Internet Family Over Rides Home

Keke Palmer, an American actress, comedian and TV show host heard rumors that she was pregnant. She confirmed it online with the statement I AM. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, former Miss World and Bollywood actress ignored calls that she should show her baby bump. For what? For her internet family.

She did not, because the internet is not family. Keke Palmer did, out of choice. She is comfortable with things that begin with internet practice and graduated to so-called ‘culture’. My apologies to Americans but because of pop culture, what American celebrities do end up being the compulsory norm.

Nigerian movies for example. If American movies are about cancer, surrogacy and marriage therapists, Nigerian movies will use those story lines for the next 50 years, at the expense of unique indigenous African stories, the whole world can relate to.

My Childhood

Internet culture includes confessions about family, especially parents. Fame comes with certain internet obligations like dogging parents. The internet is not family therefore I cannot tell strangers what happened between my parents.  

The individual you see today is a sum total of many things: my grandparents, aunts, uncles and growing up in an apartheid state where anybody who arrived on a boat, had straight hair enslaved my ancestors and determined how I grew up.

I cannot judge my parents out of that socio-political context. If fact, I’m still alive today because of what my parents and extended family sacrificed in order for me to live and write this blog. Therefore, I cannot sit here and say my father did this to my mother and vice versa.

The internet is not family. It’s an conglomerate of strangers. It cannot force me to me to validate its warped American confession standards based on LIKE and RETWEET.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.