Popular brand influencer and actress Oluwabukunmi Adeaga-Ilori, better known as Kiekie, warned on Tuesday about the rise of ‘destructive online criticism’ motivated by clout and money. She said this trend is harming Nigeria’s creative industry.
At the QEDNG Creative Powerhouse Summit in Lagos, Kiekie said social media has become a big challenge for creatives. Unlike other professionals, she explained, people in creative fields face constant public scrutiny and criticism.
Kiekie agreed that criticism is important, but she stressed that it should always be 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.
She, however, expressed concern over the growing number of content creators who deliberately disparage creative projects 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,” Kiekie said.
According to her, such comments could reach investors and make them lose confidence in creative projects, thereby affecting the industry.
“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 said she is a professional fashion designer, urged members of the public to be more responsible in their criticism of creative works.
“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 one of the panellists at the summit, which focused on the theme ‘What Creatives Need From Nigeria’.