Before the Internet is Done Regulating Us -By Saliu Momodu

So the man who invented the television, John Baird, actually did cry bitterly when he saw the malicious end to which his invention was being put?

I then wonder what those behind the internet would do if they carry any conscience within the recesses of their chest.

Over every television set in our living spaces, and worse still, on the internet that now comes ubiquitously, lewdness, violence and sensual explicitness has become the new culture. Art forms nowadays, from music, dance, pictures and films seem to all have one thing taken out, and that is creativity. To be fair, they try to compensate by making sure of it that it all comes with savagely lewd content. So it has become with television and the internet that all concerns for the welfare and appropriateness to the consuming audience has been cast to the dogs. Many of these scenes even, are character-ed by those we should be struggling to save from the venom of the industry- under-age children.
No, this is not a thesis for a return to an obtuse stone age or for a relapse into prehistoric times in antiquity, but an attempt to prick our conscience for some industry regulations for modesty, morality and moderation.

Indeed there truly is nothing like an inherently good or bad invention save for what we do with it. Hence the need every now and then for one sane regulation after another.

One laudable regulation for the internet could be that there shouldn’t be explicitly lewd content (videos, pictures etc) over it’s superhighway just the way you can’t find explicitly lewd videos (which would otherwise be flagged down) on YouTube.

How about that?

In other words, “consenting adults” as they are called, could do whatever they like within the confines of private internet platforms as is even the case today on WhatsApp, but not that same be freely available to one & all over our public internet.

The irony is that even when the world as a whole is not set for this feat, individual countries can choose to enact such decent moderations. Meaning, Nigeria can so do if it sees fit. But despite all our manicured religiousity, I bet you will hardly ever hear anyone hint such a proposal.

Oops! Least I forget, we actually have something frying in that regard. It is somewhere within the draft of the anti hate-speech bill. How did I miss that?

The world may never know how much it bleeds away by allowing this naked & unhinged assault on the moral sensibilities of otherwise innocent minds. The violent erosion of our collective sensual morality that results therefrom is far more a pressing issue than climate change (another of our undoings by the way).

In time past for example, warring nation & tribes could simply shealth their swords forever only on the grounds of a single inter-marriage between their own. But after taking so much beating from a new culture of lewdness bonanza, the marriage institution can hardly glue a man to his wife much less two nations- let’s even leave out warring ones for now.

So no thanks to the global lewdness industry that makes too much blood money from violating our collective conscience. No thanks to them for we now spend billions of dollars for weapons all in vain trying to crush differences that a simple gesture of love in marriage could settle the very morning after.

If we are to reverse this moral hemorrhage and restore decency, then those with a beating heart in their chest must take a cue and act today.

Saliu Momodu is the Producer & Host of The Scholastic-Ng Podcast.
saliumomoh123@gmail.com