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#KoT: The 43rd Kenyan Tribe
You have to give credit where it is due and judging from the
famous hash tag #KoT (Kenyans on twitter) the talk here reeks of world class humor
that you only get when you have a congregation of creative minds. I often
wonder why we don’t have any outstanding sitcoms in Kenya yet the content
provided on twitter is befitting. From chicken sagas to marriage bill debates
the Kenyan discussions on twitter are varied as they are lively. We are going
to start by a brief history and intro to the twitterverse of Kenya’s so as to
get to the gist of our weekly review of KoT’s.
Kenya tweetstory: brief history of Kenya on twitter
With such creative and witty wordsmiths you only need to
visit twitter to get your daily fix of humor and keep yourself updated on what’s
going on in the Kenyan social scene. There is immense passion that is shown on
social issues equaled by great venom dished out in response to
topics/people/countries that KoT’s, as they are collectively called, feel
aggrieved by.
Kenya has had 1 war since independence, the recent incursion
into Somalia by Kenya Defence Forces, but twitter has seen several wars erupt
against aggressors most notably the Kenya VS Nigeria tweef (fights/wars on
twitter). Fought for weeks, the tweef that used hash tags #someonetellnigeria
#someonetellKenya generated a lot of buzz and rib cracking jokes at members of
the two countries that in the end brought people together rather than divided
showing the immense power of social media. Even twitter recognized KoT’s power
and has special hashtags dedicated to them, namely
Trolling: those ugly tweets
There is never good without the existence of evil (let’s
call it bad for the conservative readers) .Due to the anonymity of social media
you can’t help but have your fair share of saboteurs, haters and trouble makers
collectively known as trolls. These are the people who will provoke others by
using negative language, crude jokes and all forms of bullying. Yeah, twitter
is more like the real world hence not a good place for escapists. Funny enough,
many twitter users may have trolled (the act of writing provoking messages on
social media) at one time or the other.
Enough of the back-story, we delve into the hot topics over the past week
Ø
Starting us of is the controversial #MarriageBill debate that spun of other
tags like #marriagebillya mahustler
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The Nyeri chicken saga had so many variants that
just searching for the words kuku
and nyerimen provided a list of comedy
fodder that left you in stitches. FYI this one trended worldwide, quite an accomplishment.
Ø
Showing that we are still colonized the royal
baby had its say with Kate Middleton
strongly on the Kenyan trend list
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It’s always there due to corporates who
discovered the power of twitter as a customer service tool; #kindlyDM is a daily if not weekly
guest on the Kenyan trend list.
