Comrade, the Nigerian meme but a cultural signifier — hidden trauma
I really enjoy research. I don’t know what career options are available for culture researchers. I study media theories for fun. My favourite is semiotics. Famous semiotician Umberto Eco has once described semiotics as “everything which can be used in order to lie.” It is the reason why I argue that the media (photography, etc.) is not objective. Semiotics is basically the study of signs and symbols. How meaning is constructed through languages or images.
Example: 🥳 — means celebration. Emojis are signs constructed from our collective understanding of what celebration signifies.
Every time I notice a social media trend, I turn on the hat of a sceptic. What’s the message? Whom is it meant for? What meaning does it bear?
I found these comrade memes hilarious until I paid attention to the signifiers. The social construct of pain in Nigerian comedy masking behind trauma. How pain is portrayed — laughing while crying. It is what an everyday Nigerian knows. It is a cultural signifier. We recognise this because we easily connect to such resonance. Imagine returning from work with no electricity to welcome you home. However, you would have charged your phone battery at work because you know exactly that power is not constant! While relaxing you’re surfing through social media and laughing with the windows opened to allow dry/moist air to hit your skin.
We laugh through the pain. I know you probably must have heard that Nigerians were once the happiest people in the world. It is masked by a failed system and economic poverty. “Wetin man go do” means “what can we do anymore?” Therefore, we laugh at our austere living conditions. When you are in these seemingly hopeless situations, being a Nigerian is more than a mindset, it is the ability to rise above anything.
The Nigerian people are the most optimistic you’ll ever meet. Their lack of ignorance, however, is sometimes part of the reason they elect bad leaders.
My master’s dissertation looked at photographs of Nigerian political candidates from the 2015 general elections. I discovered the local knowledge that was encoded in the campaign photographs based on my research. The need for politicians to document both their public and private lives. Geographically, political campaigns are structured between urban and rural audiences. The picture of their faces on bags of rice is very strategic. Mostly distributed in rural communities. It is because they understand hunger and poverty are multidimensionally related. Being hungry does not mean I am poor. I am poor, but I am not hungry. While on social media, they post pictures of themselves at charity functions with their families and other elites. Don’t worry, they have figured out that we don’t like the “eating corn by the gutter” pictures. So they have stepped up.
You get the drift…
We laugh when we see memes because they are relational and constructed with meanings. We understand them. We all share the same local knowledge that an outsider would not get.
No trend or virality on social media is miscalculated. Maybe some, but most of them are not. I am very careful these days to use hashtags or reshare what I have not critically read. Sometimes, it feels like self-censorship.
Comrade, carry on.