Say Your Mind!
Social media is so easy. You can just come up online and say what’s on your mind. With a few taps on the phone or even a simple video recording, you could declare your allegiance to a political party or share your thoughts on a government policy that was passed. Once that is done, people would have an idea of the kind of person that you are, and would most likely treat you appropriately.
Many people have made social media their mouthpiece. They’ve gone on there to say lots of things, irrevocable things that have come back to haunt them. At the time, they were harmless and playful. However, as the world evolved, some things started getting more dangerous, and some opinions were better left in the mind and unsaid.
It’s no news that in the world of today, people can suffer greatly for the things they’ve said. A certain celebrity in Nigeria has been declared wanted by the police for raping a minor, including cyber bullying and cyberstalking. And his rape case? It wasn’t brought in by a victim; he confessed to it himself during a live session on social media. And that could probably be the beginning of his downfall.
Such a thing is terrible, so it’s understandable that he’s made to pay for that crime. However, there are other times when institutions go out of their way to stifle people’s right to free speech. Like a time in Delta State (I think…), when some students refused to call the First Lady of the country their mother. A clip was made of the moment, and it went viral. Even though the majority of the students sang the song, the person who uploaded the video got into serious trouble, to the point that she was almost expelled.
The school had seemed hell-bent on kicking her out, but it took the intervention of notable activists to keep her there. They even had to try looking into her past, trying her for former infractions with the hope of getting a justifiable reason to expel her. And that can be one of the effects of social media.
These days, we’ve seen actors have their lives destroyed simply because of one careless post. It can be a video, a tweet… something. People can go from making millions every day to suddenly losing it all because of one dumb move. And even more annoying, it doesn’t have to be recent. Kevin Hart almost got cancelled because of a tweet he made years before. The actor who played Plastic Man (Ralph Dibny) in The Flash series actually got fired because of a post he made in the past.
Hollywood is notorious for that thing, just a little scandal, and studios will drop you faster than they can drop a piece of hot yam. It’s crazy. But no matter how you look at it, they believe that they’re doing what is right for their business. Whether you accept it or not, the customer will always be king! If customers associate you with even the slightest bit of negativity, they’ll move on to the competition faster than you can snap your fingers.
That’s why when one celebrity gets into a scandal, those they call friends would start distancing themselves, so the stain doesn’t get on them. And when an employee does something untoward online, they could lose their job, even though that act didn’t necessarily violate their job policies. We all heard of the air hostess who taped herself twerking in an airplane while in her uniform. She got fired. Same with the nurses who were twerking in the hospital.
Some schools these days expel female students who have become famous for the raunchy kind of content they post online. These are people doing things well within their rights, but the blowback is what the institutions are trying to avoid. Because when the public sees such an act, it would be easy to assume that everyone is like that, and that can reduce customer confidence in them.
It’s not fair, but then, it is what it is. We have to accept that whatever we do, we’re not the only ones whose poor choices reflect on. A school principal who comes online to say that dating a minor should not be a punishable offence would get himself fired from his school. A church where the pastor is embezzling funds will either be transferred or kicked out publicly, so the members will know that such a thing isn’t condoned.
Because the things you do will reflect on your person, your tribe, your religion, your family, your neighborhood… just everything about you. That’s why you’ll hear statements like, I can’t ever date someone from a certain school, or a certain tribe. I can’t hire people who worship in this church. This is because people like to see patterns, even when there are no patterns to be seen. I guess it’s cause it makes them feel smarter. If not, they’ll know that judging an entire demography for something a handful did is just pure ludicrous.
Like I said, it’s not fair. But it is what it is. We have to be careful the kind of things we post, because if for anything they cast your school, company, neighborhood, or even country in a bad light, you’ll answer for it. And that’s a fact!
It's funny how the things people say today in the social space haunt them in the future and my point remains that, regardless of how much freedom we have in the world today. We mustn't overuse the privilege not just because of today.