“Look I’ve something important to tell you. It’s top secret.”
Another guy with top-secret info! These days there are so many claiming to know something ‘top secret’ you could not help wondering if there is some top-secret factory you haven’t heard about. I mean the volume of the supposedly top-secret info is so much that there must be some 24/7 factory churning them out!
“I’ve some important thing to tell you. It’s top secret.” Oh not again! I mean with almost every other guy coming to you with top-secret you crave for some ‘normal’ news.
“I’m listening.”
“But give me your word you wouldn’t tell anyone else about it.”
Now such a request could be frustrating. Already he’s thinking you might go and tell it to the twenty-thousand plus residents in your village! It’s funny about these people asking you to give your word that you’d not “tell it to anybody else!” If they feel so uneasy why the hell should they tell you anything in the first place? By the little twist here is that they themselves have probably been told by someone “not to tell it to anyone else!” Aha; now this is a real story. Aren’t the ones telling you what they call secrets and asking you to keep quiet about it spilling the beans all over the place? Someone down the line must have told them to keep quiet about it. And look who’s talking!
“Look, if you want to tell me something, do it or else can we change the subject?”
“I’ll tell you. By the way I heard it from…”
“Hey, I don’t care from whom you heard it! It doesn’t matter.”
“But it matters. I want you to know that I didn’t pick it up from just anywhere. I heard it from a reliable person.”
In the process the guy’s giving away the very person who spilled the –top secret’ to him! How can such a person be reliable? Any way he mentions a name and you’re not surprised; Not because you know much about the other guy, but because it has been sometime since you stopped being surprised about anything or anybody! So what was the ‘top-secret?’
“So and so and his wife are divorcing.”
What! That is his top-secret? Something so shockingly trivial! That’s the reason he has been going in circles for the last forty-five minutes or so! And you, the innocent party in the whole process, thought the guy was going probably to tell you there has been new evidence the end for the world as we know it has arrived. That’s almost every other guy telling us these days, isn’t it? “All the signs are here. Judgment Day is upon us!”
On this issue of Judgment Day descending on us quite a number of guys, especially those with YouTube channels, seem to be making real money out of it. The number of views and likes of some of the channels is so much that you wonder, “Are we really that worried about Judgment Day?” Of course, it might only be just a natural instinct. But then what really throws you off the tracks is how easy it is to hoodwink people these days. It has been a couple of years since some YouTube channel warned you the eleventh hour way only a couple of months down the road and you still follow it! Something must be very wrong here. Or is it deep inside us we’re craving to hear such Armageddon narratives?
There is this friend of ours who always tells us what this or that YouTube site said about the end of the world. Not that he’s uninformed; he is a well-educated guy whom you expect to be a well-informed and, most importantly, rational fellow. So hearing him telling you the most bizarre stories of how the world was about to end you wonder how people less-informed could react. I mean his stories many times sound like scenes out of some Harry Potter or Lord of the Ring films.
“Look Guys I want to tell you a big secret.”
“About what?”
“About how the world is going to end; it was on one YouTube Channel.”
Well, that must be a hell of a story if only the guy made a minor point clear. How in the world could it be a secret when it is already on YouTube? It is funny the number of YouTube sites and Facebook pages telling you what they were posting was some secret!
So, this chap tells us ‘the secret.’ Too crude to quote!
Does he expect us to believe that? Yes, he does. His very sorry reasoning is that if the ‘information’ is on YouTube then it must be a done fact. What! This coming from someone you expected reasonable? Unfortunately, many of us are being led up the garden path by social media postings which have nothing to do with facts. Many of our disagreements come from being fed the wrong information and accepting them with every comma and semicolon included.
I sometimes think just for the sake of it we might just let go of those trivial, bizarre ‘top secrets’ and give time for real issues.
The Ethiopian Herald June 19/2022