The chaos of unfiltered information
There was a time when information had order, when it moved with purpose. The media curated not just what we consumed, but when and how we consumed it. Mondays were for business, for the economy, for shaping dreams in boardrooms and classrooms. Tuesdays unpacked society, law, governance. By midweek, we eased into culture: family, education, […]
There was a time when information had order, when it moved with purpose. The media curated not just what we consumed, but when and how we consumed it. Mondays were for business, for the economy, for shaping dreams in boardrooms and classrooms. Tuesdays unpacked society, law, governance. By midweek, we eased into culture: family, education, values. Thursdays flirted with lifestyle: food, travel, real estate. Fridays were a prelude to weekend joy. Saturdays offered long reads. Reflections, essays, slow-burning ideas. And Sundays? Sundays were sacred. A family huddled around the paper like it was scripture. Dad buried in Newswatch, mom flipping through Lifestyle and Hints, the children with wide eyes glued to Ebony and Essence, learning about high fashion and high ideals. There was rhythm. There was order.
Then, the dam broke.
Now, the floodwaters of information drown us daily. Monday morning opens not with macroeconomic trends but with trending sex toy reviews. By Tuesday, the national conversation is hijacked by a faceless gossip blog, “gist lover,” that peddles scandal as national therapy. Wednesday arrives with TikTok spirituality, a self-proclaimed healer telling us sea salt can cure generational curses, complete with background music and ring light. Gym instructors have become life coaches. Failed actors are suddenly financial gurus. Science is no longer a lighthouse. It’s a megaphone for rent.
Real experts, the ones who spent years studying, testing, verifying, have been shoved aside or corrupted. Some now lend their once-credible voices to peddle sweet poison: pesticides as harmless, sugar as natural, fat as good energy. They toss scientific terms like confetti, hoping we’re too dazzled to ask questions. And sadly, they’re right.
We live in an era where COVID-19, a global tragedy that redefined life, is now spoken of like a hoax, a marketing scam. The vaccine, once our collective hope, is now slandered as the ultimate regret. Trust in expertise has collapsed, replaced by digital superstition. And in the vacuum of structured gatekeeping, madness reigns.
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Social media, our new oracle, has no filters, no pause button. TikTok is a marketplace of madness where viral takes outrun verified facts. X (formerly Twitter) is a digital war zone, brilliant in bursts but mostly drowning in abuse and empty noise. Instagram is a theatre of perfection, performed by people falling apart behind the curtain. And YouTube? A rabbit hole of contradictions. Watch two videos on the same subject and emerge unsure whether to eat eggs or fear them, drink water or avoid it, trust bread or run from it.
More access should mean more wisdom. Instead, we are more confused than ever. Conspiracy theories thrive. Flat-Earth debates, yes, in 2025, continue. History is rejected because a YouTuber said the pyramids were Wi-Fi routers. Fiction is trending. Facts are struggling for relevance.
What’s more terrifying is how this chaos hits Africa. In the West, misinformation is an inconvenience. Here, it is a death sentence. A farmer misinformed about fertilizer risks losing his livelihood. A mother believing herbs over medicine risks her child’s life. Knowledge is not a luxury here. It’s a survival tool. And yet, we absorb imported ignorance as gospel. An African contractor builds winding roads on flat land because a foreign visitor once claimed that straight roads make people sleepy. Engineering be damned, the white man said so.
Garbage in, garbage out. We are not just uninformed. We are being actively disinformed. And behind the confusion lies something more sinister: control. Somewhere, someone is watching the data trails we leave behind. Watching what goes viral, what triggers us, what keeps us distracted. We think we’re free because the floodgates are open. But the leash is digital, and most don’t even feel the tug.
The food industry is a case study in this manipulation. Yesterday, fat was the enemy. Today, it’s ancestral fuel. Beans, the humble protein of our childhood, are rebranded as high-carb villains. Nutritionists dance to the tune of trends, not science. Eggs, once deadly, now miraculous. Milk, loved, then feared, now essential again. We are being gaslighted at scale.
Even journalism, our last hope for clarity, has faltered. A podcaster lands an exclusive with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie but shows up empty-handed, having never read Purple Hibiscus or Dear Ijeawele. Questions are shallow. Insight is absent. Journalism has morphed into entertainment, click bait, fluff.
This isn’t a lament from a technophobe or a bitter observer. It’s a call to consciousness. In tearing down the gatekeepers, we forgot the value of the gate. Now we wander through the rubble, unable to tell who’s an expert and who’s a clown in a lab coat.
But the story needn’t end here.
We must reclaim clarity. Demand it. We must sharpen our minds again, read beyond the headlines, ask uncomfortable questions, challenge loud voices with calm, informed ones. We must resist the urge to repost before verifying. And above all, we must teach the next generation that not everything viral is valid.
Because in this age of unfiltered noise, the ability to think critically, truly, deeply, independently, may be the last superpower left.
Shaakaa works at University of Agriculture, Makurdi