‘Stop destructive criticism’ – Content creator Kiekie warns social media critics

Content creator and actress, Oluwabukunmi Adeaga-Ilori popularly known as Kiekie has highlighted an aspect of social media that she warned could hurt the nation’s creative industry in the long run.

According to her, social media criticism has become a two-edged sword, with its destructive side fuelled by the pursuit of clout and money on the ascendancy.

Kiekie stated this at the QEDNG Creative Powerhouse Summit in Lagos.

She explained that criticism can be beneficial as it helps to keep creatives on their toes but maintained that it must be kept constructive.

“That I end my skit with “problem” means there’s a problem. I have a lot of problems that are relatable to other Nigerians. As a creative, I think there’s a new problem building right now, and that problem is social media itself. I have been working on social media for more than 15 years, so I have been a huge fan of social media. But I would say this, and since we have media here, hopefully it gets to a bigger audience.

“Just like bankers, when you go to work, they only report to their portfolio managers. But as creatives, we sort of report to the public, so they get to judge our work, scrutinise it, and critique it, and that’s beautiful because in criticism, in a way, you find the need for improvement,” she said.

The brand influencer explained that “destructive online criticism” should not be encouraged.

She said there is a rise in the number of content creators whose criticism is done solely to disparage the efforts of others so as to generate engagement and earn money from social media platforms.

“The challenge we have nowadays is because we have a few platforms that are paying people just to talk. People now just want to talk, and they are just talking,” she said.

She observed that creative projects could lose critical funding when negative and unfounded criticism gets to the ears of investors, urging critics to be responsible and exercise restraint.

Kiekie said, “When they come and say, ‘Oh, this particular project is minus 10, minus 100,’ that person has said so just because the person wants some form of reaction from the social space. So that particular video or tweet could get about 10 million views, and maybe those 10 million views could get them like two thousand dollars, so they’re able to pay their rent, change their tyres and so on. But what you’re doing is you’re watering down an entire industry.

“Critique, say what you must, but be mindful of how you say it. Because what we do is to entertain doesn’t mean that it doesn’t take blood, sweat and tears from us. So before you critique that, make sure that that critique is genuine and honest, not because you want to gain some form of clout or get some numbers from it just so that you can earn from it,” she added.

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