Back in
2008, forgive me if I got that wrong, it could be 2007 but definitely not
2009…When I got my first blackberry phone, a curve 2. I had boasted about
chatting with my friend Beejay every minute, every hour of the day.We both love
arguing about football so I thought we could do all those arguing things on bbm
where there would be no restrictions whatsoever. No unnecessary noise in the
house nor rush to go home late at night. I thought everyone would be at
thumb-length and boredom could go to hell. Nobody told me the truth about bbm,
all they said was that bbm was great, people would talk about things that would
make you crave for one. Bbm this, bbm that, I met so so and so person on bbm last
night, I chatted till late with this babe yesterday, Lagbaja used Tamedo’s
naked picture this afternoon, I saw the latest iphone on someone’s dp today.
Sweet things, interesting yearnings, you would almost take to the street and
snatch someone’s bb just to have one you can call your own. Nobody said
anything about the reality of things on bbm, the truth that hurts the
most...bbm destroy friendships.
I eventually got my much expected bb. Linda
Ikeji could have posted it on her blog, if I was a celebrity, with a picture of
me, probably in the bathroom, standing in front of a mirror, with a pouted
mouth, an outstretched right hand and my head tilted eastward, in an
Ikechukwu-esque style.
Well, let me save you some precious time. My friend (Beejay)
got his bb; 2 months after I got mine, but to my surprise, all didn’t go as planned….Good
afternoon fellow blackberians, welcome onboard Flight bbm craze no be small,
I’m Olawale your pilot, sitting beside me is nobody, no co-pilot, no flight
crew, if I doze off (which is very likely) due to the temperature in my cooling
Cabin, you are on your own.
Believe me,
I’m one of the few blackberrians who have been blessed by this small technology
and also cursed by it. In a short sentence, I’ve become a pathetic blackberry
addict. Whenever I’m bored or I’m jobless, I pick up this little devil and and
do all sort of things on it, strangely, I hardly ping on it, I just browse,
reading sport news, changing my dp or status, other times I just edit pictures
or write on it using one of the many Apps available on it. Things like that
keep me busy but not entirely happy, I prefer chatting but I don’t, due to the
fact that…..eerrmm, okay let’s keep that for another day. My main point here
is, I’ve made mistakes in the past, I have been stupid many times, childish and
jumpy, writing things instantaneously and uploading any picture I feel like
uploading, well, I paid the price bitterly, I lost friends, respect and the
love some people had for me…do you wonder how? Okay let me try and break it
down how I can.
The general assumption is everyone on your
bbm is your friend, init? Okay, lets assume they are your friends, but friends
hate, do they hate because of our actions or they just hate for no reason?. If
you put up a comment on your bbm, lets say you have 100 contacts on your list
and you put up a comment like “Nepa again….arrrrrrhgh, can’t wait to leave this
stupid country” this is what you have expressed on your bbm, you’ve shared it
with your so-called friends, but sorry, everyone on your contact list would
translate this differently, some would feel like, this boy/girl can update
status but can’t ping someone, another group of people would say, so he’s
planning to leave this country and he/she didn’t tell me, some would feel you
are doing ‘notice me’ others would just look at the message and drop their
phone with nothing in their minds, while some would ping you and say,hi, just
checking on you?, such is the level of craze on bbm. Come to think of it, isn’t
it the same in reality? Like everyone sees things from different angles…Yes it
is, but bbm is a small community therefore everything appears big and obvious.
A friend of mine lost her boyfriend for 2 months because she wrote on bbm, “I’m
in Love with Wale’’ she actually meant Wale Folarin, the popular American based
rapper but her boyfriend thought it was a rival Wale (not my Wale though),
funny but sad.
Now, lets
talk about display pictures, there are so many pictures we share that pass the
wrong message across and sometimes the right message could unsettle your so
called friends. Sometimes in 2011, I was in Dubai, during Ramadan fasting
actually and due to the fact that one is
not allowed to eat at public places till they break their fast in the evening;
I had to go without food all day till around 7pm and when I made it to a Thai
restaurant and ordered for food, they spoiled me with so many desserts and my
table was full. I was gob smacked, most of what they gave me, I couldn’t eat
but my table looked beautiful still like those fine pictures of Thai cuisines
we see in magazines, so I decided to take a picture of it and uploaded it on my
dp (innocent me). To my disappointment, my friend of many years attacked me,
saying I’m flaunting it to the whole world, she said stuffs that I couldn’t
swallow, BOOM!!!! Off she goes, I deleted her and till today we don’t say hi.
My point is don’t think everyone would be like you, some would take offence in
what makes you happy, others would misjudge you and many more would judge your
action and not consider your motive. Don’t be surprised that when you put up a
picture of you and your boyfriend or girlfriend as the case might be, you might
be offending more than a handful of people, while some would feel you don’t deserve
him/her, others would think you are flaunting him/her because you know they
don’t have a relationship…different thoughts like that, what about the very few
people who would say stuffs like, he looks too big, he’s ugly, she has pot
belly, they don’t fit, he doesn’t look rich, she looks like a runs girl, he
looks like a yahoo boy, bla bla bla…Who cares right? Your so called friends on
bbm do.
Bbm craze no
be small! that’s when you’ll see people sending you bc a day before Christmas,
warning you not to send them bc on Christmas . I don’t find this funny but I
find the part where these same folks use bc to pass their message across as
absurdly funny. It is like posting bills on walls about not posting bills on
walls. “That kind craze no be joke”.
On the flip side, some people will lament on bc that you begin to wonder if bc
actually kills people, I mean why can’t you just accept bc as part of the
craze, read it if you can, if you can’t just ignore it or something. There’s so
much craze craze for bbm that I can’t start talking about one by one. Those who
put on their pm “in the presence of God dnd” Hellooooo….why can’t you put your
phone on silence. You use half naked picture as your dp and you put Church was
awesome today….hmmm, God is watching yo!
As a matter of fact, there’s so much love
on bbm…but for strangers, it’s so hard to chat constantly with your very good
friends, for one reason or the other, guys don’t do it much, girls still manage
to have a good and long conversation with their friends on bbm but still, not
in all cases, we all know how much gossip tickles them . All in all, this
little technology that we embrace with all our heart, to help us strengthen our
relationships with friends and loved ones has given us so much to worry about.
Truth is, we had a beautiful life before blackberry, we have an awesome one
even now that bb is here, whether it leaves soon or later, we are happy people
and we are privileged to be alive and witness the craze this little technology
has to offer and when next you meet an old friend and you feel so excited at
collecting their pin, remember the privacy that would be lost, the
misinterpretation that would ensue and most importantly always have it in your
mind that on BBM…Little means more, much more.
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