Random musings

Hello online denizens. Residents of the digital world. Occupants of the electronic haven that is the internet. It's been a while since I last blogged here. The advent of micro-blogging (Twitter) has made it such that a lot of us don't have the time, energy, or attention spans to follow through with a regularly updated ‘proper’ blog. I'll take this moment to give kudos to all those who have kept their blogs updated with regular content. It takes effort, commitment and dedication - Discipline. If one has the energy and mental focus to consistently deliver new content online, then they're probably able to deliver a lot more to the world. Through their sheer tenacity, I'm sure they will pull through even the most seemingly daunting tasks.

I didn't start this post with the intention of moving in any particular direction. I figured I'd just let my mental train run - off the tracks If need be - just because it hasn't run at all for a while. I blame Twitter to an extent. Why blog ‘properly’ when you can push out intermittent random thoughts that don’t have to follow in any particular order. There is no rhyme or reason to Tweeting. It makes it so easy. You can tweet something, RT something else, LMAO yet another thing, engage in some twitter slander, then return to what you were originally tweeting about. It’s genius. Textual cacophony has never been so wonderful. The existence of twitter and other micro-blogging sites has changed the way we communicate information to ourselves. And it has changed even further the way we process this information. Data now comes quicker and easier. But as quickly as it comes, it goes. We are inundated with messages of all genres - current affairs, politics, high fashion, and the occasional nude picture (thank you @postbadbitches). We hardly have time to reflect on a piece of information before another rolls around. With micro blogging, we have adapted to processing the information as fleetingly and ephemerally as it comes to us. We are now micro thinking. Think of it as online induced ADD. The web has made so much information available to us that our challenge now is not what data we can access (because we have almost everything at our fingertips). No, the problem now is how much of it can we get through.

Everyday I'm asked "have you watched this" or "have you seen that". Have you listened to this new song? Do you know the latest meme? Have you read the latest news report? There's always something new. There are millions of people every day uploading new content to the internet - videos, photos, songs, articles, you name it. We've come to the point at which a lot of your colleagues might have said to you "I don't watch TV anymore". I think I hear that one every other day, if not every day. The rate at which 'regular TV' is losing its audience, the broadcasting industry will have to look at better way of monetizing that market. I have a theory which proposes that in America, most shows are sustained by an audience which still attaches some value to being the first individuals to watch an episode of a show. A fan base. These fans will sit for the show to premiere on television because it won't appear online till it's been shown on telly. These fans are what adds to the show's viewership numbers, and what dictates the advertising revenue for the show, as well as its future time slot in the networks programming schedule. Shows with a successful season one will get more prime time slots in subsequent seasons. So in America, where these shows are produced, the system works. Shows are produced and people watch on tv. Viewership goes up, ad revenue comes in. All is well. Well except for the growing number of individuals who couldn't care less if they missed the show's TV slot, because they were just going to watch it online anyway. These are the guys that are reducing viewership numbers, and making that ad revenue go down. But do not fear corporate america. Companies like Netflix - and almost every other major broadcasting network - have moved to the online frontiers to tackle the shifting viewership masses. These companies make viewers pay a small fee to rent and watch programs online, so they can watch shows at their convenience. So while the show loses television viewers, it makes a bit of money back online, especially since copyright laws make it harder to find illegal viewing sites in America (a lot of them are blocked). Also, in America, law enforcement can easily track illegal downloaders and levy them a big fine for their downloading misdemeanors.

But what happens in countries like Nigeria, where copyright rules are not that strongly enforced. The web has very limited police patrolling, if any at all (although that's apparently about to change due to some Israeli company coming in. Thank you Jonathan), and people have possibly the strongest aversion to paying a kobo for any service received online? What then, happens to the television industry? A lot of us have dstv subscriptions, but how many of us actually watch the thing while our internet/hard drives work? I don't know about you, but unless I have guests over, that dstv decoder lies dormant. Maybe if I had one directly in my room, I'd use it more. I don't really mind if the TV industry develops viewership challenges in Nigeria though, seeing as our TV is outsourced from south africa anyway. DSTV's monopoly is strong. And that's a ton of money leaving our shores. Shame, really. Its funny now, because I remember when I was a kid, and there was all that south african programming on the tv. I just took it as TV. The real implications never hit me - that it was a south african company and we used its services because ours sucked/was nonexistent. Now I wonder why my house also received Super RTL (a german channel) for a few years. Probably another television contract someone chopped back in the day and made off with a clean bundle before the venture was liquidated. As I always say, whoever can solve the problem of declining tv viewership and nigerian television content is going to make a boatload of money.

But I digress. In a major way. I didn't intend to talk about the television industry at all, or give you all my limited insight into its workings in nigeria, and in the hovaseas. I guess I'll attribute that to my micro thinking, which hasn't been helped by my already existing ADDDDDD (super ADD - attention deficit disorder for those who don't know. Yes, I assume some of y'all don't know. Problem?)

But yes, my point of writing all this was just to give a tip of the hat to those who have unfailingly delivered relevant content to the online masses, and who continue to do so. I don't know how you do it. Sometimes I don't even know why I write -or used to write. It's not to be funny, to be an 'activist', or an opinion leader, or anything like that. My pieces were never anything spectacular. The diction was just above par, if that. The structure barely existent - I digress a lot. But that can be attributed to style. Once any writer makes it, any writing quirks/flaws they had become grand, fabled, celebrated 'styles.' I think half the stuff literature teachers interpret in Shakespeare is not what Shakespeare was thinking. Shakespeare says "there was a black chair", and suddenly to literature teachers everywhere, the chair becomes an allusion/reference to the black man, who is meant to be subservient and sat upon, like a chair. Hey, esteemed lecturers of literature, maybe shakespeare just meant it was a chair, huh? How about that? Ah, see? I digressed again. Maybe one day this will be a legendary writing style - the Utomi digression technique, where the writer digresses so far off tangent to test if the reader can follow his original train of thought (which had run off the track several paragraphs ago). Speaking of styles, I wonder if hashtags will soon make it into regular literature? #okayIneedtostopdigressing

As I said, I just came here to salute the diligent writers, no matter what they write about, and what their reasons are for writing. In a world that is moving so fast, with information blazing past us at the speed of light, I am truly inspired by people who can string several paragraphs together coherently, and concisely. And for those who do this regularly, I wish them more readership. For it is a shame that one would have taken such time to put so much together, and have no one pay attention to it.

But even if readership is low, the task of writing is reward in itself, because it keeps the brain focused, sharp. It means one has the mental fortitude to take on even greater tasks, and to be consistent in their delivery. And I believe that's what brought me back to this - to putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) - For the self discipline, and to reassure myself somewhat that I can still put together some literature that isn't a memo, a report, or a speech, which is what I do as a profession. I may not be consistent as a lot of you, but I will try to write more. Not because I have anything new or interesting to say, but maybe because I need to be sure of my ability to say what I need to say, when I eventually need to say it. To be sure that I can still write, even if not that well. Maybe I'll be able to do it better if I stay consistent. Maybe not. But I guess we'll see now, won’t we?

To all the writers out there, keep writing. The number of people that can piece together more than a single paragraph of coherent text at a time grows smaller by the day. We need all of you that we have, especially in a country that churns out so many near illiterates who are likely to be future leaders of the nation. At least, when these people reduce Nigeria to a pile of smouldering ashes, at the very least we'll have you folks to write all about it.