St0ne retweetledi
People like this Paystack co-founder, Ezra Olubi, are inventions of a pop-culture socialisation that suggests you cannot be a genius unless you are unconventional or deviate from established patterns of behaviour. This Hollywood-inspired mythologising of talent has shaped an unfortunate image of those who rise above the ordinary. Yet one can be a genius and still dress conventionally, a genius and subscribe to mainstream beliefs, a genius and uphold common values, a genius and remain mentally stable, a genius and have a conventional sexual orientation, a genius and maintain the grooming and hygiene of an everyday person. We must stop fetishising people of high intellect and rare skill.
The second danger we have enabled is the delusion that one can be anything simply by declaring it. This has encouraged all manner of misfits, from paedophiles to zoophiles, to parade their behavioural flaws as evidence of exceptional intelligence, ability or sense. These performative distortions are what we now celebrate, and a legion of gullible admirers eagerly applaud them.
This warped script is exactly why you have someone like Ezra becoming so self-absorbed that he refers to himself as a “god”, with a cluster of women, either battling low self-esteem or seeking favourable proximity, calling him so. But then again, what sort of god rushes to deactivate his social media accounts for fear of outrage and accountability?
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