Wednesday 9 January 2013

OPINION COMMENTARIAT RSS Feed Pinging, Social Media And The ‘Gbagaun’ Republic–By Debo Adejugbe


“If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.” — Thomas J Watson
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In our rush to be the first to break the news sometimes, our fingers out-do our brains when we pound the keyboard. It happens more often than we can acknowledge. I call them honest mistakes. Very honest ones.
Being honest at a mistake doesn’t discount the fact that a mistake has been made, though. It becomes more fun-poking if what that mistake birthed is outrageously funny or depressingly uncouth, or both. You have to see some of these mistakes to understand my thrust.
It’s understandable when we make honest mistakes – I still do. No need to call the grammar police. I get it; we are humans, prone to silly mistakes. This piece is not centered on those who “honestly make the mistakes” – incredibly funny typos like Dino Melaye’s tweet: “Maku is a pubic enemy”. We all know what Labaran Maku, current Minister of Information is. But “pubic”? The missing “L” changed it to something extremely different. Too privately different! It however still doesn’t change the fact that Maku is Our Enemy!
How do I say this without offending anyone? Issorai!
Social Media (SM) as we know it has made Activists, Writers, Editors, Crusaders, Photographers, Event Managers etc. out of many. They are thriving in their chosen businesses even if 90% of SM activists are the present day “Abatis” in the making. They glow in the adulation of trolls and “famzers”, waiting on their paymasters to sponsor their next assignment, living fatuously beyond their means in every sense of the word. Those are the activists my generation is breeding. God help us!
No! I’ve not changed topic, we are still on the matter.
The advent of Blackberry Messenger – Pinging – and Social Media has seen the rise in free opinions being bandied around the internet space. This is a triumph in itself, as we can now engage the high and mighty directly, giving them a furious piece of our unhappy minds. But the smarter phones get, the dumber humans become.
Some of the broadcasts I get on BBM make zero sense. A graduate sending you symbols to rebroadcast so that you can get those symbols on your list? Basic knowledge is now a thing of the past. If you presently use a Blackberry, you must have received, at one time or the other, a broadcast telling you to forward a message or Research In Motion (RIM) – the makers of Blackberry would yank you off their platform. Absolutely hair-raising!
We have criminally ignored the use of correct words and basic tenses in an attempt to impress. We tend to flip through the dictionary, searching for big words, without giving thought to syntax and basic rule of communication – understanding. This group hardly gets found out though – people get lost in the big words that they forget to contextually form an opinion on the relevance of those words.
Fast forward to twitter and the exuberance of many to communicate in its fast-paced world. Here is where the “Gbagaun Republic” comes in. The motto is “Gbagaun As You Go” for so many twitter handles and when you make the mistake of pointing some of them out, you’re in for “Gbagaun Abuses”. A search for the word “Gbagaun” on twitter opens you up to a new world of “Gbagaun Possibilities”, where your dream of writing the most wayward of tenses flashes like those images you see at the point of death.
Relax, the keywords section is coming up.
Someone wrote this: “Hey!! Happy new year to all my love once I pray this year will be a benefitful one for our lifes. Amen”
And this: “52% of women fake organism”
And this: “u looks cute”
What’s my point?
This generation is LAZY! We hardly read and some of the arguments we project are watery, lopsided and foolish at best. We want to be activists when we don’t know our history. We want to postulate theories we can’t wrap our heads around. We want to impress others while speaking our “I’m see your DM”, “D’Banj’s carrier has ended” and “she says I’m a lie” english.
We make SM a tool for making money while pretending we love the country, her people and their basic needs. We sell to the highest bidder while criticizing those who beat us to it. We criticize the government and others, but get offended when a little dose is administered to us.
We are the problem!
You can’t change others when you still live in your hollow vision of making it by criticizing others, and not in hope that they would change. You definitely won’t change the world if you find it hard to develop yourself and hone skills that are relevant in today’s world. You can’t be useful to this country in ways that are great if you still send those dumb broadcasts on BBM.
Looking for who to criticize? Please, take a look into the mirror, the culprit is looking straight at you.
Keywords:
*Gbagaun – A Nigerian slang. It is used to taunt people who just made a grammatical error; written or spoken. Derivatives: Gbagauned, Gbagaunistic, Gbags, Gbagauns, Gbagauner(s).
*Gbagaun Abuses – The insults you get from those who gbagauned; after correcting them. Usually laden with lots of gbagaun and expletives.
*Gbagaun As You Go – The art of making mistakes that qualify as gbagaun on a “as you speak/write” basis
*Gbagaun Possibilities – The endless/limitless world of gbagaun, where your dreams of composing the most wayward of tenses exist.
*Gbagaun Republic: The world where it is no longer a mistake to Gbagaun. Here, they live and breathe Gbagaun without giving a hoot what you think.
I’m @deboadejugbe
Follow me on twitter and Let’s share the joy.

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