I have had plenty of extra time on my hands in the past few days, on the mend, recovering from a frightful case of tonsillitis, (nights curled into fetal position rocking back and forth in perceived cold shivers, under multi layers of mink blankets - whilst sporting high temperatures above the 40 celsius mark).
After an overnighter at the Emergency Room on Sunday night; got poked with needles for blood tests, Iv drips, and high doses of penicillin - I was back home before the children woke up for school on Monday.
A strictly five days off work medical certificate from the Doctor validated a whole lot of television and Internest (a cocoon of warm soft blankets and cushions, that you surround yourself with while you browse the internet) surfing, from the comfort of my couch these past two days!
The sickation (sick leave/vacation) didn't last long. I got bored watching Dr. Phil and that Jeremy Kyle lie detector test show, so I decided to do a bit of investigation for myself on facebook.
There are so many pages/groups that we come across on facebook and that's great! A lot of these groups/pages promote Healthy Living, Exercise, Eating Well, Clean Eating; promotes Civil Rights, Women and Girls Empowerment, Weightloss, Cooking, and more. My favorites are the ' motivational quotes ' pages - now those ones have a positive clear message. To motivate and impact positive thinking and actions amongst individuals. You don't have to be a psychologist or a well accredited counselor for that - you just need some life experiences, compassion and positivity!
There are business and private organisations' pages, which are often always obvious and have the legit look. They have websites, actual addresses, mail box/postal addresses, contact phone numbers, and they have feasible products that they're trying to sell.
Then there are the corporate players and power house organisations, like the UNDP, or the National Party, Prime Minister John Key, Government Departments and Corporations, All Blacks, Mainstream News Agencies like TNVZ One News, NZ Herald online, Stuff.co.nz, Financial institutions, Banks, Franchises, Supermarkets, Cinemas, Malls; you name it - it's on facebook. You'll be sure they'll have Twitter, Instagram, Tumbler and all those other social media networks that I can never have the time to learn more about.
But the pages that I became particularly curious with were the ones taking authority of specific cultural or ethnic representations.
Often targeting their audience with a tone of humour when addressing them, and taking on random titles like - 'Confessions of a Samoan Princess', 'Samoana', 'Polynesian Warriors', 'Paradise', 'One Love', 'Pacific Islanders' the list is endless.
At first, most of it all looked harmless, just promoting cultural arts, traditions, basic ethnic language awareness, scenery for the adventurous tourist. I thought, hmmmmmm not much of a threat to the general public.
But then I come across a random one promoting views on youth and social development as well as employment. I walk through the statuses of the last three to four months' (Yes I was truly bored but too ill for the mind to do any 'real' work) posts, calling all unemployed people to get off the couch and go to work (okay - I agree with you to some extent there, I consider this a case by case basis), then proceeds to shame all the unemployed.
Not long into my enquiries and I figure out who the admin is... one of their followers makes a comment tagging their name to it and they respond under the page name (huge giveaway). I check out the tagged admin's profile, and wha la - "Officially finished the semester today, (hashtag) jobless, if you see me be generous and buy me some lunch! - Laugh Out Loud emoticon."
Sistah looked to be in her 20 years of life of on earth, or early twenties and never held a job in her entire life.
Then I find another one, this one is a lot more brave, more opinionated, strong views, valid points, good researched topics, she/he is what the blogging world would deem as someone getting their blogging ideas from the views of others (as most of the posts are extended posts of similar opinions raised elsewhere).
Then I come across an assertive post with a beautiful picture of a woman bearing markings of the traditional malu tatoo for Samoan women, cracking a coconut shell, about to scrape the coconut off the shell for preparation of either a umu or a fa'alifu. It's not clear in the photo which traditional cooking procedure she was about to embark on - but the status read; "How about we make it a rule - that you must learn to cook a umu first before you can get a malu?"
I sneered at this - it was clearly a very immature generalisation, and one may consider it shaming other women who have taken the traditional markings.
How does one make the assumption that all women who have had a malu, have not had the experience of making a umu, or preparing a fa'alifu? Just because they either chose not to post pictures (or don't have any pictures) of them cracking a coconut, or squeezing coconut milk with a tauaga? For all you know, they could have just been posing for the photos and then immediately handed the task back to the actual people preparing the food!
So I did a bit of digging, found their true profile, early-mid twenties, unclear whether they were born in Samoa or NZ, but one thing was clear, they have never prepared a fa'alifu or a umu before (at least in the traditional way)!
There are pages outright shaming young women and girls. The vulgarity of the language used is abhorrent and disgusting. It is disappointing to see how the youth of my country are spending most of their time and to read their tunnel vision views. It didn't take long for me to figure out that the administrator/s were based out of Samoa. What's more insane are the amount of mutual friends that I have, who have liked these pages!
That's easy - you go to the 'friends who have liked this page button' and boom!
Really people? Wouldn't you rather be reading up or following a page more beneficial to your health, lifestyle, personal development and or matters of current affairs?
Alarmingly, these pages are attracting thousands of followers. I'm theorising that this is mostly due to their 'humour' tone, use of everyday basic 'slang' language - it appeals to the younger generations, and mostly divorced, widowed or single men and women. (Yes I took the time to connect a common pattern of the followers of these pages).
I'm not going to name these faceless armchair heros. No - that would be way too much irresponsible fun, and no this post is not about calling them out and hanging them to dry. I do not stand to gain a thing from that at all.
This is for you reading - yes you - so you can start making better informed decisions and be a little bit more cautious and inquisitive of the authors of the material that you're reading. For all you know, you could be learning about the heirachy of the matai system from a first year university student, barely out of their twenties, with way too much time on their hands. Or you could be getting job search tips, or ideas of what unemployment and employment ought to look like from someone who has not held a job in all of their young life!
You may be learning and getting influence on critical issues of gender equality, ethnicity, identity and culture from someone who may still be struggling with the infamous Lemalu Tate Simi question - 'Who am I?'
There are some credible pages with similar tones, audiences, key messages and values floating around on facebook.
Here's a tip - the authors or administrators usually invite you to LIKE their pages themselves.
Sometimes, your friends invite you to like these pages.
Hold them (page authors/administrators) to account - make the effort and send them a message (there are no rules stopping you), simply inquire - who they are, so you're aware of who's behind the page and the information provided.
Become a responsible facebooker. Be responsible and alert of the information that you expose yourself and digest. More importantly, make it your business to know your source.
Another tip - usually the credible authors/administrators who use random titles for page branding and property authentication - repost their statuses onto their personal pages. From there you may decided for yourself whether the information portrayed by that specific person comes from a place of experience, credibility, learned knowledge that you can trust or perhaps their information requires a bit more analysing.
Its important to know who your authors are - especially where intricate matters of social and cultural issues are concerned. Information is only as good, valueable, and helpful as it's source. Social media is so readily accessible worldwide, it is vastly becoming the 'new' mainstream media. But with no academic, experience, expert knowledge filters, it's any man's game really.
It's worrying if the opinions and subsequently therefore, the understanding of people, on what their cultural and ethnical values; become hugely influenced by unsolicited inexperienced, often biased and inobjective views of some random faceless-book pages.
The number one rule of credibility is crediting the source of information.
It is purely why I choose to blog under my real name, and run a facebook page for an upcoming online Magazine venture that I'm working on - aligned to my real name. Many prominent journalists, authors, writers; you'll find, use their real names to run facebook pages and blogs for that very core reason. That credibility is fundamental to integrity of information and source.
If you're going to have an opinion about matters that impact on individuals' wellbeing and the wider community in general, then by all means, may you have the resilience and enough heart to face their feedback and criticism.
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