"Tony is this really you”, asked my Friend, Gina, “you sound so different from the Tony I’ve known online. I’ve just observed you laugh a lot, and that’s so unlike the mean and serious Tony online”

I nudged in a coy laughter, paused for a second, and told her it was the same Tony, no different from the mean and serious online Tony as she had earlier mentioned. It was our first conversation over the phone after four months of online friendship and regular chatting.


After the interesting and revealing conversation, I lay down in my well laid bed, opened the curtains to my inner self and went into deep reflections on what Gina had just revealed to me. Over the course of my few years on social media, I’ve never paid much attention to the discrepancies between the life I live in the real world and that of social media.

It’s fair to have a discrepancy between life in reality and that of social media, I should continue with this. One though would say. The other opposes and says; it’s apt to eliminate this discrepancy and maintain a unison between both lives.

Deep in thoughts, I tried to justify this dissect I had in both lives, but opposing thoughts kept appearing and there was no mutual landing field. Like a kite, I was just loose and flying around to the direction of the wind of my conflicting thoughts.

Thinking is a lazy habit as Albert Einstein said, and I knew it was time to stop being lazy and arrest these crazy thoughts that never agree and make them my subjects. I decided to dig up facts, yes, facts!… Facts dissolves prejudice and forms a more concrete basis for better judgements and conclusions. But what facts are there to unraveling the discrepancies between a social media life and life in the real world? Am I the only one experiencing this two-faced life? These questions require answers… answers of which this succinct write up aims to posit.

A friend of mine (name withheld, but I’ll call her Ada in this piece) once had a brief chit-chat with one of her many admirers on Instagram. A chit-chat that created a spark… a spark that eventually ignited a flame of love. A chit-chat that led to hopes and dreams, smiles and rom-nce, passion and addiction, but stumbled and fell at the feet of a not-happy-ending. Ada was a pretty young graduate of sociology, she was soaked in elegance. Her smile was an enchantment, and her voice harbors melodious tunes like the work of a perfect Orchestra.

Mike (a random name, not in any way related to the real guy in context) was a good looking handsome young man. His online posts were mostly motivational, he was a human rights social crusader. As a lawyer, Mike, had his own law firm and wasn’t doing bad financially. It took Ada only but two weeks to fall in love with the online and over-the-phone Mike.

To cut the story short, I’ll play this like a DVD and fast forward to their second year of dating. I’d rather not bore you with their love shenanigans. So, one day, sometime in their second year of dating, I called to check up on my friend Ada and offered to have lunch with her. We needed to catch up on lost times. Of course if you stay in Lagos you should know that one can have a friend here and see that one friend just once or never in a whole year.

Ada agreed to my lunch proposal and by 1pm the following day we were seated at Mama Cass Ikeja drinking kunu (lol, it’s not your business what we eat). While having lunch, I asked her of Mike, the last time I did during a phone conversation two weeks ago she had warned me never to mention that name again. In all sincerity, that statement was the major factor behind my lunch invitation to her. I needed to get the full gist. Ada brought out her phone, did some scrolling and handed the phone over to me. “Here you go”, she said, “that’s what Mike did did to me, or rather, what he does to me anytime he’s vexed and in chafe”.

The photo I was staring at startled me. My opened mouth made the shape of an ‘o’ while I kept staring at a photo of my pretty friend with a black eye. “How did he do this?” I inquired, “you mean the same Mike I know did this to you, is he insane?”. Ada managed a mild smile and answered, “forget that Tony, you no sabi Mike, he’s two-faced, when online he poses as a saint, but in reality he’s nothing but a hellion”. “You know me”, she continued, “I’m not masochistic, “I got tired of being stoic and had to quit the messy and abusive relationship”.

Oh, before I continue, let me categorically state here that this article is in no way trying to prove that healthy relationships have not been or cannot be birthed through social media connections. It’s rather a ‘look before you leap’ article.

Ada is not the only victim of such betrayal in a two-faced real-life social media life discrepancy. A lot of other men and women have fallen prey to this vicious trap. Also, some people who fall for this trap aren’t so innocent of this two-faced life either.

A lot of cool minded and peaceful folks I know in reality are actually trolls on Twitter, while some quick-to-anger friends I have, never get into any online brawl, they prefer unleashing the dragon face to face and not under the comfort and protection of the keyboards.

Some heavy vocabulary-friendly folks love taking up the title of warlords on social media. They are always ready to attack and pour down insults like a wild storm with their many heavy vocabularies. Best case scenario, they end up intimidating their opponents. Worse case scenario, they end up sending many to the dictionary or even making no clear sense at all.

How about going financial-wise. Everyone claims to be a ‘baller’ on social media. The shopping malls are always clean, neat and classy. The sun never goes down in malls thanks to the heavy lighting-ups. These amazing qualities of shopping malls don’t just attract visitors for shopping or window shopping sake, no… no! There’s more to it than just that. You have any idea where I’m heading to with this? Well, don’t go tasking your mental prowess for answers. I’ll save you that energy. The shopping malls are the best photo studios of our times. Where else does everyone get the opportunity to get a classy photo if not there. Just get that classy photo there, post it online and leave followers or friends to their own assumption that you are financially up the ladder.

Also, almost everyone on social media is either an expert in one field, working with a reputable firm, or self employed. It beats me how the unemployment rate is still high at 13.9% according to economic statistics.

As you read this, I know you must have set your wheels of memory in motion, and a picture of one or more of your friends, or someone you just happen to know who lives a different life on social media from that of the real world must have popped up. Albeit, there might be no need burning up that energy moving the memory wheels, you might actually be the one in the picture that pops up. You might be the one living the double life here. Don’t sink in indignation, you aren’t alone on this.

Two schools of thought exist in the context of this topic. One is of the opinion that it is right to keep a lacuna between your life in reality and that of social media, while the other school opposes that. They both have good point to backup what they posit, but their arguments differ not from day and night, it’s just endless.

A much better approach to understanding this topic lies in a simple question. A question I know you must have asked yourself or someone else at one point or the other. A question I would rather answer through research on facts and not under prejudice. This simple question is; why do people create a hiatus between their life in reality and that of social media?

I have answers to this question, but they are all built on assumptions. As a ‘mini-economist’, I’ve grown to admire the use of data (most times sample data) to reach conclusions. Decisions based on assumptions alone are always bound by the chains of futility.

If you live a different life on social media from that of reality, tell me why you do so, or if you have reasons why one should lead a different life on social media, I’m all ears. Get to me via the comment section or through my email address which I’ll drop at the bottom of this article. I pledge to keep your anonymity if you so desire. Your honest answers and suggestions would be highly appreciated as this will be the solid foundation on which my next article (Why People Lead Different Lives On Social Media) will stand on.
Till then… ciao!

Emebo Anthony
emeboanthony101@yahoo.com

http://www.owelafrik.com/2017/04/27/real-life-social-media-life-discrepancy-emebo-tony/