Traffic, like we are
conversant with, is the amount of people who pass through a certain place at a
certain moment in a certain way. The likes of facebook posts, the views on
YouTube uploads and blog posts, the retweets and favourites on tweets, the
clicks on your links and the comments on all these are regarded as social
traffics. The viability of these platforms depends on the traffics
pulled. Thus, getting any amount of traffic becomes an obsession and a
compulsive disorder to social media users. Since grief arrests human attention
than any other emotion it has frequently been exploited and commercialized to
serve the wants of traffic.
The stages of grief
are said to be five (Elizabeth Kubler Ross and David Kessler). The stage of
denial when the bearer denies the reality and wishes away the calamitous
happening: the stage of 'no' it can never happen. The stage of anger induced by
the dawning of the harsh reality: where bearers questioned even their gods.
Bargaining stage where the bearer wants a barter of any material to have the
loss restored: 'if only' stage. Depression stage is a stage of realization
where bearer shuts themselves out of the world with heavy grieving: life is
meaningless stage. Finally, an acceptance stage where terms are accepted: the bearer
comes to the reality. It is thus unbelievable that grief so tumultuous for the bearer
has been turned into epic Internet sales.
This abuse of grief is
a gradual evolution emanating from our prayer patterns where our prayers
have selfishly been justified with the grief of others yet we 'never' pray for
their reliefs. It's a lack of empathy. Now it's reflecting in our lives and the
modern extension of which is the social media. We are lacking the requisite
empathy to make a peaceful world. Oba Awujale is a revered king in YorubaLand.
One fateful morning, news spread like wildfire in harmattan that the Oba is
dead. Like dry grasses crackling to the consuming heat, facebook, twitter,
instagram, all went ariot with the false rumour. Their users all competed to
have the most traffic on the breaking news. Interestingly the king was hale and
hearty, the media had a fair share of its traffic but the gaffe portrayed the
craze at which every Netizen ( A user of the Internet, esp. a habitual or avid one.) exploits grief to increase their patronage and
share-worthiness.
The warning should be
sounded deeper as cultures are disappearing and those surviving are digitized
into an emerging coalition of an 'i-culture' (hybrids of cultures brought by fusion
created by Internet connectivity). A culture that lacks empathy, that patronizes
grief, is a demise of humanity. Now everyone wants to make a clip that can go
viral even if it means shooting a scene of accident instead of helping to save
lives (you'd see more camera than helping hands at accident scenes). A
fall-out from what we are growing into.
Real commiserating
should start with empathy, acknowledgment of varying stages a stricken fellow
may be and until the person has come to terms with the situation, overt
patronage of loss should be avoided as it can derail the individual and induce more
psychological wreckage than necessary.
"Grief-ploitation
as described by rocketnetwork.co.uk has
been a growing trend in advertising and media recently which involves using
grief-related themes in communications to promote brands"–
--toonday
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