What listening to Gossip does to your intellect

We are growing in ass size, breast size, wardrobe size, refrigerator size, weight, junk foods, muscles, but we are left with shrinking brains.

By Paul Aremo-Oluwa

What motivates anyone to write is the propensity to tell our own stories from our own perspective using our own words. What separates a writer from the rest of the pack is that his literature does not stem out of the necessity of telling a story but of the necessity forced on him by his mental engagements and interactions. A writer is an intense reader. A writer produces long content conveniently because he has wealth of mental depths.  If you cannot read his art, in fairness to both of you -that's your problem not his.

If you can't read long, rather than complain about content length think about the sheer mental labour of the author. The pangs of stitching multiple complex thoughts into  simple strings of sentences. Think about writers ability to match their fingers with the speed of their mind.

We have a society that largely requests "Trash the Story give us the Headline." Reason why the  Nigerian youth populace are gossip-mongers and victims of false information. There is an increasing number of people with disdain for long writings.

 Its sad that gossip-peddlers are renown role models today because they've made a fortune doing so as opposed authentic creative writers. The rise of the Age of Entertainment is majorly responsible. What is entertainment without gossips after all? Before the blog evolution Nigerian HINT magazine was the most successful in this bizarre trade in the early 2000s. Linda Ikeji's blog was said to be worth 1.2 million dollars as far back as 2012. Today, the most successful bloggers in Nigeria do gossips. These merchants, these awkward professionals had successfully created a whole galaxy of mediocrity for ready gossiplorers.

What will happen to a society where the most successful blog sites are not educative or technological inclined? Is Nigeria drifting towards becoming an empire of mental slum?

Once upon a time music and movies were the soul of the entertainment industry. Gossip is now an active contender. No music or movie sells like the ones rigged to incite urban trends through gossips. Wizkid and Tiwa Savage 2018 Fever video induced social temperature to a boiling point.

When you surf through lives based on lies and lies based on other people's lives gossiplorers are building a database on fallacies and fantasies. They experience a re-engineering of their thought pattern. That construct have proven to be destructive and regrettable in the end.

Since gossiptainment is addictive, gossiplorers get high daily on mental crack -rambling in their hallucinatory state that every intelligent and educative literary art is long and boring. What cocaine is to Scarface fake news is to media outlets. Gossip is the modern day Meth readers could be hooked on.

The newspapers are not spared. In our global village, the need to gossip is now satisfied in part by the tabloid press, says John Hardy a professor of neuroscience at University College London.

News is gossip and gossip is news. Here and there, there are obvious traces of misleading headlines in the Nigerian media sphere. The headline would be based on a rumour and the entire story will be built on a tip from an anonymous source. Never leaving you in doubt that the anonymous persona could as well be fiction of the writer's mind.  Most times top stories are disheartening to read because they are less than 100 words due to poor investigation and lack of data to build the story.

Lo, along came the death of lyrics and the renaissance of the sounds! Meaning was banished from Nigerian music industry ever since.

Ironically, we are irritably misinformed in the age of information. We are growing in ass size, breast size, wardrobe size, refrigerator size, weight, junk foods, muscles, but we are left with shrinking brains. The less we read the more we claim we know more.

Those who forfeit living in the world of books have a universe of ignorance to themselves. They are a shame to their own selves to say the least. They are their own oppressor and tragedy. They shame history. They shame mental reasoning when they speak. They do the internet a irreparable injustice! Causing scientists who invented the internet to turn continuously in their graves.

An educated man is not a man with a degree. He is a man on a knowledge pilgrimage. He is never satisfied with what a Greek philosopher described as, "Baking himself in the sun of pleasure." Instead, his thoughts are lurking through the shadows of pages he is yet to turn. He is delighted by the crisp sound of pages he flips. No one ever graduates from learning. The only regret of Sir Isaac Newton on his death bed was "Just wetting my feet on the shores of the vast ocean of knowledge before me."

Nigerian youths need to rethink their reading philosophy. True and useful information exact the mind. You blow hot air into a deflated balloon. Those gossip stuff is one of the major reasons for youth delinquency. It is the reason people no longer study to know. They read to amuse themselves.

Still there is a small set of vicious readers it shall be said of them, "If you wish anything hidden from them couch it as gossip." I write because of those gallant mind masters, brain busters, word wizards, text twisters, pen peckers and geniuses.

Perhaps the beautiful ones are not yet born. But to them I upload my memoirs of depth along side others who have contributed their parts.  "If you don't value depth, Hide Your Face!"