Popular actress and brand influencer, Oluwabukunmi Adeaga-Ilori, better known as Kiekie, has raised concerns over the growing use of social media criticism for clout and financial gain, warning that the trend could undermine Nigeria’s creative industry.
Kiekie spoke on Tuesday at the QEDNG Creative Powerhouse Summit in Lagos, where she identified social media as one of the emerging challenges facing creatives.
According to her, creatives operate under unusual pressure because their work is constantly placed before the public for scrutiny, unlike professionals in many other sectors who are primarily accountable to their employers or colleagues.
“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.
While acknowledging that criticism can help creatives identify areas that require improvement, Kiekie said the increasing financial incentives attached to online engagement were encouraging some people to deliberately run down creative projects.
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The actress said some content creators now make negative remarks about films and other creative works primarily to attract reactions, views and income 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,” Kiekie said.
She explained that such negative commentary could have consequences beyond social media, particularly when investors come across posts that portray creative projects as failures.
“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,” she stated.
Kiekie, who identified herself as a professional fashion designer, appealed to audiences and critics to approach creative works with greater responsibility.
“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.
The actress and content creator was among the panellists at the summit, held under the theme, ‘What Creatives Need From Nigeria’.