Don't encourage fake gists

 

Sieve the stories and know when to kill fake gists. May the Lord be with you. (Photo credit: Google)

I wrote about fake information yesterday and after reading over it again I figured I didn’t do enough justice to it. I will share two different stories that would give you an idea of the danger of peddling rumors.

Just recently, an incident happened around Stadium in the Surulere axis of Lagos State. I’m an early bird so, I typically get to work before most people but on this particular day, nearly everyone else apart from the early risers (Myself, Innocent, and Olumide) didn’t come in until over an hour after normal resumption time.

I was on Twitter and saw a post of a horrible accident on the Ojuelegba bridge and I panicked a bit; that’s the bridge most of my colleagues use to work and I immediately got on my phone to find out where folks were but it didn’t take long for me to find out what actually happened.

Sandra already shared videos of how some physically challenged folks laid siege at the stadium because some of them were omitted from a championship and they blocked the entire road. Right as I was going through the video my boss shared, someone was in another WhatsApp group saying police attacked some boys at the stadium and was the reason there was traffic.

Someone picked the information from the group and uploaded it on her status and before you know it, lots of people started peddling the return of EndSars. Imagine folks going around to attack police stations on information that wasn’t verified.

I remember BJ’s wedding and the chaos that happened in the morning. At some point, it felt like the devil was going to win and folks wouldn’t be able to get to the church. This was due to mayhem on the way and we heard different stories that fueled unnecessary agitations.

Apparently, police had taken over the road and it was already safe to move but people kept giving us fake gist that only made us panic. I can imagine what could have happened to people with hypertension on that day, all pointing to the fact that when you’re not sure about the story, rest it.

Someone will wake up in the corner of his or her room and start broadcasting destructive, yet unverified information and you don’t want the National Assembly to curb them? I am all for the information bill and y’all might caution your aged ones (including my mother) on their trigger-happy “forwarded message” escapades.

No one has poisoned apples in the market and no one is trying to convert kids to another religion with spiked biscuits. You people should rest in Jesus name.

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