The invention of social media as an electronic platform for interaction and communication across borders brought its pros and cons. For the writer, the invention of social media shortened the gap between them and their audience and reduced the cost of purchasing books and distributing published copies. With social media, anybody can be a writer, a publisher, as well as a marketer of their products. The ultimate utility derived from this interaction is measured by the metrics of reactions and comments under a post.
As of 2014 onwards, fourth-generation Nigerian writers took to Facebook to post their poems and prose. This was before the discovery of American journals, the compensation that comes with getting published, and the opportunities they opened. As more writers read Plath, applied, and got admitted into MFAs, the race became more competitive. Grief, which was a common theme due to the country’s situation, became widespread among fifth-generation writers. Everyone is murdering his or her parents, burning homes and towns, dreaming of dead people, and lashing out at religion, all because successful fourth-generation writers explored these themes too.
As a result, social media has collapsed writers, like different crafts, into a single mould. It filled upcoming writers with the zeal to become as prominent as those ahead of them; hence, it produces facsimiles of older-generation writers. There can hardly be a difference that clearly distinguishes one free-verse poet from another, who writes about grief in such a way that it sounds just like his or her favourite poet. The effect, like anything else, is the continuous discolouration that makes our literary products, once as harmless as soda, become strong wine.
Social media wasn’t built for development but for interaction and communication. Marketing, on the other hand, performs the two functions. Hence, social media is a marketing platform. A website known as University Canada West wrote that, “Over the past 10 years, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have become marketing must-haves and have changed the way businesses connect with customers. With a click of a button, advertisers can reach millions of potential customers to promote products, engage with an audience, and build brand loyalty. Keeping up to date with digital trends is key to keeping up with consumer behaviour.”
Writers don’t get to better their craft on this marketing platform. Rather, they tend to adapt to the patterns trending among creatives, which subsequently become the niche they adopt. On Facebook, quite a lot of traditional verse poets dropped it for free verse. Every writer is looking for magazine publication because that’s what every writer does on social media, not because they have something urgent to share.
Among the first- and second-generation Nigerian writers, the purpose of writing was specifically defined by the writer. While some writers were engaged in colonial rebuttal, writers like JP Clarke and Cyprian Ekwensi explored simple themes of daily life. Contemporary writers collide over contemporary issues.
Jane Friedman, on her blog, wrote, “You should still be writing on social media… the way we all did ten years ago: as a means to genuinely communicate our ideas, our topics, and our point of view to people who become our audience.”
Writing on an online platform has significant advantages. With only data, a writer can produce content that reaches global audiences. Social media has certainly created opportunities for writers, but it has also shifted attention from the craft of writing to the performance of visibility. It has positioned the writer as a brand that must meet a target rather than as a communicator of deep feelings.
About the Writer
Paul Bamidele Olayioye is a graduate of Mass Communication from Olabisi Onabanjo University and is also a writer. His genres of writing include fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essays, personal essays, editorials, opinion pieces, columns, and critiques. He focuses on the complexity of humanity and its evolution.
He loves reading content on literature, debates, and current affairs. He also plays the piano, and he is learning the guitar.
