Unlike one of my close friends, I like FHISH. I think he is a very talented young man and I think he is going to go places. I knew about Fhish the week ‘Bonbon Sifflet’ was released and I very willingly shared it to a few people around me. Again, I think he is very talented and he is standing right at the threshold of something great and he only needs to take the right step in the right direction and he will have it going for him.
However, I can’t help but think that his lack of communication skills will, in the long run, hold him down under water and choke him. Sometimes I’m tempted to think it’s because of his new-found fame. A semi-meteoric catapulting that came on the heels of an incident that should have crucified and not redeemed him. Lucky for him, his talent was his saving grace and he is now lying in greener pastures. But for how long?
Fhish, yesterday, published a video on Twitter where he mocked people who did not know Kobe Bryant but are mourning him. In his own words “the only thing you see is people posting nice pictures of Kobe. DO YOU KNOW KOBE? How many basketball matches do you watch? You just go on Google and download the best picture and post. Social media you people will not kill somebody.”
I’m 100% certain he didn’t mean any harm. In the video he is seen sitting down, wearing a pair of shorts and singlet and talking half-mockingly into the camera.
Only he didn’t get the kind of response he perhaps hoped for. He has copiously been insulted by Twitter users and has been called all manner of acerbic names like fool, illiterate, idiot… and you can go see the rest for yourself.
Now, I would never condone insults on social media but I can’t help thinking that Fhish asked for it. I can’t even feel sorry for him.
Every time a celebrity dies this same issue of grief comes up. In Cameroon now it’s of particular concern because our country is going through a crisis that has seen thousands of people dead and I have seen people bring up the argument on whether or not people should mourn the death of Kobe more than they do the thousands dead and dying every day in the struggle. Someone brought up the death of Super Makia saying Cameroonians did not mourn him the way they are mourning Kobe.
I do not want to get into that particular argument. All I want to say is that we are, naturally, compassionate people. We are socially engineered to share the grief of others. Go to any funeral anywhere and you will see people there who do not even know the person who died, come to share the grief of the bereaved.
I remember going to a village to bury an ex’s uncle. As we approached the village, we passed by some middle-aged women returning from the farm. As soon as they saw the hearse, they burst out crying. No, wailing. They did not even know who had died. It is in us to share that kind of compassion.
But to get back to Fhish, if he had any modicum of reflection about our social dispensation, or at the very least followed the arguments over Kobe that was raging on Twitter, he would have known that as far as communication goes, that move was just downright foolish. Irrespective of the subject of the issue he should know to act with more tact. It was a goofy video that under different circumstance would have been ignored. He chose the wrong day.
Communication isn't a one-step process. You send a message, the receiver receives it and you hopefully get feedback. Along the line, there is sometimes noise that distorts the process. Kobe's death, in this instant, was the noise. You have to be aware of the noise to know how best to send the message. In this particular instant, he should have shut up.
The brouhaha over Stanley Enow’s album launch should have been the biggest and best lesson he would ever have to learn in communication. Again, his talent saved him. If his music was Nyangonish in nature, he would have been toast by now.
But here’s the thing.
Nothing enhances the notion of community after our real-life social groupings like social media. The fans and the public that follow you would hold you accountable for your actions pretty much like the neighbours in a big compound would do a small, rowdy child from that very compound.
The same members of that same community that laughed at Fhish when he released that video insulting Stanley Enow, that supported him when they realised he is a talented fellow, are the same people insulting him right now. Basically holding him accountable for his actions.
But Fhish is not a little, rowdy child in a compound. He is an adult with 6 dreadlocks and a fully grown O beard. He needs to go back to the drawing board and watch how he communicates with the public figure. It’s the price to pay to be a celebrity… unfortunately.
He will come out unscathed from this, no doubt. He may have creased a few people here and there, and wrinkled a few faces here and there. Time will certainly iron that out. But we are seeing a pattern already, and he is, perhaps, one tweet away from doing himself some irreparable harm that will drown him in the bitter waters of Marah. .
- Wandji Wilfred.