How Kenya’s Internet got into a wild frenzy over my little fib

The picture posted on Larry Madowo's Twitter page captioned: “Look out for our upcoming reality series, Mich and Larry Take Cape Town, coming soon to a channel near you.” PHOTO | LARRY MADOWO

What you need to know:

  • Mich and I looked at the growing “press” coverage with a mixture of amusement and bewilderment. “No journalists were harmed in the making of this story,” deadpanned public relations pro Rachel Irvine when we showed it to her.
  • In a world where a single tweet becomes a complete story, “churnalism” is a better name for this brave new world. The model is borrowed from the wildly popular black hole of the American Internet, BuzzFeed, which has 200 million unique visitors monthly.
  • If you read the blogs, you’re mis-informed,” is how I’d like to revise that Mark Twain Quote which, ironically, originally refers to newspapers.

Feeling a little cheeky in Cape Town last week, my friend Mich Atagana and I decided to troll the Kenyan Internet.

“Look out for our upcoming reality series, Mich and Larry Take Cape Town, coming soon to a channel near you,” I wrote on my social media pages and accompanied it with a picture.

We didn’t have to wait long. Ghafla!, the most popular blog on the  Kenyan Internet, had a post within half an hour. “Has Larry Madowo finally found his rib in South Africa? (Photo),” it asked.

“Larry Madowo relishes in the warmth and kisses of this South African Lady,” reported Nairobi Wire. “Larry Madowo caught kissing in public, find out who the “lucky” woman is,” Nyumbani TV told its readers.

NTV’s Larry Madowo spotted doing this with a hot South African lass. Eh Eh!” yet another blog proclaimed.

It is called the curiosity gap and is one of the most popular techniques in the dark arts of driving eyeballs to your website.

Have a deliberately vague headline that forces people to click on the link to find out the details.

PSEUDO-CELEBRITY GARBAGE

Mich and I looked at the growing “press” coverage with a mixture of amusement and bewilderment. “No journalists were harmed in the making of this story,” deadpanned public relations pro Rachel Irvine when we showed it to her.

Each “story” was more outrageous than the last while still adding nothing to the body of information. “Wololo! What is this South African lady doing to Larry Madowo in public? Just see,” was what Risto Base went with.

The story was much worse than the deliberately misleading title. Clickbait is the name of the game, get page impressions by any means possible.

Mich isn’t even South African although she lives and works there; she’s Nigerian. More than 20 posts were written about this non-story and all reported my “upcoming reality series” as a fact.

Even the supposed name of the show is copied from 'Kourtney & Kim Take Miami' on the E! channel.

The pseudo-celebrity garbage  of Kenyan entertainment blogs didn’t care about the sparse facts; they had content. Verification takes too much work when you’re working for clicks. Publish fast, and ask no questions.

Not one of them sought to know when the show would be starting, or on which channel. Nobody questioned why a full-time journalist would be doing a reality show in the first place.

Completely unintentionally, it ended up being a study in journalism in the age of social media.

To call it journalism is insulting to actual reporters who take their time to verify information, research background and present the best available version of the truth.

In a world where a single tweet becomes a complete story, “churnalism” is a better name for this brave new world. The model is borrowed from the wildly popular black hole of the American Internet, BuzzFeed, which has 200 million unique visitors monthly.

BELLY OF THE BEAST

Ghafla! has 2 million unique readers every month, with 9.2 million pageviews, which is higher than anybody else in Kenya except the Nation and Standard.

So yes, there is a seemingly insatiable appetite for that “ratchet” content to use Internet lingo they might be familiar with. Though not a pioneer, it is the most successful and countless other copycats have sprung up to compete for its eyeballs.

But inside the belly of the beast is an enterprise short of any journalistic chops that runs purely on gossip and innuendo.

Beef, socialites and useless minutiae of famous people’s lives are the currency of this new media maze. “If you don’t read the blogs, you’re uninformed.

If you read the blogs, you’re mis-informed,” is how I’d like to revise that Mark Twain Quote which, ironically, originally refers to newspapers.

Solid journalism is going to survive the Internet era precisely because of this. You can’t substitute a trained reporter for a tweet-watcher with a “publish” button. I just hope the people who consume this stuff online recognise it for the rubbish it is, and treat it as such.

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Want to tour Robben Island? Google has just made it so easy

WHEN AHMED Kathrada and his fellow inmates were told by prison authorities that a fax had been sent for their release, they were flummoxed. “What is a fax?” they inquired.

He had been in prison for 26 years, 18 of them on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela. Now a Unesco World Heritage site, it is one of the most visited tourist spots in South Africa.

Like he does regularly these days, Kathrada took a group of us through what was once his entire world. But you don’t have to make the trip to Cape Town and hop on a boat to see the island anymore.

Google has launched Street View for Robben Island, allowing anybody to take a virtual tour of the entire facility.

Former inmate Vusumsi Mcongo takes you through the entire journey and explains what it was like to live there.

It is an important time to launch what South Africa’s Department of Tourism describes as a pilgrimage for humanity when the country is fighting a flare-up of xenophobic attacks.

“We must make people understand the significance of an integrated approach to heritage in Africa and maybe use heritage to deal with these challenges,” said Robben Island CEO Sibongiseni Mkhize.

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Music:  Just when did activism start counting?

A YEAR AGO today, they discarded their shirts and danced suggestively in their raunchy music video for 'Nishike'.

Everybody’s mother was upset that Sauti Sol had lost their way. Then they got qualified good boys Amos and Josh into the studio and together put out Nerea, a bold song asking a woman  by the same name not to terminate her pregnancy.

Parodies were up within hours and it took over Twitter’s trending topics. Blog posts were written about “policing women’s bodies” and why men can’t understand the reasons a woman chooses to abort.

A beautiful song about what that child could grow into became a pro-choice debate against the demerits of abortion.

When did people stop enjoying the music and start looking for political correctness and activism in every song?

“Music is a social commentary, we’re here as a vessel,” Sauti Sol’s Bien-Aime Baraza told me on Friday. “Don’t shoot the messenger!”

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FEEDBACK

On the government’s poor response to the Garissa terrorist attack

Hey Larry, 

I agree with you. There are so many moving parts in Kenya’s war on terrorism that it makes the equation  difficult to solve because of variables that do not make sense. The symbolism of that student waiting, knowing that help would come and her eventual death is hard to take. As you said, even the government did not offer counselling to the bereaved, and I wonder why we have a government that, despite having an intelligence system, dismisses threats and hearsay. What, really, is its job? I read the other day that even the army had issues regarding the release of their military choppers! So, are those choppers for display only on Mashujaa Day and VIPs who only talk? Peter Kivuti

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I get a little surprised that  all of you keep talking about the Recce Squad and their failure to be deployed by air or whatever!  Were there not enough, or any, policemen in Garissa to deal with four awkwardly trained terrorists? And the military that had secured the university? All these policemen I see with guns on the roads, are the guns only for extorting money from lorries, matatus, etc.

These are the questions to ask because, if terrorists strike, say in Kisumu, I don’t want to hear about the Recce Squad getting transport from Nairobi.

Wolleston Ngumo

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Larry,

Our security forces have perfected the art of repeating their own mistakes. Expecting them to learn is demanding too much from them. Given the trend, it’s easy to predict the reaction of the security agencies in the unfortunate event that an attack of the magnitude of Westgate and Garissa occurs again. This public service bureaucracy thing is too colonial and costly.

I was utterly shocked by the excuse that the deployment and facilitation of the elite GSU unit can be done only with the approval of the Inspector General of Police. Yes, under normal circumstances that should be the case, but there are circumstances where bending the rules is inevitable. To add insult to injury, a senior official claimed that a nine-hour delay was reasonable time to react, given the operational requirements. And these PR gimmicks and misplaced priorities must also stop; they are becoming counter-productive.

What on earth were CS Joseph Nkaissery and IG Joseph Boinett going to do in Garissa in the wee hours of the fateful day? Three Recce Squad officers squeezed in that “only available” chopper would have made a difference!

Esau Busiega

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As a young Kenyan, I lost hope in our leaders a long time ago. I will do what I can to make Kenya the country I want it to be by training my fellow youths to be better, giving back to the community and supporting others to improve the economy. Yes, it needs patience, but with each day we make some progress.

As part of the team that was at Chiromo, I will not wait for the government; if it can’t prepare for disaster, then we should. My friends lost family members in Westgate, Garissa and just the other day in Somalia.Fellow Kenyans, use the available resources. Take defence classes if you must, research on how other countries prepare for such disasters and when you learn something, share it with the people in your circle.

As for South Africans, they need to change their mindset. Most, if not all, the people carrying out the killings cannot fill the vacant positions they claim foreigners have taken. They should invest in education and training rather than  in weapons and murder.

Ashikube

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Larry,

Yes,  Garissa is another Westgate but worse than Westgate. Worse because even after Westgate, the government did nothing to prepare for the next attack. Al Shabab were smarter this time.

They attacked a site far from Nairobi to ensure that it would take hours for our security forces to get there.

Unless the government sets up regional/decentralised police commando teams (which can be at the attack site in 30 minutes ) all over Kenya, Al Shabaab will strike again and slaughter hundreds.

If the government continues doing nothing to prepare adequately, at a certain point I expect the families of the victims will have the legal right to file a class action legal suit against it for gross negligence contributing to mass murder.

Canuck

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Larry,

We cannot afford to be part of the problem, that is, blame the government, other people or anything, for that matter. Someone was blamed for the Westgate attack, but that didn’t solve the problem or prevent further attacks.

What the government should do is within our circle of concern but not our circle of influence. What if we started by not blaming anyone specifically but ourselves (the 40 million of us)? That will be one step forward towards unity as Kenyans.

The many faults seen in the past tragic events cannot be solved by a quick fix.

The cause of these  problems boils down to our character. Sadly, if we don’t change our character, then these problems are here to stay.

Kelvin