Before anybody says anything, I will be the first to admit that I am guilty (to a certain extent) of whatever follows, so I’m not being hypocritical or anything, just pointing out observations.
Recently I had to take a trip to some off endzzzzzzzz location with a friend, well to me it was like the edge of the earth, but apparently that is some people’s daily commute. The driver drove, and we sat at the back and had a conversation, all the way up to the north pole, we talked about everything from the serious (politics), to the random and irrelevant (oranges that were being hawked on the side of the road), and it was very refreshing. But the truth is my blackberry battery had died, so at that point all I could do was talk, had that not been the case I would have robbed myself of a great conversation, because inevitably somebody would have bbm’ed and i’d have to reply, there would be something interesting “trending” on twitter, a funny chain email would have come in that I couldn’t resist reading, something would have distracted me from fully committing to a chat. For a split second it made me think: social media really is the devils spawn (I don’t really think that, but at the very least it must be some miniature daemon that is not naughty enough for the devil to send on runs, so he just keeps him facing the wall with one hand up and a laptop and blackberry in the other hand). Social media has robbed an entire generation of the ability to appreciate the “Art of Conversation”
If we were to calculate the amount of time the average (average privileged) Nigerian spends on their blackberry, iPhone, android (just u Kiks), other brand of smartphone, it would probably be around one to two thirds of their waking hours. Bb messenger, twitter, facebook, WhatsApp, kik... U name it, a whole cyber social network at your fingertips, an opportunity to either express yourself, be 100% who you are, no airs no graces, or to create some sort of false persona and live out the life of the person you wished you were, and nobody will question you. I have spoken to people that have really creased me up, had me rolling on the floor in laughter in “cyber space”, then bumped into them in real life, the 3 dimensional world and they had the humour of a corpse, watching ants crawl up and down a wall for 2 hours is more entertaining than hanging with them for 5 minutes. Whether this is because they are shy or because they are not really who they are in cyberspace, I am in no position to judge, but somehow the cat got their tongue, the same tongue that was talking 19 to the dozen on the other end of a phone screen, is now short of words.
It’s always so remarkable to me when I’m in London, having dinner with friends, and there isn’t a single phone on the table, oyinbos no dey commot phone for pocket, they don’t check who tweeted what, if there is a red light flashing, who just changed their profile picture to something controversial, they just dey chop their food, and ‘conversate’ dey go. I often joke around about having social anxiety (sometimes its not a joke sha), but it is almost par for the course, we spend so much time on our phones that the thought of social intercourse begins to nauseate and terrify us, and we quite simply are incapable of talking without being able to cut and paste, erase, re-type, spell check, use a thesaurus, thinking about what we want to say a hundred times over, making sure to tailor it to what the person we are ‘socialising’ with wants to hear, using overly aggressive wit, saying things we dare not say otherwise, because we can, forced gallantry, etc etc. We can be whoever our keypad allows us to be, but once it is taken away, very few people know how to behave, they morph into shrinking violets, or they bring out their ak47 and load it up with 500 rounds of pure bull *h**, sort of like verbal diarrhoea, they burst into nervous chatters, but it isn’t true conversation.
Real conversation is truly an art, and one I have made my study. It is uninhibited, raw, and real. It is being able to say what’s on your mind however stupid, it is being able to crack a joke that nobody else but you finds funny, it is not tiring under the pressure to be interesting, it is throwing in the odd conversational hand grenade – saying something unexpected, it is talking about nothing, but the other person understands perfectly, it is a connection of minds, it is a communion, it is give and take, it is the noblest of team sports. Like a painting, no two conversations are the same, each painter uses a different stroke, a different pallet, and has a different style ... His “CONVERSATION” is his own unique “ART”.
Xoxo.
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