Hello everyone, my name is Ponnle Samuel and this will be my very first mini-competition since I started TwoCents, and I've been working on this piece since when I heard about the competition. Read and learn a lot❤️.

Olodo uprising: are we rewarding ignorance or authenticity?

Sometimes, I honestly wonder what we are doing on the internet these days.

You can sit down, think deeply about a topic, do some research, write something meaningful and share it online. After spending hours putting your thoughts together, you might get a few likes and maybe two comments.

Them someone comes online and confidently says something that is completely wrong. People start laughing and someone takes a screenshot, another repost it. Before you know it, the person is trending.

And you start asking yourself, "so, what exactly are we rewarding?"

This is what I call the olodo uprising.

Now before any body get offended, being an "olodo" doesn't necessarily mean someone is useless or unintelligent. Sometimes, it simply means someone doesn't knows something and honestly nobody knows anything.

Instead of saying, "oh, I didn't know that. Let me learn," some people proudly defend their ignorance.

Social media has also changed the meaning of authenticity.

We are constantly told to "be yourself'. And I agree you shouldn't pretend to be someone else Just to impress people.

But being authentic doesn't mean refusing to learn.

If I genuinely don't know something, admitting it is authenticy. If I make a mistake and accept correction, that's authenticity too. But if I'm wrong and continue shouting simply because people are watching, that's not authenticity. That's just stubbornness.

The funny thing is that the internet rewards attention, not wisdom.

And engagement is engagement.

The algorithm doesn't care whether people are praising you ro dragging you. As long as people keep taking about you, you are winning the attention game. 

People start to realize that being reasonable may not get them noticed, but bring ridiculous might. And we the audience help them.

Maybe we are simply rewarding it🤷🏾

What we should stop is rewarding proud ignorance. There is a difference between "I don't know", and saying "I don't know, and I don't care to know". 

The first one is a starting point and the second one is a dead end 

So, are we rewarding ignorance or authenticity?

Maybe sometimes we are rewarding both, but we need to learn the difference. 

Thank you❤️

Hope we all learned something😂.