BEAR OR MAN - by Jefferson Nnadiekwe

It's been a few weeks since the Bear or Man question trended on various social media platforms. For clarification, the trend poses a question to women : 'Would you rather be alone in the woods with a bear or a man?'Interestingly or not, a good number of women chose the bear. Strange right? But their reasons might make sense to you if you heard it. These women who chose to be trapped in the woods with a bear rather than a male human cited reasons that can at best be considered as an awareness to abuse. That means, they made their choice because they would feel safer with a bear rather than a man who is likely yo abuse them in some form. I think it's a bit of a generalization but then again it's possible these responses were spurred by trauma and the need to tell men to do better. Well, now I'm about to be a bad guy (settle down abusers, this is not a defense for you sickos). I insinuated earlier that the whole trend was an awareness for abuse. While I applaud the intent, I disagree with the method from a logical standpoint. It is clearly an over sensationalized effort that pits victims of abuse against logic. A lot of men could not for the life of them wrap their head over the absurd answers to the question. Contrary to what it was made to look like, this puzzled reactions was not a manifestation of ego but of common sense. 'I will rather be with a bear that WOULD eat me, than a man who MIGHT abuse me', sounds like the popular romance hogwash 'I will take a bullet for you'. We think we feel that way till we are faced with the scenario in real life - nobody who isn't some animal trainer will rather be with a bear than a fellow human. Matter of fact, even if you knew said human is an abuser, chances are you'd fancy your luck against them than an actual freaking bear! It makes no damn sense to do otherwise. Quite frankly, some of those responses sounded fake, planted, and melodramatic for the purpose of getting a reaction from the public. Let's not go into the tokenism that was written all over some responses. I dare say this was not a way to spread awareness, but just to have fun on one trend before the next comes along. Sadly, this is new media - over sensationalism and tokenism. Netizens always crave for a conversation, a chance to drop their 'not so hot' takes on a topic. Blog pages and certain individuals take advantage of this. In order to drive engagements, bait questions like 'Bear or Man' are asked. With a couple of preplanned fake comments, the fire spreads and everyone wants to be involved. Marginalized or trauma victims are always the target. Is it a nice thing to do? Taking advantage of serious societal issues just for the sake of online conversation? Frankly, I don't think so. Everyone else does not seem to mind. After all, the trend has blown over and even though nothing serious was birthed from it, it was a nice exercise in argument. The future of social media and society at large keeps getting scarier. We are becoming a people who would rather 'talk' about real world problems than actually do something about it. Unfortunately, societal problems are more than mere trends or avenues for tokenism (which itself is a societal problem). Hopefully we get to start taking these conversations to the real world rather than using them to hunt for social media money.

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