What are really rewarding?

Yesterday during my break time in school, I watched a stranger confidently explain something he was completely wrong about.I laughed.Then I sent the video to my best friend.I watched it again.The comments were even funnier. People were quoting him, adding jokes, tagging their friends, and debating whether he was genuinely clueless or simply playing a character. Someone called him an “olodo.” Another defended him: “At least he is being himself.”I scrolled.Another video.Another joke.Another person confidently saying something dumb.Twenty minutes disappeared.Then I came across a thoughtful explanation of a topic I've been having a hard time understanding. I watched for approximately five seconds before scrolling away.That was when the thought occurred to me:Perhaps the more uncomfortable question is not, “Why are these people behaving like this?”Perhaps it is, “Why did I stay?”Ever since the phrase “Olodo Uprising” came up a few months ago,it has become a convenient way of describing a cultural moment in which ignorance, unseriousness, or deliberate foolishness seems to be garnering an extraordinary amount of attention. The debate that followed Ycee’s remark quickly became a familiar one: Are we celebrating ignorance, or are we simply embracing authenticity?But perhaps we are looking at the wrong side of the coin.Maybe the real story is not just about the people creating the content.It is about we the audience.We live in an economy where attention has become a form of currency. A creator does not necessarily need to be the most knowledgeable person in the room. They need to be the person who can make the room stop and look.And looking is enough to begin a cycle.We pause. We laugh. We comment. We like. We share. The platform notices. The content reaches more people. More people react. The creator learns what works and produces more of it.And someone might say, "well,that's just the algorithm".True,the algorithm is built that way.But the algorithm did not decide that foolishness should win.We showed it what we were willing to watch.And it gave it to us.This is where authenticity becomes complicated.There is nothing inherently wrong with being unserious. There is nothing shameful about humour, simplicity, eccentricity, or refusing to perform intelligence for the approval of others. In fact, some of the most refreshing people online are those who seem entirely uninterested in appearing polished.But authenticity can be packaged.So can ignorance.So can intelligence.A person can perform being clueless because it is funny. Another can perform sophistication because it attracts respect. Someone else can exaggerate their personality because they have discovered that a louder version of themselves receives more attention.Eventually, the question becomes difficult to answer: Where does authenticity end and performance begin?And that is one of the peculiarities of the attention economy. It does not particularly care whether something is authentic. It cares whether something is engaging.And engagement has no obligation to be intelligent.A carefully researched explanation may take ten minutes to understand.A confident falsehood may take ten seconds.A nuanced argument requires patience.A ridiculous statement requires only a reaction.And it is of no surprise that the latter sometimes travels faster.But this does not mean that education has suddenly become worthless.If anything, some of the recent controversies suggest quite the opposite.Consider the strange irony of people being accused of fabricating academic credentials. If education had genuinely lost all social value, why would anyone feel the need to pretend to possess it?The very act of claiming a degree, title, qualification, or expertise suggests that these things still carry prestige.And that what has weakened is our patience with the process of acquiring it.We want the authority without the apprenticeship.The confidence without the curiosity.The recognition without the years of learning that make recognition meaningful.And social media makes that temptation particularly powerful and very easy.Visibility can arrive before competence.Confidence can arrive before knowledge.Influence can arrive before expertise.A person can become famous for talking about a subject long before they have actually learned enough about it. So now, are we rewarding ignorance or authenticity? Neither, exactly. We are rewarding attention. And that small word—“we”—matters. Creators do not become influential in isolation. Every view, like, share, and comment tells the platform what deserves to travel and the creator what is worth producing again. This does not mean we cannot laugh at ridiculous things. We can. The problem begins when entertainment becomes our only acceptable form of engagement. When everything must be funny before it is worth listening to, education struggles. When confidence becomes more persuasive than evidence, expertise struggles. The internet did not invent our attraction to humour, novelty, or drama. It simply learned how profitable our attention could become. Yesterday, I gave that ridiculous video twenty minutes of my attention, but barely five seconds to something I genuinely wanted to understand. That is the uncomfortable answer.We are not simply rewarding ignorance or authenticity. We are rewarding whatever earns our attention. And attention is never just something we spend. It is a vote for what we want to see again. So the next time we laugh, scroll, like, or share, perhaps the question is not only, “Is this entertaining?” It is also, “Is this what I want more of?” Because what we repeatedly give our attention to eventually becomes what the world gives us more of.

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