Olodo Rabata: Why Are We Making Ignorance Famous?

Growing up, I remember two childhood songs that taught me, and many others, lessons about working hard, learning, and success. The first was a reminder from my mother: “T’i’n ba kawe mi, bata mi a dundun kpa!” It meant that if you studied, stayed focused, and did well, you would grow up to be successful. People would look up to you, and you would make your parents proud. The second was a song we would never want to hear in the street or at school: “Olodo rabata, oju eja lo mọọ jẹ!” Being called an olodo or a class clown was one of the worst things you could be called at school. You might not even know exactly what olodo meant, but you sure knew you would be embarrassed if you ever heard someone humming that tune behind you. It was an insult used to belittle you and make fun of you for not being smart. In its own strange way, it was meant to push you to make you work harder, study more, and avoid becoming the person everyone laughed at. But something has changed. In recent times, we have watched this olodo culture blossom on social media. For a very long time, people have deliberately misspelled words and pretended not to understand simple things for the sake of views, comments, and likes. We laughed or complained quietly in comment sections. But when a popular personality such as YCEE came out and named it the “Olodo Uprising,” it immediately went viral, and suddenly everyone was talking about it. The fact that it took a fellow celebrity to openly condemn the culture before many people began paying serious attention to it shows that the situation had already gone further than we thought. Today, everything seems to have turned upside down. Nobody is ashamed of acting like an olodo anymore; the culture of being an olodo has become one of the fastest ways to gain popularity on social media today. Now, we see talented people and their intelligent remarks go unnoticed while the so-called olodo gets millions of followers, likes, and comments simply for being funny. Isn't that ironic? But let us come out and say it: being intelligent is not determined simply by whether you went to school. Intelligence also comes from the willingness to learn, to think, to ask questions, and to gain knowledge. Some people genuinely do not know. Others deliberately choose not to know because ignorance brings them attention, money, and popularity. The problem, therefore, is not ignorance itself; the problem is choosing ignorance as a performance. Some people genuinely are ignorant, but others choose to be ignorant because it gives them clout, money, and popularity. And everyone is copying it. Children are picking up phrases, behaviours, and mannerisms from people who present ignorance as cool, but children aren't the only ones falling victim to this culture. People of all ages are buying into it, throwing away their education and everything else they ever knew in an effort to be the next big comedy sensation. And that is where the problem lies. If we want to be successful in life, we need education, but if we portray ignorance as cool, then people are going to believe that instead of studying, researching, learning, and educating themselves, they can simply be funny and money-minded, because that is a quicker way to success. That is a very harmful outlook to have on our intellectual future. We have gotten to the point in our society where we crave celebrities and comedians so much that we would accept anybody's laughable presentation in order to get them. We have gotten to the point where somebody who uses proper grammar is boring, but somebody who speaks incorrectly is funny. We have gotten to the point where nonsense talks are celebrated, but educated monologues are mocked. We have gotten to the point where common courtesy is leaving, rudeness is becoming socially acceptable, and being educated makes you a target for ridicule rather than an inspiration for others. And that, maybe, is the true evil in this Olodo Uprising. Not the laughter, not the mockery, not even the occasional choice to be ignorant for financial and social gain. But rather the fact that ignorance is becoming aspirational. That young people are buying into the lie that in order to be cool, we have to be uneducated, that thinking is doing too much, and that learning is pointless because somebody else was able to achieve fame and fortune by claiming not to know anything. Those childhood rhymes were cruel, but they should not be the standard by which we judge anybody who shows any level of ignorance. Nobody should be beaten for not knowing something; everybody should be educated and encouraged to think for themselves rather than be brainwashed into believing that thoughtfulness is a bad thing. But maybe we shouldn't be targeting the olodo who claim to be ignorant for clout. Maybe we should be taking a closer look at the people who made ignorance cool in the first place. There is no shame in being ignorant in some things, but there is shame in choosing to be ignorant in all things because you feel like it's more fun that way. Perhaps the real uprising should be about changing the culture of our society so that people are respected for choosing to think, rather than ridiculing those who choose not to.

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