NATHANIEL BASSEY: "OLOWOGBOGBORO" BROKE AND STILL BREAKING RANKS

Have you ever wondered why it is so easy to promote evil or immorality, yet so difficult to share and promote morality and any good form of experiences or things, tangibles and intangibles?

For the past couple of weeks, I have been holding back not to write anything about the ‘’hallelujah challenge’’ by Nathaniel Bassey which trended so awesomely in a magical way all through the month of June.

Before you start getting it twisted, let me clear the air. First of all, I’m  not a member of Nathaniel Bassey’s family or a member  of his church  neither am  a personal friend of his or even a friend to his friend. It would also interest you to know that I didn’t even take part in the challenge until three days before it ended.

And guess what? I wish took part in it all through the month and not just for three days .

Nevertheless, I didn’t miss out on the blessings of the month neither did I miss out on the blessings of the midnight praise because I was involved in my own daily/nightly prayers and praise sessions as organized by my local church. Yes! I am a Christian. Just in case you didn’t know.

So the month of June was indeed a month of daily mighty praise of God from millions of people across the globe. Believe it or not, many testified and are still testifying about the wonders  that came out of all the praise challenge(s.)

Now with that out of the way, dear reader, let’s move on.

Every move of God normally moves people forward and I believe that just concluded hallelujah challenge and all other challenges of night praise, prayer and worship which no doubts were moves of God moved a lot of people, individuals, families and businesses forward.

And so it was disheartening to see posts and comments on the posts on social media from individuals including Christians who were condemning the hallelujah challenge by Nathaniel Bassey claiming it was just a strategic PR for his next album or song. Phew! How condescending can people get when they see good things. When a few of these negative posts and comments were attacked by those who saw it as “uncalled for” the posters and communicators of course quickly moved to try in defending themselves.

That’s by the way though, even though it was what gave rise to this write up.

After seeing such comments the one thing I could ‘deduce’ from all such comments was sheer “envy”.

Yes I say envy or else how can you  find it so easy to ‘okay ’ programs and reality shows that promote all kinds of immorality including sex and nudity but shout when people spend their data praising God for just one hour or more every night for just a month? Yet we complain about how decayed the society has now become; including  politicians stealing public funds on a daily basis while robbers, kidnappers and ritualists are carrying out their activities all around the place at their various levels unperturbed, not leaving out the rapists, perverts and peadophites whose victims are also getting on high by the day.

So it’s okay when 90% of men go online on a daily basis to watch pornography for hours on social media and data is used for all these.

Some “enjoyers” of the bad news are quick to Google on the latest couples who are breaking up, who is cheating on their spouses, how one person was disgraced or who was rich and now broke and many more.

People or should I resound that “man” is naturally wicked and that it takes a lot of discipline to push down and suppress the spirit of envy and thereafter wish good for others?

Alas! It’s not always so with many individuals as the quest for always wanting to remain ahead of a friend or next person, seeks for ways to continuously put down every one of perceived their “competitor”.

Why am I not surprised at the negative remarks from many especially the co-Christians?

Imagine a Pastor or Christian artist/minister who’s been in the ministry for a couple of “donkey” years and yet still struggling, only for this “small boy” or “rookie” Nathaniel Bassey to come from "nowhere" and take all the “shine” with a small idea as “Halleluyah Challenge”. Kai! What a “whipping”!! I can only imagine how many of the “bad belles” bit and are still biting their fingers with expressions and thoughts such as “if only I had thought of this strategy and acted upon it earlier”.

Well deal with it dear, move on, join the challenge next time, ask God for your own “one small idea” and be rest assured that without any grudges against those whose bread have been “buttered”, your own bread will also be “buttered”. Just be patient and think positive.

Enough said already and you may be wondering why I’m just writing about that “Halleluyah challenge” when it’s been many weeks over. Yes it’s because many are still talking about it and testimonies are still coming out.

When next any such praise challenges come up, I will take full part in it even as I know millions of participants from across the world are gearing up for the next challenge. Nathaniel Bassey broke ranks with his Halleluyah challenge and it was a good ‘rank breaking’ let others follow in his step perhaps it could become a leeway in sanitizing what we do on social media with our data.

Carry on Nathaniel Bassey and by the way ‘Olowogbogboro’ is really trending already and of course, Gods culture is on the verge of taking over ‘pop culture’.

Olowogbogboro is truly turning things around!

STELLA ENE-INYANG

STAGGERING NUMBERS OF CLICKS/VISITS: WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT PORN?

A few days ago, a couple of persons where having a discussion about how social media has destroyed homes and how principled individuals have given way to very unethical behaviours as a result of what is seen on social media.

Sometime ago, a licensed psychotherapist, certified sexuality counselor and New York Times best-selling author Ian Kerner wrote a very interesting article on his website iankerner.com with a questioning title “Is there such a thing as ‘good porn’? honestly speaking, it was a good read.

For many of us, like he explained in the article, our first exposure to pornography was surreptitious as it was either a case of a sneak peek at someone else's copy of Playboy or the viewing of a worn VHS tape stolen from an older sibling or some other ways. However today, the reverse is the case as porn is nearly everywhere given that anyone can simply jump online and view it with the few clicks on a device. 

 

‘Anyone’ means ‘anybody’  irrespective of age, gender, class, religion and more given  the staggering numbers of people who visit such sites if the  data provided by the American Psychological Association is anything to go by.

According to the data, as stated in the article, the rates of porn consumption range between 50% and 99% among men and 30% to 86% among women. It says the popular website PornHub alone logs about 2.4 million visitors per hour which is more than an estimated 6,000 visitors per second.

Amazingly, such a site is free and given that it's all free, it makes it not only more accessible and acceptable to a lot of people of the present generation but also for those of the future and many years ahead as it is gradually becoming less taboo and simply part of life for many people at the moment. The shocking and craziest part is that when you want to watch better and well-meaning videos online, you have to pay for them.

Even though many see this trend as unethical, Ian who refers to Porn as a sexually explicit Internet material or visual sexual stimuli given his field, says it could be a positive and a valuable aspect of a healthy sex life in some ways.

A proposed regulation in California would require porn actors to wear condoms while filming. The thinking is that this will not only promote safer sex on set amongst the performers, it will encourage porn viewers at home to follow their lead. But condoms aren't the only way to protect the safety of adult film actors or to ensure that the porn that reaches consumers is of a higher standard overall.

In fact, a booming trend in the creation of adult films -- ethical porn -- is changing the way erotic content is both made and consumed.

"If we put porn in perspective and use it as an adjunct to fantasy, it can be beneficial," said licensed marriage and family therapist and certified sex therapist Marty Klein, author of "His Porn, Her Pain: Confronting America's Porn Panic with Honest Talk About Sex."

But with this growing acceptance comes a tolerance for mediocre material. Like most advertising-based online content, the "tube" sites that offer free porn operate on search terms and clicks. It isn't created on the "build it and they will come model," but rather on the "build more of what they're already clicking on" model. This approach creates a vicious cycle: What we click on is what gets made, which is what gets clicked on, which is what gets made.

Though the average duration of a porn visit clocks in at about 9 minutes, many men and women spend way more time searching for something interesting to view. "Sometimes, I can spend two hours a night looking at porn," one of my patients said. "It's not because I'm addicted. I'm just looking for something that feels real."

Unfortunately, that can be difficult to find on the tube sites, where quantity far exceeds quality. "Amateurs have largely replaced actors because they're willing to work for less money," explained Bryant Paul, a faculty member at Indiana University Media School and co-producer of the Emmy-nominated documentary "Hot Girls Wanted." With an amateur's career peaking after just a few months, many must participate in increasingly degrading or exploitative material to remain relevant in the industry.

Because tube sites tend to deliver short, digestible clips of content, some of the material they offer may be pirated and taken out of context.

"Free porn sites may steal scenes from longer movies, which they re-label and rebrand," explained adult film director and writer Jacky St. James. "I can create a film that's more story-driven and romantic, only to have a clip from it pop up on a tube site, where it's being called something like 'big-breasted blonde whore on her knees.' " Worse, there's no guarantee that the people participating in free porn are of legal age or that they have consented to the acts portrayed onscreen.

But the answer to bad porn shouldn't be no porn at all; it should be better porn. Enter ethical porn. Much the way organic produce, cage-free eggs and fair-trade coffee have transformed the way we shop for food, ethical porn is changing the landscape of adult-oriented material, making it easier to enjoy.

In his new book "Ethical Porn for Dicks: A Man's Guide to Responsible Viewing Pleasure," clinical psychologist David Ley outlines the requirements for this new form of porn: It should be made legally, respect the rights of performers and pay them for their labor, and treat both performers and consumers as consenting, thinking individuals. Also important: Ethical porn celebrates sexuality as a diverse, complex and multifaceted component of being a human being, without judgment.

That doesn't mean that ethical porn is always romantic and soft. "Hard-core, rough sex can be ethical," St. James said. "What matters is that the performers are comfortable, consenting and respectful of everyone's boundaries."

Ley agrees. "Ethical porn can explore darker aspects of sexuality. If we expect it to be 'nice,' we set others up to be ashamed about their own desires," he said. "Professional sports aren't 'nice' either, but they can be played ethically and responsibly. Porn should be the same."

Something else to consider: Just as porn itself should be ethical, the way it's consumed should be, too. "In addition to advocating for a product that's made ethically, we should be using it ethically as well," Klein explained. "That means enjoying it in a way that highlights the positive aspects of your own relationships and sex life: for example, not breaking any promises to your mate about your viewing and not using porn to withdraw from your mate or make them feel bad with explicit comparisons to porn stars' bodies."

In my own practice, I often suggest to couples in sex ruts that they try ethical porn as a way to increase sexual arousal, as well as to people coping with common sexual concerns such as erectile dysfunction, premature ejactulation and difficulty achieving orgasm. Indeed, research by neuroscientist Nicole Prause and her colleagues has found that watching more pornography actually increases arousal in men to less explicit material -- and increases the desire for sex with a partner. In other words, it makes them more responsive to "normal" sexual cues and more desirous of real physical relationships (Archives of Sexual Behavior, May 2013).

So how do you know whether the porn you're watching was produced ethically? Although there's no guarantee, you might want to start your search with the winners at the annual Feminist Porn Awards. Yes, you'll probably have to pay for it, but even with a small budget, you can build your ethical porn library into something you can feel good about enjoying.

DON'T LET THEM FEED YOU RUBBISH!! OUTSMART FAKE NEWS FEEDS ON YOUR FACEBOOK!!

Before social media became the ‘in-thing’, when we heard the word ‘NEWS’ the first thing that would come to mind is ‘TRUTH’ and not just gossip or some individuals who may just be constituting ‘nuisancy’, that’s if English would permit me that usage.

As a child, listening to news on the Tv or radio was most of the times 100% authentic or 97% at the most very authentic and verifiable.

But with the advent of several social media platforms, just about anything is put out there for public consumption whether fake, false, true or … you just name it. It’s all out there and it takes only a very sound mind to rational what is or what is not. The internet does a lot of misinformation and harm in one month than what simply gossip and ‘word-of-mouth’ has done in decades put together.

Having consulted with two communications experts, Dr. Melissa Zimdars, an associate professor at Merrimack College in Massachusetts and Alexios Mantzarlis, the head of the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute, CNN decided to published an article hammering on the notion that just because it's on the internet doesn't make it true.

It seems so simple, but if everyone knew that, Facebook and Google wouldn't have to pull bogus news sites from their advertising algorithms and people wouldn't breathlessly share stories that claim Donald Trump is a secret lizard person or Hillary Clinton is an android in a pantsuit.

First, know the different types of misleading and false news

1. Fake news

These are the easiest to debunk and often come from known sham sites that are designed to look like real news outlets. They may include misleading photographs and headlines that, at first read, sound like they could be real.

2. Misleading news

These are the hardest to debunk, because they often contain a kernel of truth: A fact, event or quote that has been taken out of context. Look for sensational headlines that aren't supported by the information in the article.

3. Highly partisan news

A type of misleading news, this may be an interpretation of a real news event where the facts are manipulated to fit an agenda.

4. Clickbait

The shocking or teasing headlines of these stories trick you into clicking for more information -- which may or may not live up to what was promised.

5. Satire

This one is tough, because satire doesn't pretend to be real and serves a purpose as commentary or entertainment. But if people are not familiar with a satire site, they can share the news as if it is legitimate.

Alexios Mantzarlis trains fact-checkers for a living. He says it's important to have a "healthy amount of skepticism" and to think, really think, before sharing a piece of news.

"If we were a little slower to share and re-tweet content purely based on the headline, we'd go a good way towards combating flasehoods," he told CNN.

Melissa Zimdars points out that even those who spend a lot of time online aren't immune to fake content.

"People think this (thinking) applies only for older people," she told CNN. "I think even early education should be teaching about communication, media and the internet. Growing up with the internet doesn't necessarily mean you're internet savvy."

For starters, here are 10 questions you should ask if something looks fake:

1. Does the story come from a strange URL?

Zimdars says sites with strange suffixes like ".co" or ".su," or that are hosted by third party platforms like WordPress should raise a red flag. Some fake sites, like National Report, have legitimate-sounding, if not overly general names that can easily trick people on social sites. For instance, several fake reports from abcnews.com.co have gone viral before being debunked, including a June article that claimed President Obama signed an order banning assault weapon sales.

2. Does the headline match the information in the article?

Mantzarlis says one of the biggest reasons bogus news spreads on Facebook is because people get sucked in by a headline and don't bother to click through.

Just this week, several dubious organizations circulated a story about Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi. "Pepsi STOCK Plummets After CEO Tells Trump Supporters to 'Take Their Business Elsewhere'," trumpeted one such headline.

However, the articles themselves didn't contain that quote nor evidence that Pepsi's stock saw a significant drop (it didn't). Nooyi did make recorded comments about Trump's election, but was never quoted telling his supporters to "take their business elsewhere."

3. Is it a recent story, or an old one that has been re-purposed?

Sometimes legitimate news stories can be twisted and resurrected years after the fact to create a false conflation of events. Mantzarlis recalls an erroneous story that actually cited a legitimate piece of news from CNNMoney.

A blog called Viral Liberty recently reported that Ford had moved production of some of their trucks from Mexico to Ohio because of Donald Trump's election win. The story quickly caught fire online -- after all, it seemed like a great win for the domestic auto industry.

It turns out, Ford did move some manufacturing from Mexico to Ohio -- in 2015. It had nothing to do with the election results at all.

4. Are the supporting videos or photos verifiable?

Photos and videos can also be taken out of context to support a false claim. In April, the liberal site Occupy Democrats posted a video that purportedly showed a young woman getting removed from a bathroom by police for not looking feminine enough. This was during the height of the HB2 "bathroom bill" controversy, and the article clearly linked the two. "IT BEGINS," read the headline.

However, there was no date on the video or evidence that it was shot in North Carolina, where the "bathroom bill" was to be passed.

In fact, according to Snopes, the same video was published to a Facebook page in 2015, meaning it predated the HB2 controversy.

5. Does the article cite primary sources?

It's not just political news that can be bogus. Now8News is one of the most infamous fake-but-looks-real site, specializing in the kind of weird news stories that often go viral.

One such article claims Coca-Cola recalled Dasani water bottles after a "clear parasite" was found in the water. There was even an accompanying gross-out picture that allegedly showed the parasite, though some basic Googling reveals it is most likely a photo of a young eel.

Regardless, the article had no statement or claim from any company. Clearly this would be a big story. Dasani or any number of consumer advocacy groups would publish statements or news releases about it, right? There are none to be found -- because the story is 100% fake.

6. Does the story feature quotes, and are they traceable?

A favorite meme of Liberal Facebook groups features a fake quote from Donald Trump that is allegedly from a People Magazine interview in 1998:

"If I were to run, I'd run as a Republican. They're the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they'd still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific."

This one is easily debunked if you take even a moment to think about it: People.com has extensive archives, and this quote is nowhere to be found in them.

7. Is it the only outlet reporting the story?

During this election season, Pope Francis was roped into three super viral, and completely false, stories. According to various (fake) websites, the Pope endorsed three US Presidential candidates: First, Bernie Sanders, as "reported" by National Report and USAToday.com.co. Then, Donald Trump, as "reported" by fake news site WTOE 5 News. Finally, another fake news site KYPO6.com reported he had endorsed Hillary Clinton!

In all of these instances, subsequent reports all circled back to the fake ones. It's always good to trace a story back to the original source, and if you find yourself in a loop -- or if they all lead back to the same dubious site -- you have reason to doubt.

8. Is your own bias getting in the way?

Both Zimdars and Mantzarlis say confirmation bias is a big reason fake news speads like it does. Some of that is built into Facebook's algorithm -- the more you like or interact with a certain interest, the more Facebook will show you related to that interest.

Similarly, if you hate Donald Trump, you are more likely to think negative stories about Donald Trump are true, even if there is no evidence.

"We seek out information that already fits with our established beliefs," says Zimdars. "If we come into contact with information we don't agree with, it still may reaffirm us because we will attempt to find faults."

So if you find an outrageous article that feels "too good to be true," use caution: It just might be.

9. Has it been debunked by a reputable fact-checking organization?

Did you know there is actually an International Fact-Checking Network (which Mantzarlis leads)? And that it has a code of principles? The code includes the ideals of nonpartisanship and transparency, among others. Sites like FactCheck.org, Snopes and Politifact abide by this code, so if you see a debunking there, you know you're getting the real deal.

10. Is the host on a list of unreliable news websites?

This is where things can get tricky. There's obviously a big difference between "misleading" news, which is usually based in fact, and "fake" news, which is just fiction disguised as fact. Zimdars' now-famous list covers both kinds, as well as satire and sites that capitalize on clickbait-type headlines. Snopes also maintains a list.

While Zimdars is glad her list has gotten so much attention, she also cautions that completely writng off some of the sites as "fake" is not accurate. "I want to make sure this list doesn't do a great disservice to the ultimate goal," she says. "It's interesting that some of the headlines [about my list] are just as hyperbolic as the ones I am analyzing."