THE TRUTH BEHIND ANONYMOUS MESSAGING

I thought about it for a while. About whether I should also do it or not. Do I really want to know? More like, am I ready to face other people’s opinions? In as much as it kept bugging me, “What you don’t know doesn’t kill you”, I consoled myself as I brushed off the idea. So does that mean I was debating about doing what would eventually kill me? I told myself that maybe I’d get to know something that might kill me, yes, but will make me aware of the reality around me. But what if it eventually acts like a knock out on my face and I fall like a sack never to wake up?

I finally decided not to do it – succumb to peer pressure. Call it quarantine pressure too since it’s something many people have done for what seems to me like the lack of something better to do. Okay, maybe that sounds rude. I’m sorry, but si we are calling a spade a spade and not a big spoon? Anyway, allow me to make my point. This particular thing has been around for quite some time now. I saw it some years back but for some reason, it has recently become the trend. Silly, right? But silly ceases to be silly and starts to be interesting when people are on lockdown in their houses with limited adventure destinations.

What keeps you sane during this time, Mjango? What makes your long, dull days fly past quickly? Some resort to reading, a huge number turns to movies and series, then there are Plezdent Kingstons, legends of all times.

Now the physical destinations are out of bounds and the online and virtual world is nearly all we have. Whatsapp and other social media platforms are having human traffic. People who have not been texting you before are now slowly meddling back to your life. Our attention is spread across online activities making us take interest in things that we would normally not have time for on a cooperate day.

Among those things mjango, is what forms the basis of my blog today. Secret anonymous messaging. Popularly done through Kubool. If you have just woken up since you last slept, before the world’s skirts were blown off by a pandemic, anonymous messaging is an online thingamajig that has been designed to allow people to send you, for instance, messages anonymously. All you need to do is create an account there and share the link and wait to see handwritings on your wall.

Yes I know, people who refrained from doing it are easily tagged as ‘too mature.’ Just because everyone seems to be doing it and they are not. For all I know, I have carried that tag like a mascot’s prop all my life. It’s surprising yet amazing how people want to know what their very own people secrectly think of them. Key word, SECRETLY. Meaning there are things people think about us or even we think of people but for one reason or the other, we just cannot confess it to them.

The catch in this secret anonymous messaging is to unravel the confidential things people would want to say to you. They may be positive or negative but the element is the weight of the information that warrants secrecy. Now the funny part, which is also majorly what we want to look at – is that the truth is ugly. Yea I can repeat that, the truth is ugly. Truth, however, in this case, is subject to what counts as truth to someone and not necessarily a universal fact.

People went on to post screenshots of some of the anonymous messages they received and you bet it was entertainment for our eyes. I would like to post some of them and I will be giving my comments below them. Before that, I have to mention that I extracted these screenshots from places they were posted for the public. My apologies in advance to anyone who may be offended for either seeing here a screenshot they posted or well, even seeing an anonymous message you wrote to someone. I bet the latter would offend the most. Either way, I think we can all use a good laugh in these times.

So here we go.

Let’s break monotony for a minute,

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Anyway to drive the point home. Even I responded to some people’s secret anonymous messages. So you see mjango, we are not so different after all. Even I have things I cannot tell to some people’s faces. Or questions I can never get answers to on a normal day like whether you have ever had a one night stand with my ex. Or even two.

But my decision not to take part in gathering anonymous messages also doesn’t make me any better. It only means that we subscribe to different ideologies. My opinion stands that if something is really worth telling about me, you will juggle up your balls and come and tell me. In the same way, if I really want you to know something, I will come clean with you. It’s only a matter of when perhaps.

Telling or asking someone to their face is your only chance to cast away assumptions in your own mind. In fact, people do appreciate more when you’re honest with them even though some may not really verbally commend it. If the level of your guts only measure up to where you can only say what’s in your heart but anonymously, I think that’s just how much you’re ready to own up to those words as well. That’s to say, you’re not ready. Even I wasn’t ready to really own up to what I wrote in my anonymous messages.

We will be a stress free people if and when we learn to speak our hearts out. Mind you, that’s different from speaking your mind out. Maybe we are just nursing cowardice and timidity within us without knowing. We should be able to to tell someone that they hurt us or effed* up big time or offended us outrightly to their faces. There lies the freedom from the shackles of beefs, unforgiveness and unhealed pain reigning in our hurts and displayed in what we do on a daily basis making this innocent world a very chaotic place.

Sending someone an anonymous message does not necessarily mean that you’re afraid to tell them up-front by the way. It could be that you just want to keep things a little mysterious to add flavour to what you expressed.

Anonymous messaging is also an avenue not only to express feelings, but opinions. They say everyone has got one. The biggest mistake, yet the biggest favour you can ever do to yourself is let in people’s opinions. It will be a mistake when you trigger the opinion of someone who does not wish the best for you. Or someone who thinks shallowly and selfishly. It will be a big win for you when you ask for an opinion from someone you respect socially, intellectually or even religiously. Someone who loves to see you flourish like a flower during spring. When you give the people in your contact list a chance to tell you things anonymously, just like I have observed from my very own friends who took up the challenge – not everyone in your contact list is your friend. (The actual definition of a true friend.) Habari ndio hio! You may regard them as friends but the results of your anonymous messages show otherwise – that you have haters amongst your very own friends and maybe even family. I mean, most people in your contact list are your friends and family right?

I have seen people who have been insulted anonymously. Body shamed especially in ways I do not wish to quote. Katutu, my editor, tells me about her friend who was told, in simple terms, that she is not even pretty. Mind you, this is a real beauty queen who has won several beauty peagants. Now who does that? These people who have mean and hurtful words to hurl at you could even be friends in your inner circle and family or clan members as well. Blood is thicker than water huh? Only when the message is not anonymous!

I bet some people who got malicious responses did not anticipate that people within their circle could say such things about them. You see mjango, there is being honest and then there is being just too much of a douchebag! There are people out here amongst us who will always carry bad intentions in their guts about us, quarantine or not. Clearly, there are people who smile with us and compliment us on a daily basis but deep down, they detest us, so when they get a platform to pull us down and lowe our self esteem, boom! They grab it like a million-dollar super deal.

Fact remains however, that someone who cannot insult you or talk ill of you straight to your face in broad daylight but has to rely on anonymous messaging – is nothing less than a coward! Why don’t you bring it on if you really mean it huh? Why hide behind the shadows? And you my friend, will be the loser here if you allow such rotten opinions to get into your head and water down your esteem. If you’re not strong enough to take in the pile of mud that will be thrown at you through anonymous messaging, then why go ahead and open up yourself to it?

I bet some people’s view of the world and their circle of friends has changed all of a sudden after seeing what has been said to them anonymously. They must have opted to reevaluate the people they call friends and those saved in their contact list.

People are bitter out here mjango. Bitter about nothing in particular. Like wolves that take pride on kill counts so all they do is go on a killing spree. Some want you. No, not in a lovely way but in a lustful way. They drool over you every time your name pops up in their minds. Others don’t like you at all. They just pretend to because they are benefiting from their faked friendship with you. They don’t want to love you, they want to use you.

The truth of the matter, however, may be that some of the messages are true. Maybe you just need to change your character, or put on some cologne, or stop missing lectures… But watch mjango, that you may just be believing a malicious lie. Even those people who have been told that they are loved. Maybe it is nothing more than lust. In my opinion, however, if you hide behind curtains to pull down someone, that says a lot about the type of person that you are. Heal brethren. Heal from what is hurting you so that you don’t hurt others. Sanitize your envious heart you young lady that gets jealous of your friend for achieving what you could not. She has the man you wish you had, so what? Let it go dada! Those mean comments wont bring the man to you sis! Cleanse your dirty thoughts. I’m talking to you brother, you who has sent lustful texts to a beautiful sister with a bright future behind hehe. Kula tu kwa macho polepole. As some would say, vitu zingine si a must. Imagine if kubool decided to reveal names, the chaos! The shame!

When it’s all said and done, it goes without saying, that there are good people amongst your friends. You might not be someone’s cup of tea, but you sure are another’s double shots of vodka! Cheers! Of course, you couldn’t have made all poor decisions on your choice of friends. There is at least one potato that hasn’t rot. So don’t lose faith in people, however much it may seem like we are surrounded by multitudes pointing their middle fingers at us. Open your eyes beyond anonymous messaging and you’ll see that there are people who want the best for you. Probably so much that they will either compliment, correct, ask or even rebuke you straight to your face. Do you know what I call that? Growth! Those are the people who want you to grow into a better version of yourself. And growth is bitter sweet. So suck it up mjango!