People are allowed to feel a spectrum of things when bad things happen. People can feel grief, gratitude , righteousness, and perhaps even earn the right to comment on how other people should feel. 

These many ways in feeling things have been on display over the last two weeks, and it makes for interesting observations on how people can chose to express/process grief. In what seems like a distant past, expressions of grief were internal and private- a combustion in the heart no one sees but perhaps can feel. These days, there’s a relentless livestream of people crying, making TikTok compilations and other individual absurdities, but one thing is clear, grief these days, has to be on display and be uniform. it also has to conform to what the current societal norm is, which is over-sharing and being performative.

Most consequential about these feelings lately, is a video-less than ten seconds long- in which singer, mohbad, lays lifeless while his friend makes the announcement that, “ mohbad is dead”, after which the floodgates of content on what it’s like to die in 2023, break open, and flood every timeline. This content has majorly gone two ways.

On one hand, it has been eerily intimate and revelatory. From private conversations and voice memos, to carefully curated compilation videos of him smiling- looking the opposite of what he had been accused of(drug addict and mentally unstable). It has been social engineering at its most evocative. On another hand, content on his death has also been shocking, needless and devastatingly intrusive. If the video of him crammed into that coffin with his neck allegedly broken for him to fit is deeply disturbing, cue another video of his exhumation in which his blood is  splattered about. It has been an enduring display  of the best and worst parts of social media. 

In thinking about everything going on currently, it’s necessary to reflect on what things would look like In the absence of social media, and advanced reporting technology. Would all the sudden kinship with mohbad still be there if there wasn’t a deluge of photos and videos of his personal life online ? It feels like Mohbads personal POV on his death, where viewers take sides with characters( his mum and dad), and suggest the next course of action if he is to get justice.  People have personalized this death and made it multiple things it could be and shouldn’t be.  

Death threats, cancelling persons, deep speculations and sensationalism, are just some of the things his death has become. In a way, this moment feels vividly  similar to what was in the air during the #endsars protests: an abundance  of  commentary and hope, all without a sliver of reality. It feels like pieces of a happy ending strewn around without a befitting script, or in plain terms, without recourse to the things that bring justice. It’s wishful thinking at a feverish peak- a reluctance to accept that things may have just been stirred up but not actually shaken. 

Sooner or later, the news cycle would take a different trajectory and all the machinations around his death would perhaps become another “twitter and Nigerian music industry moment” 

Sure, things need to change, but for now, everything and everyone seems to be in a huge collective dilemma. How is one supposed to feel in times like these ? In the absence of the collective, performative rage and sympathy that has flooded the collective consciousness, does anyone truly care ?