Imagine being shot. Imagine bleeding to death. Imagine tweeting out a plea for prayers, only prayers. Now, imagine strangers on Twitter responding with vileness. One asking you if you’re dead already. Another asking you to show her proof of your attack. Another still cussing you out in her language.
Last week, a train going from Abuja to Kaduna was attacked, and Dr. Chinelo Nwando Megafu, a young dentist on board, got shot. Utterly desperate, she sent out what would be her last tweet: “I’ve been shot, pray for me.” Heart-wrenching tweet, but some “adult” Nigerians accused her of lying, cussed her out, and wished her death. Chinelo died. A brilliant life cut short. As so many have said, Nigeria happened to her.
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I can’t begin to imagine her family’s pain. And then to find out—as they must have by now—that her request for prayers was enough for some fellow Nigerians to deride her and wish her evil. Not only did they accuse her of lying, but they abused her in the cruelest language, egged each other on, LOLing at their own “witticism.” I don’t get it. A Nigerian-American lawyer was one of those who tweeted out vileness at the late Chinelo, calling her a liar, asking her to provide proof of having been shot, and accusing her of chasing clout. ebi if you think someone is chasing clout, you ignore them rather than energize their clout by responding? This lady and others are now scrambling to apologise after exposing their figurative behinds to the world. But words spoken are like cracked eggs. You cannot unspeak them, which is why the golden rule is “think before you speak” (or in this case, “think before you tweet”). It really isn’t that difficult to control your fingers from typing words and hitting the send button faster than you can think. Not for anyone with commonsense.
Some of those who have either very quickly deleted their tweets or are now apologising, apparently read criticism of the present government into the dying girl’s tweet. It beats me how they made that leap. How does it make sense for anyone old enough to have a Twitter account to accuse someone they’ve never interacted with of making up tales of being shot? What justification have they got? Perhaps, when politics is the only prism through which one views the world, any statement/tweet that does not praise one’s trusted administration, no matter how unrelated or innocent, is an attack. If any of those people who were so quick to label Chinelo an attention-seeking liar had checked her Timeline, they would have seen someone who did not peddle falsehoods; someone who was not into tweeting anything near self-promoting, never mind attention-seeking. Besides, she was not asking for money so they could not have thought she was trying to scam folks of cash. There was absolutely nothing about her tweet that should have gotten any reasonable person suspicious. But Twitter is full of unreasonable people.
Some school of thought has it that social media brings out the worst in humans. The anonymity of social media, the lack of eye contact is said to lower inhibition and acts as some kind of digital-fueled alcohol that causes people to write/say evil and offensive stuff to strangers on the internet. We’ve heard of folks trolled to the extent that they abandon social media completely and in some cases, trolled to suicide. Yet the wickedness continues. Apparently, for a number of people, being mean to strangers on social media is their favorite sport. And it is so because they are just wicked, and social media gives them one more avenue to manifest their wickedness. Finding satisfaction in sending out cruel words because you want to defend your favorite celebrity, person, politician, or for whatever reason, is a result of a wicked heart. Period. Those that responded to the tweet of a dying girl with cruelty didn’t do so because they typed (and clicked send) faster than they could think. They did so because they are mean. The finger tweets out of the abundance of the heart, and when the heart is wicked, its tweets reveal that wickedness.
How is it to deal with the wickedness? I wish I knew. It’s not like there’s a magic pill for evil. Many have said that wickedness is the fruit of an empty soul. And the devil finds work for idle hands. So maybe the cure is for those who feel the urge to be mean to actively seek joy and fulfillment in life. Surely, there’s got to be something that gives their life meaning? If they don’t find that thing, we’ll continue to have wickedness on these (Twitter) streets.
May the dead rest, and may their families find the strength to carry on. Amen.
