The Inbetweeners

Do I seem like the type of person that you can easily walk all over? Like the type of person whose purpose in life is to be used; to be a springboard for others in preparation for bigger and greater things? Do I seem like the type of person unworthy of genuine affection? Be it by my own hand, or an inability to recognise and relate to my brand of humanity? Perhaps I am being a bit, melodramatic reader. Don't you think? What could have led to this harrowing portrayal of sadness you ask? Well, dear friend... good ol' fashion, character-building rejection. See, most people take rejection a lot easier than I ever will or ever could. For me rejection is a mark upon my conscience; it signals to me that I am not wanted and it feeds into my pathological insecurities. Especially when the rejection comes in the wake of emotional vulnerability and honesty, which is a rare colour on me.  Rejection tells me that it's better to be silent than to be vocal about how y...

I've now been home for a week and what I like to do is catch up on the political situation. I don't like doing this when I'm away because most of what I read rarely reflects what the people I know feel about it. In an attempt to appeal to the masses, it is clothed in an awkward neutrality that fails to tap into the humanity of the shared political experience. Also, perhaps rather selfishly, I believe that if I don't see it, it hasn't happened (you are now free to depict me as an infant who has yet to understand object permanence). But, as I watch and read the news, both local and international, I'm aware of the same things I always have been; the preference and, perhaps troublingly, the deference shown by the international news sources and stories, and the condemnation of tribalism in African Politics. Now the former, I've grown used to, but the latter really bugs me. Simply because, it's treated as a uniquely African problem; particularly by t...

Can I just say something for a second, Why are these young ones in such a rush to grow up? I could answer that question for them, but the situation was different for "my generation". Though we were in a rush, we were spared growing up online from a very young age. We were at the genesis of social media, whilst they are living in the era of its popularity. Though the internet will remember some  of my mistakes, it will definitely remember all  of theirs. It is for this reason that the right to be forgotten has been codified in the new General Data Protection Regulation, or why, in the new Green Paper released by the British Government, greater efforts are being made to guarantee the internet safety of young users. But for me, it's not the fact that the internet will always remember, but that for many people, this is okay. Privacy is no longer positive, in that I have to let you in, but negative , in that you are already in and I tell you when,  and where, to stop. W...