How I see Nigerian Blogsville (2) – The two clans... not cliques

If you missed my previous post, be sure to read it here, before proceeding. By doing so, you will to appreciate this post better.

Haa, people of blogsville, is if fair? Is this how life is? You people just set me up for failure. You want to become Alakobas of my blogsville career? I see you people like drama too much. When I said there are two clans, I meant proper clans, not cliques, as I suspect most of you are expecting. You all want to put me in trouble, ehn. But read on, the post is still interesting, even if it doesn't cause you to bring out your boxing gloves. 

Just imagine a real life community that has two major clans with a wide river separating them, same tribe, same goals, but different kind of structures and houses. That’s how Nigerians that blog on Wordpress and Blogger are on the internet.

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So yes, there are two major clans in Nigerian Blogsville. All others are negligible. The blogger clan and Wordpress clan, and they hardly mix.

If you decide to leave your primary family to join the other clan, they will beg you to stay, cajole you, try to convince you. You might give in to their pleas, or decide that you are going, so you leave them your house address in the clan you are migrating to, but the truth is they will hardly come to visit you. And some of them will tell you "we will miss you. Unfortunately, I don’t do wordpress, or I don’t do blogger."

In fact, loads of times, you have to go back to your house in your former clan, and tell your former family that you have something new for them in the new house. Some will come, some won’t.

After a while, you concede defeat and either come back to your former family, or accept that you have lost their affection and stick with your new family.

There are few, like Angels Beauty, Ms Tizzle, etc that cut across both clans, they know how to paddle in that river that separates the two clans, but ask them, it takes serious consistence. Having to cross a river all the time is not beans.

For me, I did not visit Wordpress bloggers in the past because they did not have the Google follow button on their blog gadget, and I couldn’t figure out a way of following them on my blogger dashboard, which is my method of keeping up to date with blogs I follow. Some people have other methods. So I just blanked out Wordpress bloggers. But I later figured out how to add them, so I now cross that river few times, but the truth is that they hardly come to blogger, so I don’t even know most ones that exist. The ones I follow are like Angels Beauty and Ms Tizzle, that try not to limit themselves to any clan.

How do I know blogsville people like to stay in their clan. Apart from the ‘I don’t do Wordpress or blogger’ comments I have seen and dropped, I visited my friend’s wordpress blog when he was campaigning for the Nigerian blog awards. He put up a list of blogs he felt should be nominated in each category. He typed something like ‘For the blog of the year, vote a.wordpress.com, b.wordpress.com, or c.wordpress.com, so he didn’t campaign for any particular blog, as long as it was a, b, or c, he was fine. They were all Wordpress blogs.

So I pinged him, and asked "how come I didn’t see any blogspot blog on this long list of yours?" His response was ‘I hate blogger, I can’t stand it, I don’t visit it.’ And here I was, thinking it was only blogger people that disliked Wordpress people. That’s a classic example of bloggers who will never cross that river for anyone.

So when choosing your clan in this blogsville, choose well, and try to be loyal to one clan, not being from blogger today, and tomorrow, you tell us to follow you to Wordpress. What if you want to have your house in the two clans at the same time? Fine, but as for me, it is just too much stress.

Did you notice the irony? Wordpress bloggers still call themselves bloggers, even though they do not use Blogger, lol. They should call themselves Word-pressers. Sorry, I just had to chip that in.

So this is the end of my ‘How I see Nigerian blogsville’ rant series. I hope you enjoyed it

How I see Nigerian Blogsville

I remember as a new blogger, when I could hardly get traffic to my blog. I could only boast of about four followers after almost a year of blogging, and I always had to drag my colleagues at work by the ear to read my posts and beg them to drop comments, just to be sure that what I was writing was making sense.

I stumbled on some blogs, and read in the comment session how they addressed themselves. They knew about one another, they were always rushing to drop comments on new posts, and they even rejoiced and danced whenever they became first to drop a comment on someone’s post. Some of them had like 20 followers, which I found very impressive, seeing I could not get up to 5 in a year. Some had like 40 and some had like 100. 100 followers? For me, that was the height. They all seemed pretty close, and were a very strong clique. They referred to themselves as blogsville.

After a while, I so much admired them, that I dropped comments on one or two blogs, asking how I could join blogsville, because I thought blogsville was like this virtual internet village where you have to register and become a member, so you can know and support one another. Some did not answer me, but one lady said all i needed to ‘join blogsville’ was just become a Nigerian blogger. It did not make sense to me cos I was a Nigerian blogger and I did not seem to be part of this much admired blogsville.

After a while, I just let it go and concentrated on my traffic-less blog, working on the quality on my posts. I left blogger for about 5 months, due to stress at work, and a came back when I noticed that my gift of writing was getting too strong to be ignored.

I started posting better things, few people followed me. I checked their blogs out, and followed back, commented, etc, not because I was looking for followers, cos I wasn’t even aware that following and commenting on other people’s blogs could increase visit to your site, but I began to notice a difference.

For example, Myne would come visit me, comment and go, when no one was even willing to look at me. I visited back and I saw that she had like 300 followers even though we started blogging around the same period (obviously, old things have passed away for Myne).

I started to know people on blogsville, and the remaining, as they say, is history.

So back to the main topic, how I see blogsville…

I love Nigerian blogsville, i won’t lie. This is because overtime, we have come to create another virtual, yet real, world of our own. It is a very strong community.

Imagine a real village, having people of different temperaments, people you like, people you don’t like, people you are indifferent about. People with varying opinions and views about life, yet doesn’t make any of them better than the other. Just think about that village, it might be in Abeokuta, Ihiala, or Otukpo, and put it in a virtual world, that’s how I see blogsville.

Someone told me that her friends always wonders when she talks about people in blogsville, and they think she’s in sane, because they can’t see anything, and she tells them "These people are real. There’s actually this world/community that exists on the internet, and they are very real just like you and I.” And she’s telling them about how one blogger did something to another, how one loves another, etc. But they just look at her like she’s crazy or so.

What sealed it for me was the famous blogsville fight exactly a year ago. The so-called team pro-gay vs anti-gay. The way everything blew up. It was like a real life fight, in which I kept silent before anyone had the opportunity to deck my head. It just portrayed to me what a strong force we are. So much emotion, people left blogsville, people fought, made up, laughed, cried, etc. And you say it is just internet? I think blogsville is more than just internet. It is a community. Twitter can be ‘just internet’, facebook can be ‘just internet’, but blogsville is a community, not just a virtual one, but a real one, and I am glad to be part of it.

The only requirement to join this community to let yourself known, and be friendly to the ones already there, and voila, you are in. Else, you will stand alone in the cold for a very very long time, just like I did, while you watch others cuddle one another. It’s not because they are wicked, they just don’t know you exist.

Did I mention that in this community, there are two major clans? Watch out for my next post.

You are invited to Word Up

Just in case you haven't heard or noticed, there's a Spoken Word revolution currently going on in Nigeria, and sooner or later, it will be hard to ignore.

I am therefore using this medium to invite you to the biggest Spoken Word concert in Nigeria currently, Word Up. We had the first edition in August 18 this year, and it was off the shizzle.

Since I don't want you to miss the type of fun we had last time, the below picture is my official invite to you. I am actively involved in the Spoken Word movement in Nigeria today, so please, I would love to see you there.

This is the flyer we would be sharing. Anyone that loves Spoken Word and literary arts would recognise the names on the flyer, and agree that these are indeed the top Spoken Word performers in Nigerian today.

Just in case you missed it, yes, I will be performing there. Remember I said I am one of the promoters.

Please, check the flyer or IV for more details about the event. Please, check it fast, the event is this Saturday, so don't dull.

See you all there, hopefully, before I mount the stage.

Six ways to become a modern day Marriage Counsellor/Relationship Expert by Atilola Moronfolu

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The days of having to spend money going to expensive counselling school in the US is over. Who says you have to waste precious time reading all those books and engaging in those time wasting psycho analysis, just because you want to be a respected marriage counsellor?

There are sure better and faster ways to becoming a marriage or relationship expert, especially in this age when the pressure to get married is so high, and the one to get divorced is even higher, your skills as a relationship expert is definitely going to be worth a lot, especially if you use avenues where people can assess this expertise of your, like the internet.

So here are six sure fast ways to become a marriage or relationship expert

1. Get married

What better way to become a marriage expert than living the experience yourself. Get married, and use your experience as a blanket method to advise everyone. It doesn’t matter if your relationship with your spouse is unique. It doesn’t matter if the person whose relationship problem you are trying to solve is in a courtship with someone who likes beans, while your spouse likes rice. Don’t care about differences in personalities. As long as you are married, whether the marriage is 1 minute old, 1 day old, or 100 years old, you are automatically a relationship expert.

Also, no one cares if you are happy in your marriage, sad, battered, have been keeping malice with your spouse for the past six months or six years. As long you got a ring on your finger, you are automatically are a relationship expert.

2. Get divorced

This is another fast way to be a relationship expert. You are more equipped in recognising the signs of a bad marriage, who not to marry, and who not to date. The more divorces you have on your hands, the more certificates of marriage counselling you are equipped with, the more people respect this expertise of yours. You sure will be getting a lot of sad married women as customers.

So yes go ahead and get divorced. Who says your pain has to be wasted? You can cash out it by becoming a relationship expert.

3. Be a prophet or seer

It doesn’t matter what your state is… rich, poor, tall, short, thin, fat, whatever. As long as you are a prophet, you will be seeing visions that God will reveal to only you. He won’t reveal to either of the parties in the relationship or marriage. After all, they are not blessed with the prophetic gift you have. As long as you are a prophet, God will tell you who kola should or shouldn’t marry, without informing kola. He will tell you how many kids Angela should have, and what she should be cooking for her husband every morning and night.

In fact when you are a prophet, you will become a relationship expert with the highest form of control, as we give great respect to our prophets on this side of the world. So yes, become a prophet/seer to be a counsellor, and if you can’t become one, lie that you are one. it’s really difficult to know the difference. Trust me.

4. Be a modern day pastor

This is another relationship expert that has almost as much control as the prophet. It doesn’t matter when you were ordained pastor, or what ministry you were called to. Whether your calling is warfare, deliverance, holiness preaching, prosperity preaching, motivational preaching, or any other specific one God calls pastors to concentrate on. As long as you are a pastor, you are a qualified marriage counsellor. Your congregation will not even be bothered about how you treat your wife, whether you love her like Christ loves the church, whether you beat her, or belt her, whether you give attention to your kids, or put the church before your family. No one cares.

It will also do you good not to address the issues when your sheep come running to you when there is a problem in their relationship or marriage. Just tell them that what God wants is for them to go back home, and close your eyes to the real issues. Once you are pastor-something, you are an automatic marriage counsellor and relationship expert. And the good thing is that the ladies will love you, especially the ones who have a problem in their marriage. The thing is, you must be careful lest you are tempted to fill the vacuum their husbands have refused to fill, so you won’t be relieved from your pastoral responsibilities, and lose that precious relationship expert certificate, and you will have to stop practising.

5. Be a musician or any other kind of celebrity

Once you are a musician, and have the ability to spew words, add beats to them, and get a dead club jamming, you are automatically a relationship expert. Go on twitter, Facebook, etc., and let the whole world know your opinion about relationships and marriages. Your ever-loyal twitter followers and Facebook fans will be sure to spread your sagacious words to the public. It doesn’t matter whether you are married, single, or divorced, holy or a saint, frat member or cultist, whether you lick tom-tom, or smoke weed publicly, sing meaningful songs or thrashy meaningless songs, or whatever. As long as you are a celebrity, the world will respect the fact that you could rise above many and become famous, however you were able to achieve that. You will automatically be respected as a relationship expert and marriage counsellor.

6. Be a blogger/commenter

If you can’t do any of the above for now, start a blog… any kind of blog, but romance blog or occasional romance articles will work best in your interest. You can either be a known face or anonymous. We don’t care. As long as you can drive traffic to your blog, we will see you as a relationship expert. Start a 'ask the blogger' series, advise us, tell us what you feel is right about sex and courtship, it would even do you good to be forceful about it. We really don’t care about your credentials or history. The fact that you are only accessible online will prevent people who don’t agree with your views from stoning you.

If you are too lazy to start a romance blog, just become a regular commenter on such blogs. As long as you are consistent in commenting on such blogs, you will be noticed, and recognised as a marriage counsellor and relationship expert.

So yes, these are six ways to drive the marriage counselling experts out of business. Pick the one most convenient for you and you are sure to be cashing in some bucks very soon.

Atilola’s words.

This article wasn’t written to diss any particular person, so if anyone feels am talking to them or anyone, you are wrongly mistaken, and I am sorry for the misunderstanding.

I wrote this post because I noticed that in recent times, everyone has become a relationship expert, which is ironic because, the more these so-called expert advices are flying around, the more relationships and marriage are failing.

My own opinion is that marriage is a good thing, and God is the author of marriage. If you have problem with your Honda car, you would most likely take it to 'The Honda Place' for repairs if you can afford it. So why is it that now that we are having problems with courtship and marriage, we are not turning to God, the manufacturer, for help? We would rather listen to the six personalities mentioned above, people who might even be in the same problem or worse than us.

Counselling is good and necessary at times, but choose your counsellors wisely.