I was scrolling over Instagram the other day and I came across a picture which was a screenshot of one of Kanye West’s tweet. I don’t remember what it said word for word, but what he was saying was that he will need to have a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg and other social media owners to remove the ‘Number of followers’ and ‘Number of likes’ features across their platforms.

And as you can imagine, you should see the number of retweets and likes on the tweet, and thinking about it, you could tell that the likes and retweets weren’t merely because it was a Kanye tweet, but more of the support and affirmation to the content of the tweet.

I wouldn’t even lie, my first reaction was ‘this is so funny’, and then I took some time to read the replies on the tweets and got to see things from other people’s perspective but still maintain my stance that I really don’t think it is that serious.

Our generation fights more internal battles than external battles, if we compare it with the generation of our parents, and i’ll tell you why I think it is this way. Our parents generation was a less talk, more work generation, it was call and respond, and being asked to jump, they asked ‘how high?’, our generation is plenty talk, less work, more of ‘come around lets discuss and come to a conclusion’ and when asked to jump, we ask why? or request to walk or run instead.

So really, our generation thinks a lot more than we do which explains the incessant internal battles, while our parents were more of ‘obedient’ even to some levels of vacuousness.

Is either better? I doubt. I think they’re 2 extremes. So, balance is always a major key.

Now, I generally think that some of the internal battles of our generation is strongly tied to how liberal and tolerant we’ve become to things which to an extent is a really good thing, but as all other things in life, also has it’s cons.

As I read through the replies and retweets of Kanye’s tweet, all I could decipher was ‘INSECURITIES!’.

The problem was not that the number of likes or followers affected us, it was that we weren’t comfortable knowing that someone had more likes or followers than we did, and that people decided on whether or not to follow you based on the number of likes and followers you had. (by the way, I find people who have Instagram accounts without pictures really creepy, and that’s usually a first reason for not following back).

I’m not entirely sure where insecurities come from, and I honestly can’t tell you a remedy except to find your worth, value and security in God, but what I know, is that insecurities are killers of people, dreams, relationships and peace.

I also have a problem with using a problem as a solution to another problem, wouldn’t it be more sensible to develop 2 solutions for the 2 problems? In this case, fighting our insecurities by rallying around to get social media to remove the number of followers and number of likes features?

Here’s the fact of this matter (notice I didn’t say Truth, reason being that facts change and are subjective, but Truth!, Truth is Truth), the fact is that removal of these features will not make you or anyone feel any better or more secure about themselves or their pages.

As it is an internal problem, it is also an internal solution, something you need to fight and overcome within you and not source external factors to solve for you.

I really got Kanye’s drift, don’t get me wrong, but looking holistically at it, it won’t be solving any problems or making anything easier, so even from a developers point of view, such an update or change would not even be considered, as they don’t see how it will make the app more beneficial, except if they value customer opinion over benefits of their application (which again, is the generation we’re in).

Insecurities are rooted in more ugly issues like jealousy, pride, fear, lack of authenticity etc. And these are issues that each individual needs to address for themselves, as individuals, and not one for Kanye to use his status to address.

The Number of followers or Number of likes, do not define you or give you any value. Although it is amazingggg to have a huge follower-ship and likes on your pictures and videos, but once you start to equate your value or person to the number of followers or likes, there begins to be a problem. Lets teach Self love in spite of the environment and not in comparison to the environment.

This life is too short, too interesting and just too amazing to be bothered about things that affect just a fraction of our existence.

In conclusion, LOVE GOD, LOVE YOU. To borrow from one of my favourite persons, Lobatan.