Obasanjo’s Internet – Foluso Agbaje

Did you know that there are approximately 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide? Can you imagine all the different ways in which we all use the internet? Obasanjo’s Internet is our interview series where we speak to some of our internet favourites on how they relate to the internet and what it means to them and their work. This week, Foluso Agbaje, author of The Parlor Wife talks to us about how she uses Obasanjo’s Internet. 

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?

I know this sounds very cliche for a Nigerian mother but I pray. There’s a prayer YouTube live I join called Rebirth Ministries. It’s changed my life. I’ve been joining the prayer calls for about two years now.

How do you use the internet for work or pleasure?

I would say for both. So I do all of my writing on Google Docs because it’s just so easy not to have to remember to save. Everything is in there with my research. I do most of my research online as well. That’s predominantly what I use the internet for. And then obviously, in the other half of my life, I work full-time in financial services. I mean, lots of my work is on the Internet there as well.

For pleasure, I don’t watch TV that much. Usually, if my husband is watching a show I piggyback off it especially if it’s a show I like, like Industry or Belgravia. But then my husband usually is the one who finds the link. So social media is probably what I use the internet for pleasure or like booking experiences. I would say predominantly I use it for work and my writing. 

What moment or episode in your life would you say captured the essence of the internet?

I would have to say it was the days of Gossip Girl Naija. I don’t know if you’re old enough or young enough to have been part of that era. So Gossip Girl Naija was, I want to say, a rogue Nigerian who just decided to start blogging like Gossip Girl. It was when the actual show was still running. And this was somebody young because they knew what all the young people in school in the UK, what all of us were up to. So Gossip Girl Naija was a blog that would then just post gossip. They’d be like, “Spotted. This person was on Oxford Street with this person. This person failed their exams, this person did that.” I think that moment was for good or for bad one of the first blogs of our generation at the time. It was so traumatic for most people. I remember the power of the internet to either make or break you. 

I know someone who read the news on Gossip Girl Naija one day and then failed her exam the next day. Like that’s how impactful it was. And I realized that, you know, this was still very early days of the internet. We were all still using big computers. There was only Facebook, I don’t think there was Instagram then. So it was just, wow, this thing is quite powerful. I mean, now seeing a gossip blog is nothing. Anybody and their mother can start a gossip blog but then it was this is quite a powerful way to share news, good or bad. I mean, there were some good things shared on Gossip Girl Naija, but mostly bad. But it was the realization that this is something that even our parents have not experienced. It’s not something that they can prepare us for. It’s going to be a lot bigger than any of us could have imagined.

Your favorite social media platform and why?

I want to say Instagram. I was actually off Instagram for probably three years between when ENDSARS happened in 2020 and last year, 2023, because yeah, ENDSARS was so heavy. I felt like the internet really amplified that and I just didn’t want to be reminded of everything we were going through as a nation, as a population. I closed all my social media accounts. I didn’t have Instagram, I didn’t have Twitter and I had nothing for three years. But coming back last year, I feel like Instagram has been the one I’ve enjoyed the most because most of my friends are on there. Every social media platform has things about it that don’t work very well but what I love about Instagram is the fact that you can kind of keep up with your friends’ lives without even reaching out to them. There are friends who I went to school close to 20 years ago that I’ve reconnected with. We had lost touch, we hadn’t spoken to each other and then all of a sudden our Instagram profiles would pop up and then we’d connect and we’re sharing pictures or I can see pictures on their profiles, they can see pictures on my profiles and videos and they’re like, “wow, I didn’t know you did this now, I didn’t know you did that.” And that part to kind of connect people, I think Instagram is quite good with that. Twitter, not so much like you’d have to scroll down someone’s timeline to read all their feelings and, you know, people don’t always tweet the way they share on Instagram and I think Facebook. Facebook, I think is a bit dated. Like I said, when I was younger and the internet was really coming out Facebook was what we used predominantly the way we use Instagram now. And I know Instagram has a negative side, but I think if you kind of ignore that and you don’t tap into the essentially toxic nature of it, it can be a really powerful tool to stay connected to the people that you care about around the world. 

What was the last meme you saved?

Do you remember the first time something you posted went viral? What was it? How did it make you feel?

I remember this because again, I was off social media for so long and this happened shortly after I came back on Twitter. So I had just come back and I was traveling for my friend’s wedding. I was in the queue to board the plane and some other passenger standing beside me, a slightly elderly lady said to me, oh, please can I help her go back into the duty-free area where she wants to eat some snacks. I was like, huh? I tweeted about it. You know, general confusion, standing there being like “This lady just asked me to go back into the duty free area to get some snacks. What in the snacks is going on?” And I don’t know how, but it had probably close to 300 retweets. When I got to the wedding I was going to, people kept saying, oh, “I saw your tweet. I liked your tweet. I reposted your tweet.” I guess it made me realize that sometimes something random happens to you and you think, oh, this is so random and it’s so innocuous, I’ll share it and will probably get one haha and everybody moves on. But it was so bizarre. It showed how some things that you might think, Ok, random, not that big a deal can actually be so bizarre to a lot of people and resonate with people in so many different ways.

So what I found interesting was people were then having their interpretations of it. Like people would quote and say “This is how people do drugs” – drugs did not even come into my mind. “This is how people do drug trafficking.” “This is how they use people for juju.” Different things were coming up and I was like, wow, the power of the internet to just touch people in different ways, that’s how I felt. I mean most of the people retweeting it didn’t know who I was so it was almost like the words had taken on a meaning of their own and it was just spiraling into, you know, different thoughts across different groups of the internet, people in Nigeria, not in Nigeria, people were even quoting in languages I couldn’t read or understand and it just made me think this is beyond me now. It wasn’t even about feeling special because it wasn’t like I tweeted about my book or anything. It was just something random that had happened to me in the airport and it just blew my mind how it could resonate with people in so many different ways.

What’s the most outrage you have ever generated over something you posted? How did you react to it?

I love International Women’s Day and I love the idea of it. In fact, I first heard of it in university when my friend from Kazakhstan was telling me how International Women’s Day is such a big deal in their country and it wasn’t as big globally back then. But she told me about how women would gift other women flowers. I’ve always thought it was such a special day, but what I didn’t like was that at the last International Women’s Day, a lot of women who make life harder for other women were then pretending to be female champions on the day, they’d be like, oh “This is what I do for women” and I just didn’t like how fake it was. So I posted a tweet saying – I don’t remember the exact line. Something about “International Women’s Day is great and all but it’s painful to see some women who make other women’s lives harder at work trying to take it on.” I got so many comments about “This is what I don’t like. Somebody is trying to do something good for women and you’re taking it down” and again, the power of the internet, you never know how what you say can resonate with people because if you have never had a bad work experience at the hands of another woman, it’s hard to see that tweet and think why is this one being so bitter about a happy day? But in the same vein, some people were like, yes, yes, I understand. Again, many retweets, but some of the retweets were “This is what I don’t like, you know, it’s supposed to be a good day. This one is putting a negative spin on it.”

So I think I got the same message even though it was a mixed bag in terms of responses. I got the same message, which is your words almost have more power than you as an individual. Someone can take them out of context and get a completely different message from what you were trying to put out there, what you even understood by what you were writing. So yeah, it didn’t make me feel bad. It just made me feel like … interesting. I can see how if you’ve never had this kind of experience or know anybody who’s had this kind of experience, it can kind of rub you the wrong way.

What rules do you live by on the internet?

So I saw, I think it was Adam Grant – he’s a behavioral psychologist that posts a lot on Twitter, and Instagram and he’s just phenomenal. He does so much research on people’s behavior at work and outside of work. Anyway, I live by these rules that he posted recently and I wish I had saved it but it goes something along the lines of “ Before you post anything on the internet, think about if it says anything positive about how you’re feeling right now. Do you want this to stay? When people look at your page, do you want this?” Is this going to age well essentially? Those weren’t his words, but that’s how I translated it.

Is it going to age well? And is it putting out a message that you want to put out there? So again, going back to viral tweets. In a moment, you feel like why is this random lady talking to me in the airport? But in a few years, I might look at that and be like why did I post that? Why do I want everybody to know that I’m at the airport at this point? So I think the rules I live by, are just being intentional about how I want my posts to age over time. Also, many of us heard this growing up, if you have nothing good to say, then don’t say it. It’s very tempting to just be tweeting tweeting tweeting every time. But if you have nothing positive or educated or helpful to say, then do you need to say it? What is the purpose behind this content that I want to put out? And how is it going to make me or my audience feel in a few years or a few days. When it’s taken out of context, how is it going to age? So I think those are probably the rules I live by. Being intentional about what I say, asking myself whether or not it’s for a purpose that is beyond me. And I guess lastly thinking about how it is going to age on my page and how it reflects on me as a person. 

What is your guiltiest online pleasure?

I think social media. I spend more time there than I want to spend. So like an hour before bed, I try to be off it. I don’t want to be on my phone at all – WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter. And it’s funny how that can sometimes be hard to avoid. The minute I pick up my phone within that hour I find, wow, 30 minutes have gone by and I’ve been mindlessly scrolling, not at anything useful in any way. So I think it’s spending too much time mostly on Instagram because Instagram is so easy to keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. And then the algorithm will recommend a page and before you know it, you’ve moved to that page.

Would you say you have an online persona?

I know a few weeks ago on Twitter people were posting what some AI tool had said about their Twitter pages. I really should have done it then so that I could give you an answer now. The truth is I honestly don’t know. It’s so hard to see yourself the way other people see you. I think it’s easy for me to say, OK, my persona is this, but I don’t know. I tried to keep it light. I mean, I will admit that on my darkest days, I try not to post because I don’t want to negatively influence anybody else. So I don’t know, I think my online persona is light. But right now it has been very book promotion-heavy. So it’s been just about posting about The Parlor Wife. I try to keep it light. I would say maybe light and bubbly but again, it’s very easy to be blindsided and not perceive yourself the way other people are perceiving you. So that’s my humble opinion of what I think my online persona is.

What’s your favourite emoji and why?

My favorite emoji has to be the one that Nigerians have turned into a woman holding her head, but it probably was not intended for that purpose. I overdo it. Someone could say, oh, I just found out that I am traveling next week, I’ll send it. I’m sure it wasn’t intended to be used as “Ye,” but I now use it as “Ye” or like “wow.”

Are you particular about your feed?

Yes, I am very particular about my feed. Like I said, I left social media because of how toxic and traumatic EndSARS was so I am very particular about my feed. I don’t want anything traumatic coming on there. This sounds insane but I don’t watch the news. I don’t read the news. I believe that our ancestors grew up in a time when you couldn’t have access to what multiple people in different countries were doing and their mental health was significantly better because of that. You can’t be completely insulated because some things come up on my feed and I see, but I don’t want to be inundated with negative news and things that are going to make me sad and I can do nothing about. I don’t want that on my feed so I’m very particular about things like that.

You know, Twitter can be toxic. I think that’s probably my least favorite social media tool. People can just say all kinds of crazy things about different topics. and you’re like, why do you even think this way? What happened to you to make you so negative? So I’m very particular about my feed and I don’t like anything that’s going to disturb my peace on there.

YouTube or TikTok? Which do you prefer and why?

This is a tough question. So it depends on my mood. TikTok is good for really funny content. You can go there and just be laughing. My feed on TikTok is curated to just really funny stuff and helpful things like other moms talking about things they’re dealing with. It’s just really funny, really light. I like that about TikTok. What I prefer about YouTube is I can do a lot more with it. So I do my workouts on YouTube, I have a whole workout playlist saved that I can use If I travel anywhere in the world. I have that available to me without the need to go to a gym. I also sing in my church choir so there are some songs I can find on YouTube. I just like the whole idea of it – it’s almost like a Wikipedia for different things. 

TikTok is informational, but it’s not the same way. YouTube has done so much for me. There was a time in my life when took time out of my job to focus on my writing and to get my agent and book deal. As part of that,  just to still get some money, I was teaching English as a foreign language to adults across the world. I learned how to be a teacher by watching videos on YouTube on how to be an English teacher. So I just feel like you can do a little more with YouTube in a way that, you know, TikTok is very short and snappy, very quick. It’s for entertainment purposes. But YouTube is a lot more, you know, educative and useful for me. But this might just be the millennial in me who has not found the corner of TikTok that does all those things.

Which Nigerian creator do you think the world needs to see and hear more of?

I have two. I have one that is, I guess more religious and then one that’s less religious. So the first one I would say is Nathaniel Bassey because he’s just so phenomenal and when you listen to his praise and worship, you are transported into another place entirely. I know there are so many Christians around the world I think would benefit from listening to him.

The second person is Ayra Starr.  I just love watching her. When I was younger I used to be a huge Rihanna fan and I feel like watching, and I still feel like I’m watching … I don’t know she is even more special than Rihanna was in my humble opinion. The confidence that she exudes, the way she’s just got this amazing vibe like you can’t watch her and not be transfixed. She’s honestly amazing. It’s just a personality thing but I think everybody needs to see that. And I love that her career is growing and, you know, she will have the opportunity to be on the global scale, even more than she has done so far. So those would be the two people I would pick.

Who is the coolest person you follow and the coolest person who follows you?

I’d say the coolest person I follow is probably Jola Ayeye of I Said What I Said because everything she posts, I’m laughing. She’s just so funny, but she’s also very real. I know her personally as well. She knows how to make everything seem hilarious. And then I think the coolest person that follows me would be Mayowa. He’s one of those people that just knows so much about everything. In his own quiet way, he just knows a lot of everything pop culture, history, politics, music. So the fact that he chooses to follow me is almost flattering because wow what on earth could I ever be talking about or putting out there that you don’t already know in a bigger capacity? I’d say he’s probably the coolest person that follows me.

What is your favourite Nigerian podcast?

 I’ve got two that I listen to a lot and ironically it’s the two people I just mentioned. So I Said What I Said and Submaroach. Submaroach is just so funny. I don’t think like a man at all so it’s just very funny to hear their opinions. I went to their live show in April and I just had such a good time.

And then I Said What I Said. I write stories about Nigerian characters and I get so much inspiration from them. It’s not like I’m taking the stories but I get so much inspiration from even just listening to the dilemmas and the way different people think. I’m like, wow, this is something that I should do more research on because I didn’t even know people could think like this. I love the guests that come on as well. 

I just realized there’s a third one that I listen to a lot now. On a more personal note, I listen to Mummy Mayhem. It’s relatively new and because I’m a mom we never had, at least not to my knowledge, a Nigerian mum podcast. I listened to so many other international parenting podcasts and the issues that we deal with in Nigeria are just so unique to us as parents. It was something that I had never seen before. When the first season finished, I was like, oh my gosh how has it been 12 episodes already? It felt like three and I’m looking forward to them coming back. So it’s hard to pick but I would say those are the three that I listen to a lot and probably on the same level. Once the episodes come out I listen to them as I’m doing my exercise or driving. I love all three for different reasons

Have you ever hooked up with someone you met online?

That has never happened. Like I said, I am a millennial. Let me not say it’s a millennial thing because it’s not. I think it’s probably more of a personality thing that just wouldn’t be something I would do at all because I’m a very cautious person. So, no, that’s never happened to me before.

5 people you’d love to see answer these questions

Wole Soyinka, Tiwa Savage, SL from Rebirth Ministries, Tinubu, and a domestic worker. 

Read previous Obasanjo’s Internet entries here.