Papa Shangos Blog

As many of my regular twitter followers will know, I often like to play with preconceptions of how people see me, who they think the person behind the tweets is, how they judge me and how they label me.

Back when I first started on Twitter I used my real name and identity but as im quite experienced in internet use on a professional level, im only too aware of how vulnerable we are to identity theft, phishing, and general hacking naughtiness when we share our personal details within social media networks and I was very reluctant to leave myself wide open like that.

So I decided to create an alter ego, an alternative persona that was still intrinsically me but where things werent so obvious. And even within the facts I decided to throw in segments of disinformation to keep the dystopian forces on their toes, and hopefully ‘out’ those people with agendas that conflict with mine.

So the identity I decided on was Yoruba man, partly based on the Fonejacker character George Agdgdgwngo – a nigerian 419 scammer with a colourful and incredibly funny personality.

The main reason for this, apart from me finding the persona to be very funny, is because i have a huge love of all things african and especially nigerian.  I just love the culture, the people, the ladies (!!) and pretty much everything about the place. I love how the peoples minds are just so FAST! how the people have endured so much suffering, still get treated atrociously by the world in general and still keep on keeping on, retaining their dignity, culture, roots, pride in the face of HUGE adversity.

These are a people who the world dismiss as dirty liars, scammers, villains, but in reality they are a noble ancient race, very highly intelligent and skilled, who have been put through the worst horrors humanity has ever seen due to the slave trade, building of american empire etc and still manage to keep on fighting.

I love and admire them so much.  So much that many of my nigerian friends say im more nigerian than they are, and that underneath my WHITE exterior, im a true naija boy at heart. Its a HUGE compliment 🙂

The point of this post is to firstly point out why I have my persona on twitter and where it comes from, and also to point out that its been an amazing social experiment. Just because I dont actively tell people my nationality and creed, I just let people make their own assumptions and make their own judgements and they are nearly ALWAYS wrong!

Ive had so many people make false assumptions or go on about their nasty little politics on Twitter without them realising who I really am or how very very wrong they are about me.

Its certainly brought the racists out of the closet too. Some very very simple minded black american ladies mainly, ranting on about stuff they have NO IDEA about, having their arguments blown out of the water almost instantly by Moi, and essentially teaching them a lesson about how it is so wrong to judge another person and how assumptions often make someone look very foolish.

Its delicious, I just hand them the rope and they happily jump from the gallows.  Sometimes its the only way to show bigots up, its the only way to show the futility of judging someone based on their colour, how underneath we all bleed, we all feel pain, we all want love. How underneath, cultural differences aside – WE ARE ALL THE SAME NO MATTER WHAT LEVELS OF MELANIN OUR BODY PRODUCES.

Thanks for reading 🙂