It would be exactly 9 months in a few weeks that i mistakenly stumbled on the Nigerian forum,
Nairaland.com. It's been 9 months of fun intermingled with disappointment, dismay and despair. 9 months of the mundane and important, 9 months of learning how not to massage egos, 9 months of words of encouragements, intellectual challenges and downright insults. 9 months of being banned, unbanned and being uncertain when the next sledge hammer ban would fall.
It is sad that most of the brilliant minds that used to keep us so busy on the forum have slowly trickled away, unfortunately we are left with teenagers pretending to be adults, those whose parents would be ashamed to see their pictures and posts online. People who have so little to contribute and yet waste tons of space. People like Rhodalyn, supposedly 17 yet is as dumb as dumb ever gets. Never seen a sensible post from her, all she's thinking about is turning 18 to have sex with her boyfriend!
Lord!
Eveseh? Another issue entirely! Let's not go there. Maki posts pictures that leave nothing to the imagination, as for aqua, any day he posts something that is not fit for the "Adult" section would be a miracle. The sections that get the most buzz these days are the offtopic and chatterbox sections where "intellectually stimulating" discourses such as "the hottest girl on NL", "questions for Rhod", Ciarra vs Beyonce", "what are you eating now" and others hold sway.
Gone are the days when the likes of Ijebuman and Nferyn held us spelbound on the politics section. Akolawole who was doing a marvelous job in the sports section has since been given the "ban" treatment, where are the likes of Owo and Ono? So many have left and in their place we now have the likes of Efani, Bigshishi, retro and eveseh.
The likes of Retro are just 18 and yet sex, boys (blacks road closed!) and cigarettes are like second nature. Hotangel, i really don't see why so many people are so fixated on that girl. Colorless would be the word, neither here nor there.
True Nairaland has grown to be the biggest online forum for Nigerians but it's administrative style has allowed it to become infested with bored teenagers eager to massage their insecure egos by constantly hiding behind the facade of anonymity to insult those old enough to be their parents. Diddy4 has told all those "adults" who want respect from his teenage group to show them respect first, i'm wondering when the world suddenly turned upside down. Perhaps fathers are now supposed to respect their sons first.
For those still interested in some scrappy bit of intellectual excercise, a good place to start may be the religion thread. The likes of TayoD, Gwaine, Syrup, Ajia23, Logical are posters worth taking a second look at. For those interested in the absurd, you might want to start with the recycle bin and then move to the offtopic (more like cat fight/dissing zone) threads.
Great threads still exist, friends and partnerships have been forged through that forum, bridges have been built, lessons learned. Nairaland has come a long way from its small beginings but is gradually falling prey to the vices that befell one-time hit social networks such as friendstar. It has the potential to be a major meeting point for Nigerians world wide, but whether the admin is up to the task of taking the forum to the next level remains to be seen.