We like to think we recognise value when we see it, but I am not always sure that we do. Sometimes we recognise packaging before we recognise substance. We recognise popularity before we recognise discipline. A person can be everywhere and still have very little to say. Another person can be quietly building, and shaping lives, yet remain invisible because they have not turned themselves into a performance.
THE recent conversation in Nigeria on “Olodo Syndrome” is not only about intelligence. It is also about what society rewards. In Nigeria today, we are watching some young people learn that attention can become currency, and sometimes the fastest way to earn that currency is to perform the most ridiculous version of oneself.
I do not say this to mock the youth. Many of them are responding to a difficult economy, and a digital culture that rewards spectacle more quickly than substance. But we should still be honest about what is happening. When visibility becomes more important than depth, and noise becomes more profitable than thought, society slowly begins to confuse attention with value.
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And yet, from time to time, something else breaks through.
I thought about this when I saw the interview with Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes. Many people were suddenly fascinated by her work in private equity, and the scale of what she had built. But her value did not begin when the interview went viral. She already carried that value. The viral moment only made more people see what had been there all along.
That is the part that interests me. How many people of depth are moving quietly through society while our attention is captured by noise? How many women carry wisdom, leadership, memory, and experience, but are not recognised because they have not been packaged for the algorithm?
We like to think we recognise value when we see it, but I am not always sure that we do. Sometimes we recognise packaging before we recognise substance. We recognise popularity before we recognise discipline. A person can be everywhere and still have very little to say. Another person can be quietly building, and shaping lives, yet remain invisible because they have not turned themselves into a performance.
This is not new, but social media has made it louder. It has created a strange kind of public classroom where everyone is watching what gets rewarded. Young people are watching who becomes famous, why, and how. They are taking notes of who gets invited, who gets paid, who gets mocked, who gets defended, and who gets ignored.
They are learning the rules of visibility these days, even when nobody admits that there are rules.
When foolishness travels faster than thought, people learn something from that. And to be clear, I do not think every young person performing online is empty. Some are simply reading the room. They have seen that seriousness does not always reward, that talent can be ignored, that decent work can be unseen, and that a ridiculous moment can open doors that years of discipline may not.
That should make us pause.
Because the issue is not only the young person trying to go viral. The issue is also the society that made “virality” feel like a reasonable strategy. If we keep rewarding spectacle, we cannot be shocked when people become performative in the worst ways.
This is why the Adesuwa Rhodes interview is a breath of fresh air. It offered a different kind of visibility. It was not built on foolishness or noise. It was the sudden public recognition of a young woman who had already done the work.
The tragedy is that society often waits for a person to be packaged before it pays attention. We wait for the viral clip. Only then do we say, “Ah, this person is serious oo.” But many people were serious long before we noticed them.
A society that mistakes attention for value will eventually become impatient with depth. It will want everything to be quick, dramatic, easily digestible, and entertaining. But the things that truly shape people are rarely that simple. Wisdom, discipline, becoming takes time.
We need to be careful about the people and behaviours we reward, because rewards become instructions. They tell the next generation what to imitate. If we only celebrate noise, we teach people to become noisy. If we only notice people after they trend, we teach them that being seen matters more than being rooted.
The conversation around “Olodo Syndrome” should not end with mockery. It should ask us a deeper question.
What kind of society are we becoming when foolishness has a market?
For me, that is the real concern.
Not that people want to be seen. Everyone wants to be seen in some way. The concern is that we are building a culture where being seen can begin to matter more than what is being carried.
And perhaps the work now is to become more discerning. To look again, listen better, and ask what is beneath the performance, and also what is being ignored because it refuses to perform.
Because sometimes, the people with the most to teach us are not the loudest people in the room. They are simply waiting for a society patient enough to recognise depth before it becomes a trend.
- https://ujuaku.substack.com/p/a-society-that-mistakes-attention
