Notes From The Gutter

Some readers response

 

Dear Herbert,

I write to agree with and commend you on your article in The Nation newspaper [of Friday September 23 2016] on accidents and camera-obsessed societies that spend time taking photographs for uploading on the social media instead of helping with rescue efforts.

I was appalled last weekend when I received vivid pictures of people dying after being involved in road accidents.

I failed to understand the lack of compassion and heartlessness by some people who, instead of helping, were taking pictures of those dying.

What a society of inhumane creatures we have become! I support your article 100 percent.

Kind regards,

W Kadewa.

 

Dear WK,

Thanks for writing and expressing your take on these camera-possessed Homo sapiens. It is a shame.

Recently, pictures made rounds on social media of a university laboratory up in flames. Students captured in the photos looked very busy and happy taking photos of the inferno.

We need a psychological revolution.

Please write again.

 

Dear Herbert,

I agree with you on your entry on a camera-obsessed society. Where is the world, Malawi in particular, heading to?

It seems gone seem are the days when indeed people could rush to the accident scene to save lives. Today, they rush to the accident scene to shame the lives [of victims]! May the Lord have mercy!

How I wish somebody did a similar article in vernacular because this unMalawian behaviour is [getting] deeply rooted in the urban society, cruelly, and ignorantly spreading to the rural masses where our stunted economy is affording people to acquire at least a simple gadget in the name of a mobile phone.

Bravo Herbert!

Phillip Naunje.

 

Dear PN,

Thanks for sparing your time to share a piece of your boggled mind. Kindly continue to share your take.

Herbert.

 

ADDENDUM

Fellow Republicans, one can only imagine a strange humanity we are being socialised into. Some of the pictures we hasten to take at scenes of incidents and accidents to share on the social media are not even palatable, by any means.

However, it is so difficult to think of a way to break free from the global grip of this sociaI media influence. It is like a small piece of straw trying to find its peace amid the strong waves of a tsunami. Our sense of censorship is colonised and eroded.

You see what? Owing to humankind’s natural and insatiable need to know, there has always been that strange sense of importance society accords a story teller.

There is a market for these pictures. So, there has to be a source for them. Social media’s choice of content is a reflection of what the audience craves.

Everyone wants to be important. So, everyone wants to be the news teller and break the news. But because the established media is ‘so choosy and full of restrictions’ on who can contribute, people turn to the free-for-all social media.

However, instead of becoming photojournalists, the people become photo‘jaw’nalists; they are out there with their mandibles wide open to take that savagery bite. n

 

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