Of Dancers and Thinkers

Months ago, a senior colleague of mine urged me to consider writing about what appears to be the craze for creation of dance content on social media by Nigerian youngsters. This colleague observed that this has become so prevalent that once you decide to scroll through social media, you will almost unfailingly encounter a Nigerian young person dancing. She felt that such preponderance of dance content is symptomatic of a generation afflicted by a lack of creative depth and disconnectedness with the sobber side of life.

Coming from a person whose views I have profound respect for, I could not but start thinking about this seriously in order to gain some personal clarity. Mercifully, my giving more time to Tik Tok in the last one year was all it took for my view on this matter to begin to assume shape. My adventure on that video streaming app has enriched me with so much knowledge that I’m indeed thankful. However, I have also been struck that much of the intellectual content that has caught my fancy, when it comes from young persons, had been a creation of foreigners. On the contrary, most of the dance videos were from Nigerian youths, especially the female ones.

I don’t know exactly if the above observation is an exaggeration but all I can say for sure is that while I have been served with more than enough entertainment by young Nigerian content creators, I have been well fed with so much knowledge by their foreign counterparts . Though these foreigners also do create loads of entertainment content themselves, the difference is that while both categories of youngsters produce a lot of entertainment content, the foreigners have proved capable of equally holding their own when it comes to cerebral content.

I have no doubt that an audio-visual social media platform like Tik Tok would lend itself more to entertainment content than hardcore informative content; yes, it is a medium in the mould of television and cinema and so is likely to offer more entertainment than any other form of content. But then my observation tells me that our young people are thriving when it involves entertainment content and are lagging behind when it comes to intellectual content.

One may query the parameters that led to my conclusion. “How did you know this? Did you count the number of intellectual contents from young Nigerians and compare it with the number coming from foreigners?” The answer is definitely No; I’m only judging based on my immediate impression, so I leave the final conclusion to those who can carry out an empirical verification.

However, I would speak with more certainly and indeed with no fear of contradiction when the question is condensed to simply read, “Between Nigerian youngsters and their foreign counterparts, whose social media content embodies greater intellectual and informative depth? To this, I would not hesitate to give my answer as “the foreigners.” And by foreigners I speak specifically of Americans, Europeans and some southeast Asians especially Indians. Yes their Nigerian counterparts do drop educative content hourly and on daily basis, but this is nothing to compare with the sophisticated intellection embodied by what some of the foreign youngsters share regularly. Examples include historical content which focus ranges from the fascinating world of antiquity to the vicissitudes of the modern epoch; scientific content which spectrum stretches from the basic laws of nature to the near-esoteric realm of theoretical physics; and philosophical content which breadth of inquiry respects no boundaries, as everything, from the most sacred to the most mundane, is queried. I have savoured a lot of all this. One of the Tik Tok channels that I follow keeps churning out commentaries on the fascinating world of astronomy and astrophysics, dissecting cosmological phenomena like relativity, black hole, gravity and electromagnetism. Another one has some Indian youngsters engage deep philosophical questions spanning religion, politics,.law, morality, etc.

In all these, where are our own youngsters? They are dancing? They are romancing with celebrity gossip? They are reveling in the optics of the screen reality? All this is not bad, but when our young persons are missing out of the above sophisticated intellectual engagements, it is unfortunately suggestive of our not being a thinking society. India, United States and European nations are climes where intellection has prevailed.much more than it has in our own clime; they are thinking societies – and there is no way this will not reflect on their youths’ social media engagement.

As an arena of self-expression, social media inevitably reveals how the mind of individuals and that of their society function. If a society is such that has embraced serious intellectual engagements as a way of life, evidence of this must be seen in the spaces (including social media) where their members express themselves. Similarly, a society that has failed to do so will not fail to be exposed for what it is in these same spaces.

Thinking makes the difference between sophisticated societies and middling ones. Of course, no one doubts that dancing is good and a legitimate part of human experience, but then dancers must also think else they may dance into abyss.

This is my meditation this midweek.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.