Wole Soyinka has opinions about social media
The novelist and Nobel Prize winner on why he avoids social media entirely, saying he doesn’t tweet, blog, or engage with what he calls today’s increasingly promiscuous digital platforms.
Wole Soyinka giving remarks in Accra, 2014. Image credit Paul Kagame via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
The Nobel laureate—despite granting interviews to blogs and having work published on sites like Sahara Reporters—fundamentally despises all forms of social media, as he tells the Nigerian diaspora website, Sahara Reporters:
“… Let me take this opportunity to announce yet again that I do not tweet, blog or whatever goes on in this increasingly promiscuous medium. I do not run a Facebook, even though I am aware that one or two serious-minded individuals/groups have instituted some such forum on their own, for the purpose of disseminating factual information on my activities. I neither contribute to, nor comment on the contents of their calendar … To speak generally, Internet abuse is getting to be a universal plague, one that goes beyond personal embarrassment and umbrage. I strongly recommend collective, professional action to protect the integrity of the medium, and save it from becoming a mere vomitorium for unprincipled scallywags with, or even with no particular axe to grind.”
