Betty Bayo and death of privacy

“Thank God I’m facing this on Facebook,” she told me on Friday. “Jesus faced it one-on-one.” Betty is married to ‘Prophet Dr’ Victor Kanyari, most famous for healing miracles of dubious standing, according to at least two different prime-time TV investigations.

Long before Betty made her way to #TheTrend for her televised non-confession, everybody on the Internet and their boyfriend’s sister was already talking about her.

In an era of collective judgment stretched to its worst extreme, Bayogate couldn’t have been better timed. If a pastor is accused of being anything less than upright and of running a con seed-for-healing enterprise, you must naturally go after his wife.

So the echo chamber of the traditional and social media jumped on the poor singer, taking apart her lifestyle, music and everything in between.

As is customary, few in the commentariat let facts get in the way of a good story. In a country where talk is increasingly an industry in itself, a coherent narrative failed to form even after days of overdo and the details remained fuzzy.

TELL-ALL

So when she finally talked about her relationship with the man now appropriately named Profit Kanyari, people expected a tell-all with sufficient salacious snippets to last an entire week’s cycle. It wasn’t to be, leaving disappointed viewers left to conclude that she had been coached or had been an accomplice to the avarice all along.

Human beings come pre-installed with an insatiable curiosity, especially for odd, intimate or embarrassing aspects of others’ lives. In my village, market women spend as much time gossiping about passers-by, their family trees and any rich uncles as they do selling their wares.

The men at dowry payment ceremonies and drinking dens spend just an inordinately large amount of time also gossiping, only they call it something more serious-sounding.

In the Internet age, you no longer need to meet over a pot of busaa or bag of sukuma wiki to gossip. Social media is a marketplace that’s always on, and everybody can speak at the same time.

You can quickly summarise that Betty knew about Kanyari’s shenanigans but chose to remain because of the money, then broadcast that opinion to every end of the earth instantly.

The speed and global reach of the Internet allows you to decide, without any strong justification, that an actress who leaves behind a five-month-old baby to enter a reality TV show is an irresponsible mother. Or that a public figure who is no longer wearing a wedding ring has uncoupled with their spouse.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE

Why should we care about these things? Why is there an urgent need to opine on such private aspects of people’s lives? My guess is that it is because the Internet has killed privacy as we knew it.

We are now nosier as a society than we ever were and we demand constant gratification with as much useless trivia as possible. It doesn’t do much for the body of knowledge available to the world, but this information provides temporary escape from everyday life.

Nobody minds their business anymore because they’re so busy engrossed in other people’s business. The fact that the Betty Bayo interview was a television event akin to a General Election says a lot about our society.

Reality TV shows like "Tujuane" exist purely because of this strange phenomenon. Keep in mind that a whole family of talentless, vain people have become global superstars, thanks to their E! channel show "Keeping Up with the Kardashians".

TV executives talk about the second screen — viewers using their gadgets to comment on what they’re watching on the traditional TV — as the future of media consumption.

I’m often told it is most entertaining to "watch" #TheTrend on Twitter, with everybody trying to outdo the other with their snark or humour. Apparently, the urge for communal gossip is too strong to overcome for most people.

Nantondo, from Barbara Kimenye’s outstanding short story "The Bewitching of Damieno", would be scandalised in this Internet age. She needed a sizeable audience and heightened anticipation before delivering the village gossip.

Now, everyone has their own perspective on the dirty details and have a captive audience ready on their palms. No wonder Betty Bayo is weary of trial by Facebook.

Madowo is the technology editor at NTV. Send your feedback to him on [email protected]