Let me tell you my experience with Larry Madowo and what I have learnt so far. It was back in 2012, and at the time I was a second-year university student. Back then owing a smart phone was likened to the mushrooming white dog breeders in Nairobi estates. Smartphone users looked ‘trendy’ so they could easily have naïve first years for girlfriends and change them like clothes. Sitting next to one during an exam was like hitting the jackpot because it made a very efficient mwakenya source (Cheating exam sheet). Ideos brand were the ‘Sukuma wiki’ (kales) smart phones of the day. Of course, for me, I have always tried to avoid jumping on the bandwagon. When they go for jeans, I do khaki, when they order fries I go for wedges, when they own ideos I went for Samsung.
Smartphones introduced us to online communities like Facebook, and I remember trying to build friends and especially follow popular personalities. The one personality that I remember then was Larry Madowo. His posts for some reason were very popular on my news feed, and I was always intrigued at the many comments that he got on his posts. Sadly, whenever I went through the comments, they were full of internet trolls. However interesting, innocent, educational the posts were, the comments on the other hand were full of internet trolls trying to pull him down.
“First, it was about how I said my name, then how I looked, what I wore, what I said, the color of the sky and the unnecessary letters in the word queue. Even when I was making major strides professionally, there has never been a shortage of people telling me how much of a failure I am,” said Larry on a Facebook post where he addressed how he copes with internet trolls.
Personally, the remember people constantly calling him Larry Madomo, ugly, braggart, and many others distasteful names not worth typing. And this made me so sacred of the opinions people have of me online. I would be scared to posts my achievements, feelings and work because someone might call me names or rubbish my work. I know there are a lot of young people stuck in this box too. Scared to advance your dreams because online crowds would intimidate you to silence. So you confine yourself into singing in the bathroom, you only write for your diary, you are always hiding in a jumper, you can’t give an honest opinion on anything because you are scared of being trolled online.
But guess what? Despite the negative energy from social media, none of it for even a second stopped Larry from living to his full potential and even garnering over one million followers on Facebook and not from bad publicity but for his authoritative command in the field of journalism. Today Larry Madowo is a US Correspondent for BBC World News, a Writer and Television Presenter, a Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum, 2019-20 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia University. He has interviewed big names like Bill Gates on corona virus vaccination and the controversy surrounding it. He is well travelled, and his opinion on almost everything counts.
And how did he deal with the trolls? His advice is: Never seek validation from Random People. On his Facebook page he goes on to write, “I am not seeking validation from random people on the Internet… Write every insult possible on my Instagram page and I will still proceed on my own terms. Social media hate no longer has any impact on me like the old adage: sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never break me. Never underestimate people’s capacity for malice, I tell friends who come into contact with the online mobs. Strangers who have never met you but are happy to aggressively attack you for no reason at all do not deserve your attention, not even an acknowledgment.”
All you need to ask yourself is what are your terms? Are you still going to live on people’s shadows or are you going to break from your cocoon? Are you going to work smart to achieve your dreams or be a flower girl to people success parties? Are you going to hide when we fall or will you garner strength and get back up? Are you going to believe in yourself and abilities or will you be comfortable with a mediocre life? You are the CEO of your life. You can hire, promote and demote people around you, but most importantly never seek validation from random people lest they pull you down to their level.
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