Between popularity and notoriety, By Wole Olaoye

The quest for fame is a global pandemic. From time immemorial, man has craved recognition and social pre-eminence through various means — even if he has to be anti-social to attain social recognition. In this pursuit, the line between popularity and notoriety thins out. Most people would rather be notorious than be unknown. Every Tamuno, Dike and Hadi knows this fact.

I commend Nicola Formichetti’s words to the dark minds who foul up the virtual superhighway of  social media in their quest for recognition: “The dark side of social media is that, within seconds, anything can be blown out of proportion and taken out of context. And it’s very difficult not to get swept up in it all.”

Tamuno, Dike and Hadi 

Tamuno: Ah, Silifa has suddenly become an arrogant celebrity. Small girl of yesterday! Since her social media post about her stepfather went viral, she has suddenly become a superstar and is on demand everywhere…

Dike: I can give you a long list of her type in my neck of the woods. She must be the envy of other girls now, except that I wouldn’t go as far as she went just because I want to ‘trend’. Some people have more scandalous stories but they will never tell the world because the internet never forgets. You may become famous today but your grandchildren may be embarrassed by your disclosures several decades ahead.

Hadi: I insist that cultural red lines are sacrosanct. Despite the fact that social media tries to create an artificial ‘global culture’, we all know that there are western cultural fads that will never gain traction in Africa because culture is thicker than a fleeting craze. By the way, please refresh my memory on the Silifa story.

Tamuno: You mean scandal?

Hadi: Whatever!

Dike: She claimed that she snatched her stepfather from her mum and is today cohabiting with the man who is 39 years her senior. She told the story with lurid details and virtually disrobed her mother… 

Hadi: Stop! Now I remember! The details are too offensive . Please, spare me!

Tamuno, Dike and Hadi are like most of the average people in the world who frown at extremes. Silifa, the subject of their gossip, is our local version of Christie, the American TikToker whose story went massively viral when she disclosed that she had married her stepdad. The story was so salacious that the video was viewed 22.3 million times on TikTok. It also attracted over 124,000 comments from viewers who also asked for more information. 

Married Your Stepdad?

The world enjoys watching the dance of a mentally deranged person as long as she’s not a family member.

The woman who goes by the username @Christywho_  shared her video with the on-screen caption, “Marrying my step dad was the best decision I’ve ever made.” The upload showed a man hugging a woman who had her legs wrapped around him as they kissed….

You would think that America was too far gone in debauchery to see anything wrong in what the woman claimed to have done, but the pushback was instant.

“Am I the only one wondering how your mom is doing?” asked one viewer whose comment was liked over 3,000 times. 

“There’s 7 billion people in the world, why?” asked another who received over 9,000 likes.

Many TikTok users stitched and duetted the video, appearing shocked by the story — one uploader’s silent reaction received over 103,000 views.

The video also made its way to Twitter where a user wrote, “Can someone unplug the internet please? I don’t want it anymore!”

The TikToker’s post had achieved as much notoriety as anyone could wish for, and she had become known by millions of people all over the world within a few days. But to what end? The negative reactions were so damning that she did a sequel to the video clip and changed her story. 

Joke Turned Sour

Christie, the mother of two from Tampa, Florida, has now come out and revealed that the couple’s love story is not actually as controversial as she had portrayed it to be. She told the New York Post that she posted the clip as a ‘joke’.

In answer to some of the questions asked by commenters, she replied: “Was I groomed? No. Did my stepdad raise me? No. Was I a minor when I met him? No.  Do me and my mom still talk? Yes. Did he have kids with my mom? No.”

Some critics had, inevitably, reacted with hate towards her children and her late brother. And that touched her deeply.  

“The amount of death threats I received, wishing that my children were born without arms and legs and they were glad my brother had died, and they wanted to call child protective services on me.”

To another critic, she retorted, This filter is insane. Plz leave my kids and ‘unalived’ brother out of this.”

She explained that her new husband isn’t even her stepdad – she simply made the comment because the couple have a 16-year age gap. She revealed that her husband was actually her older brother’s best friend, and after her brother died in a motorcycle crash, they bonded over the loss and fell in love.

“I didn’t expect the video to blow up as much as it did,” Christy admitted. “I wanted to show that People will believe anything that they read on the internet. I also wanted to prove that everyone will be upset and believe anything they see on the internet nowadays,” she elucidated.

“They were mad when I ‘married my stepdad,’ and they were mad when I posted my real story and found out that it wasn’t actually my stepdad. The internet feeds on the drama.”

Nigerian Desperadoes

It is that drama that will rubbish the legacies of many trending stars of today who will weave any kind of story to go viral. Politicians who have access to the public treasury indiscriminately buy hours of prime airtime on television stations to advertise their partisan poison. They also retain an army of internet warriors who terrorise their opponents and further spread their lies. They forget to ask themselves: Where are the liars of yesterday?

It is in this context that one must pity some Nigerian desperadoes who are like Nevada’s Christie. There is one who calls herself an investigative journalist but who, to all intents and purposes, is just a social climber and name dropper. She has tried so many tricks in the book but so far, no luck. People generally think she needs to see a shrink.

Then the attempt by a self-styled activist, critic and social media influencer, Martins Vincent Otse, alias VeryDarkman, to use a fib against the Falana family to climb to millions of social media endorsements and commentaries has blown up in his face. Tails between his legs, he’s now begging the Falanas for mercy. 

The evolution of social media has changed our lives for good. Social scientists are still trying to fathom the full extent of the influence of this phenomenon which has changed the way we relate with each other and shrunken distances and knowledge gaps in such an unprecedented way that it is nothing short of a socio-scientific revolution. It can be a powerful instrument for good or social destruction depending on how it is deployed. 

Wole Olaoye is a Public Relations consultant and veteran journalist. He can be reached on wole.olaoye@gmail.com, Twitter: @wole_olaoye; Instagram: woleola2021.