by employing irony, exaggeration, and/or humour, and people may stay up late to watch the show. This is satire and provoking change, if only in a shift in thinking, is the endgame.

Satire’s overtness, sometimes camouflaged by its subtlety and silent sophistication, is blended into much of what we watch and read, but is often overlooked because we appreciate these works for their entertainment value only. Perhaps the authors want to make people laugh before they make them think.

The #BringBackOurGirls campaign focuses on the serious business of finding and freeing the over 200 girls kidnapped from a Nigerian secondary school in Chibok. While we are still lighting candles for them, questions surrounding the culpability of Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, the legality of the first lady’s “tribunal” and the state of security in Nigeria, especially in the light of recent bomb attacks, continue to make rounds on social media.

It is the cartoons and videos, not the essays, expressing the general mood of the country that have captured my attention the most. I see these works as satires. Some of the media that zoom in on the Nigerian first lady’s perceived gaffes, have come under attack, because satire can be misunderstood when we view these works for their ridicule value alone. Perhaps the authors want to shock people first and then make them think.

“Satire is a mirror where beholders generally discover everybody’s face but their own.” Jonathan Swift

Politics and satire live on the same street. However, I cannot imagine that President Obama, or any other president pouts and refuses breakfast because of a political cartoon splashed on the front page of a newspaper. This is not to say that satire cannot be a demeaning and horrifying personal attack, the pendulum can swing to any extreme, but I’m referring to satire, which has as its greater purpose constructive social criticism to further dialogue and/or action.

Uneasy the head that bears the crown

As a child, I had frequent bouts of malaria. At my mother’s insistence, not only did I have to wait until the smell of sheltox faded into the walls of my room, but I also had to sleep under a white mosquito net. Once every few months I would stand in front of her under the dim inquisition lights of our verandah, hands outstretched as she placed three tablets of Camoquin in my palm one after the other.

“Swallow it quickly with your Fanta,” she would goad.

I was never fast enough. After taking a sip of Fanta, the Camoquin would begin to melt in the fizzy oasis that was my mouth. I would shut my eyes tight as I swallowed the mixture. After I swallowed the third tablet, the half-empty bottle of Fanta was my reward. I rushed the orange liquid, willing it to eliminate every trace of the bitter Camoquin. After this ritual, my body would stave off malaria for a few months.

This in my view is satire at its best; mix the bitter with the sweet to move society to a better place. When this era is over and the dust settles, the videos, the cartoons, and slangs coined, will be reminders that truth was once too hard to swallow.

Cartoon credits:

Mike Asukwo

Mike Asukwo on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asukwo

Mike Asokwo on Twitter: @Asukwoeb

Khaki no be Leather http://t.co/MAWGvUpCeq

Business as Usual http://t.co/90N6BMfUqu

We, the Experts http://t.co/PeuA19Zsmg

The Eagle has landed https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203949665842578&set=pcb.10203949674762801&type=1&theater

JTF-Joint Task Family https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204006243536985&set=pcb.10204006243736990&type=1&theater

Statistically Speaking

April 27, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 88 Comments

I am drawn to my WordPress stats page at least once every day although the stats do not tell me things I am curious about like how old my readers are. I know a twelve-year-old girl who reads my blog occasionally and a man of fifty-one, who claims to have read everything on my blog. Are the rest of my readers older or younger? My stats do not also tell me if I have crossed gender barriers with my pen. Who reads my post more, men or women?

I know no one in Brazil and Azerbaijan is a place I must locate on a map, yet my words have gone where my legs could not go. My words have travelled over Congo, a place I visited in Wilbur Smith’s The Dark of the Sun, and touched down in the United Arab Emirates. At least one person in every continent, in 105 countries, has viewed my blog.

I have heard it said that Nigerians don’t read, and that the average Nigerian’s appetite for literature lies in entertainment (Nollywood gossip), politics, and religion. I think I have done my part to debunk that claim. My highest blog views are from Nigeria, closely followed by the United Kingdom and the United States. Mind you, nearly 5,000 views in a country of 150 million people is a drop in the ocean, but I’ll take that drop, thank you!

What brings people who I have never met to my blog? I’d like to think that although I don’t know what gnaws on your mind at night, my words do. More likely, search engine robots pull you to my blog when you search for words like Akpos or Body Magic. If Akpos is unique to Nigeria, then majority of the seventy percent of viewers from Europe and The Americas are Nigerians. It makes sense as my Naija experiences colour my metaphors, making me feel proud that I’m also exporting Naija culture to non-Nigerians.

Was it my smiling Gravatar or a comment I left on another blog that brought you here? If so, I’m never changing that photo! If Facebook brought you here, I am not surprised for people share my posts on Facebook more than on any other social media platform.

I wonder if you stay after you land on my blog or if you leave, bookmark the page, and return later. If you stay, what do you like to read most? When I read a book, I try to find someone I know or myself in its pages. Is the protagonist’s failure like mine or is his success worth aspiring to? Does he walk with a limp so I can catch up with him?

I think the best stories are about the human condition, which would explain why stories about my or another’s insecurities served with wit, are the most viewed, most shared, most commented, and most liked posts on this blog. Posts like The Body Magic, I am not Looking for Love, I am going to Work, The Measure of a Man, Any Comments, and Six Degrees of Separation. Perhaps vulnerability exposes authenticity that makes you stay beyond the polished prose.

Now I know what drives traffic to my blog, do I write another Akpos post? Now I know which posts attract the most views, comments, likes, and shares, do I stop writing posts like, Grow Up Mikey and Our National Pastime, because they performed poorly at the box office?

I cannot confine myself to the prison of writing for stats; my mind is bigger than that. However, I realise that my stats are my friends and they are relevant to the degree that I can make right inferences, which affect my writing and ultimately enhance your reading pleasure. So please fill in the gaps and tell me what my stats page won’t: who are you, what brought you here, and what will keep you coming back?

Image credit: illustration from Microsoft

I Do

April 20, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 61 Comments

Some people believe that after they’ve met The One, they could never develop feelings for another. I think that if we are blindfolded we may be unable to distinguish touch from touch. This is not an argument against monogamy, but for focus.

In his book Outliers, The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell says that hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning¹. In making the point that excellence requires a critical minimum level of practice, he says ten thousand hours is the magic number that researchers have agreed on for true expertise². That’s an awful amount of focus.

Livelytwist and I have been married for a year and as much as she has pleasured me past our honeymoon weekend of 2,000 views, family, friends, work, hobbies, books, TV, social media, and a hundred other commitments compete for my attention. If I have achieved any kind of excellence in this marriage, it is because I rarely let anything come between Livelytwist and me.

Our marriage has not been without its challenges. Although I spend hours conjuring word pictures to process big ideas, promoting these ideas beyond my small circle tasks me. Learning how to ‘shout’ on Twitter and Facebook does not excite me. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.³

I remember that at twelve or thirteen, my mum gave me the talk.

“You’ve started your period. From now on, if a boy touches you like this,” she tapped my arm, “you’ll get pregnant!”

I did not take her words to heart. But the next day, as I played tag with the kids on my street, the horror of how many times I could get pregnant weighed on my heart. At dinnertime, I watched the boys run to their homes while I trudged to mine, sure that my stomach had already started swelling. I stopped playing tag after that.

My mother had successfully sold me her abstinence formula, which I bought until I turned sixteen and the boys came to play tag in droves. Only then did she change her marketing strategy.

Where I come from, we call every carbonated drink Coke. Such is the brand dominance Coca-Cola enjoys, and yet the company still spends millions on advertising. I realise that I must first write posts that resonate with readers, before I figure out how to get them to read it, and then be ready to change when my methods age.

At the same time, I do not want to be that guy at the airport, who you ask, “What do you do?” and he answers, “I’m in sales, and you?” Then while your lips are opening, he tells you about his eBooks, his tenor rising, rising, dropping, rising, rising, as he shoves a Kindle in your face. You cannot get a word in edgeways, so you promise to buy at least one book and make a mental note to go for confession. When you throw the bookmark he gave you in the bin, all that remains from the encounter is the smell of musk.

The first indicator that someone outside my close circle was anticipating my blog post came a few months after I started blogging.

Lively, how far? It’s 2 p.m. here and we’ve been waiting all day for your blog post.

This email from a reader via my contact form proved that my walk was louder than any talk I could have given for he had noticed my Sunday-Sunday consistency. It changed the game for me. I shovelled out my doubts about blogging and said, “I do” to Livelytwist.

All of you who share my posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and by word-of-mouth, are my connectors to the rest of the world. Your referrals are fresh like 8 a.m. doughnuts and relevant like Google. You helped me stay faithful to Livelytwist. At every crossroad, you lifted the lamp of love, and I saw in your face, the road that I should take.

Thank you.

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A self-deprecating post about my struggle with weight and the Body Magic may be what bring these die-hard seekers to Livelytwist.

A tongue-in-cheek stab at the ubiquitous Akpos, means that Akpos, and all things Akpos, are the search terms that bring the most traffic to my blog.

Every time I write about love, my stats go boom boom boom! But, what’s love got to do with these search engine terms?

Thankfully, these search engine terms reveal what the others may or may not: Livelytwist actually offers something intellectual.

And these search engine terms remind me of why I do what I do…

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