By Akin Olaniyan
There is no way we can know everything but at least, when it comes to social media, we know that the most harmful lies are disguised in slick but poisonous bottles of certainty – pushed by smiling charlatans pretending to be specialists. You see them mostly in dumbed-down videos with every inconvenient nuance edited out, just for one purpose – hitting maximum engagement. Take a bow, Aproko Doctor (Egemba Chinonso Fidelis), the country’s ‘sweet-talking’ medical micro-influencer, whose social media videos on TikTok and YouTube offer controversial advice in dangerously-funny ways that are designed to entrap his foolish followers. His latest ‘sermon’ on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is by far the best example of what you get when we allow questionable people remix medical advice for the attention economy.
Aproko Doctor’s social media content are obviously not just created to inform but also to perform by remixing complex science into bite-sized videos designed to sacrifice complexity and empirical rigour for entertainment and virality. The 14:11-video delivers its cleverly disguised message like a badly-prepared fast-food, and while pretending to be an attempt to present a balanced view, goes on to perform the oldest trick in the media business: rehashing dubious corporate-backed science as unbiased truth.
As amusing as this might be, the arguments rendered in the usual dramatised format he favours attempts to pass off dubious claims as expertise and that is where I think we should help his unsuspecting followers make sense of the danger he actually represents. For example, when he attempts to suggest that GMOs have been around for so long that they, therefore, are safe for human consumption, he is suggesting that once government agencies like the United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) speak, their voice should be the last word on any issue. Well, it is difficult to accept that the same government agency that approved opioids, should be the final authority when it comes to issues concerning what people eat. Also dubious is his suggestion that GMOs will help address food insecurity by improving yield, because corporations like Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, which have been leading the lobby for adoption of GMO seeds have been raking in billions in profit as global hunger worsens. His suggestion that opposition to GMOs amount to scaremongering has to be the height of illogical reasoning because he completely ignores the scientific basis on which some of the European countries have imposed bans. Instead, a man who claims to have studied medicine and therefore should have some respect for scientific evidence, appears to suggest that if you oppose the questionable, capitalist agenda behind GMO, then you must be superstitious peasant.
In doing so, he completely misses the point that where the bottom line is concerned, corporations have been wrong before and can be wrong again. Of course, in an attempt to earn – either through sponsorship or content monetisation – he unwittingly passes off “trust the science funded by the agribusiness lobby” for “trust the science.” In this, his followers deserve our sympathy, for they lack the discerning mind to see through his duplicity. I agree, the GMO video, like his other pieces of content, is a persuasive performance, perfectly fitting the specifications for the bite-sized content that platforms will push, and which helps to maintain high engagements. However, like all performances – especially in Nollywood – the story line lacks the finesse to match the fine editing and, therefore, exposes the absence of rigour.
The digital space where the likes of Aproko Doctor operate is established on one well-drilled model: whatever you do, get traffic to your content because engagement is the currency. This growing space, we now know, rewards content creators like him who have mastered how to prioritise watch time, likes and shares over accuracy or nuance. Let’s be honest, in this space, a bite-sized video presented in Aproko Doctor’s usual dumbed-down style declaring “GMOs are safe!” will trump a boring but balanced discussion of risks because it is the way the ecosystem is designed to work. If this content of the GMO video suggest that we should go and verify his claim to being a trained doctor, at least we can all agree that he is smart enough to spice up his videos to improve engagement and monetisation. That a man is willing to sacrifice accuracy and his own reputation in desperation for engagement is, however, something difficult to understand. True, platform owners understand the game and are complicit in the distortions presented as authentic content such as the one in the GMO video. The ecosystem that reward such controversial content inadvertently creates a frightening environment where dumbed-down is not just the exception but the model for success.
The video claims the views expressed are those of the producer but when a so-called specialist selectively highlights some watered-down facts while ignoring scientific dissent, we have to suspect agenda setting. Observe that over 7 minutes (or 70% of runtime) is dedicated to push arguments supporting GMOs; just 1:50 minutes (or 17% of runtime) to describing the risks and criticisms; and 1:27 minutes (or 13% of runtime is used to make the case of balance and make up your own mind whether this is anything but an agenda-setting piece of content.
In deliberately framing his argument as settled in favour of GMOs, while ignoring peer-reviewed arguments about the worrying impact on people’s health; Akproko Doctor casts himself as both reporter and framer in this scientific discourse. In his embarrassing marketing of GMOs, he sounds like a man who is desperate to persuade his followers to believe him without sound evidence; in the process oversimplifying complex issues with potentially damaging public health implications.
The more sinister thing about this video is the shady attempt to disguise the blatant conversion of cultural capital into economic gain. So, the man had positioned himself as a specialist who cared for his followers health; with every doctor-in-lab-coat video aimed at building a “trust me, I’m a doctor” reputation. Then, boom, he reveals his true intention: to accumulate enough social credibility for monetisation even if it has to be by fronting questionable causes. Not that it comes as a surprise, media scholars having called attention to the fact that in this new environment of the attention economy, influence is the currency. He proves that for so-called influencers like him, followers and monetisation matter more than facts and credibility.
Social media is still largely unregulated in Nigeria and that is fine for all of us who care about freedom of expression but when medical professionals begin to cross into the unsafe zone of doctoring scientific information for bite-sized videos, we have reasons to be genuinely concerned. The ecosystem that prioritises spectacle and conversion of credibility into clicks; and which have reshaped every aspect of life including Christian worship is attempting to dictate how Nigerians engage with medical information. When livestreamed Pentecostal worship meetings became YouTube’s top-earning content, it confirmed our worst fears that even the Church is not immune to platform logic. With Pentecostal Churches entranced by monetisation, Aproko Doctor’s GMO gospel should be seen as what it is: a crude get-rich-at-all-cost scheme disguised as professional advice. It is baffling that the Medical Council (MDCN) is rather too sluggish, and unwilling to police a sacred space but one in which we are seeing an increasing number of nurses and doctors moonlighting as content creators.
For a start, maybe regulatory oversight should begin with things like mandatory disclaimers on dubious videos, especially where they offer ridiculous and oversimplified medical advice. In case it does not exist already, the MDCN could also consider issuing guidelines to force moonlighting nurses and doctors to cites sources and disclose sponsorship. In the meantime, the public will do well to learn to treat every information from moonlighting medical professionals like Aproko Doctor like my generation did with those who hawked medicines they claimed could cure all ailments in Molues: Either ignore them or listen to them at your own risk.
For here is the issue: The problem is not just that these folks are peddling misinformation, they are symptomatic of the unwitting redesign of how we collectively evaluate truth. When sponsored compromised content creators have a field day setting agenda; when dubious influencers are allowed to dominate serious conversations such as those around public health; when the ecosystem rewards dumbed-down content over verifiable information; and when socio-cultural capital translates is easily converted to cash, we are not dealing with rotten videos but with terrible epistemology.
Think about it and you will realise that the fundamental question is not about whether or not GMOs are safe. Rather, what we are being forced to confront is the more troubling debate about the fate of complex truth in the attention economy that appears to value distortion for as long as they attract likes and shares. Of course, as Aproko Doctor’s clout across social media suggests, it seems the ecosystem has indicated where the bets are likely to be won.
It seems that in this new economy, even if it threatens public good, virality is prized over and above verifiable content – maybe until the day of reckoning. Only that by then, there is a big chance that the cruise-catching content creators and their ignorant followers would have moved on to the next controversy.
