As I was thinking about what this article would be about, my brother Godwin had all focus on this cool app he had discovered on Google play store. Albert was busy tweeting and retweeting. Collins was definitely on Facebook and Ernest laughed in the space of every five minutes with his eyes stuck on his smartphone. Total silence there was, then Ernest laughs, then silence.
I realized how agonizingly and disappointingly socialization among humans has diminished. In 2006, it was impossible to find a minute of silence with myself and these characters put together in one room. There was always something to talk about. Collins would tell a movie with perfect accuracy in his narration that you would need not watch if you hadn’t. Albert’s ability to make you laugh again to jokes you’ve heard several times amazing. I do not miss these times and the things they said and did as much as I miss the fact that we were literally talking.
We live in a world today where the advancement of telecommunication technology has taken over our natural human social and interpersonal relationship and destroyed it to the core, making us robots programmed to communicate using devices therefore creating an artificial environment branded “social network”.
The thought of how we have fallen completely to it sickens me. We don’t just like it, we are addicted to it. We are at a point of life where our handsets matter more to us than the person next to us. We post and tweet everything to the point that it’s so meaningless to whoever is on the other end of the communication process. We don’t even care anymore about the communication process. We careless if there is a receiver reading, and making sense of what we post. We just post things because it’s cool to do so.
We pretend to be friends on the Social Network when in reality, we have nothing to say, nothing in common and sometimes, we don’t even exist. I once told a joke to a guy and he actually said ‘lol’ when he could have just laughed.
No wonder Passenger said in ‘Scare The Dark Away’ Well, “we wish we were happier, thinner and fitter, we wish we weren’t losers and liars and quitters we want something more not just nasty and bitter we want something real not just hash tags and Twitter
It’s the meaning of life and it’s streamed live on YouTube but I bet Gangnam Style will still get more views We’re scared of drowning, flying and shooters But we’re all slowly dying in front of f**king computers”
Another irritating aspect of this Social Network hijack is the terrible effect it has had on our grammar, spelling and our English in general. We spell words in different kinds of wrong ways all in the name of shorthand. I tell you the truth, we do not write that way to save time and bytes but basically because we either can’t spell or feel our English words need more swag. I asked a lady what her name was on Whatsapp and her response still baffles me. She replied: ‘mhy naem iys Ehwurhamha Dhedhe Ahmhanhorki’. She actually meant Ewurama Dede Amanorki. Was she writing shorthand? No. None of the words she wrote was shorter than normal. Was she being stylish? I guess so. But with spelling? I wonder.
Thanks to the Social Network, though economical, one cannot remember the last time he received a phone call from a relative or a friend. We used to care that much till Android and his siblings came by.
I am never an anti-social network activist. No. But never let it affect your interpersonal real time relationship with others. It’s about time we had real conversations, Sing a song together, share a plate, and share a hug with our handsets switched off.