A few times in the past I wanted to know what people say about me and do the Google search. There are images of my work with other references from this blog, etc. Now I think this blog has been a part culprit of putting me out there. Here is how about 10 years ago I read about tips for making one’s blog more relevant in online searches, and thus, driving more traffic. One-first lesson is to use hashtags well. The other point is to try to mention famous people and important ideas so that your blog about bathing your dog in the garden comes up when people are searching for reviews on the latest BMW. That kind of stuff could happen because I mentioned the neighbor’s BMW car parked beside the lawn of my house in the article when trying to give my story some scene props! Now I shared what one strategy of getting famous through disjointed storytelling. The flip side is when your product or whatever you were advertising (that caused you to start blogging in the first place) gets wrongfully associated with others. A few minutes ago, a friend sent me a website called Ranker- www.ranker.com. The particular webpage ranked famous artists from Nigeria. They mentioned some great names- Aina Onabolu, Demas Nwoko, Yusuf Grillo, Twins Seven Seven, Chike Aniakor, Obiora Udechukwu, and Felix Idubor, etc. Hey, I jumped to the good side. Right before the list is an intro that includes Keziah Jones as a famous Nigerian artist (fine artist)! I don’t know how or where these writers get their information from. No, I know Google is everybody’s friend! A quote from the introductory lines on Famous Artists of Nigeria gets specific ‘if you are a fine art lover use this list of celebrated Nigerian artists to discover some new paintings that you will enjoy.’ Ok, it just keeps getting worse. Which moron mentions Aina Onabolu with new paintings in the 21st century? Well, we are all bloggers. When one reads the post and images of artworks of the famous artists, the writer of the post on ranker.com commit a worse offense the works of other artists get wrongly linked with the images of the famous artists. Two of my paintings are posted on that page. One is ascribed to Obiora Udechukwu and the other to Chike Aniakor. I usually mention Obiora Udechukwu who is a mentor and my professor at Nsukka in some blog posts. Also, I must have written about Chike Aniakor, who was my professor also at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Ben Enwonwu’s painted is given to Aina Onabolu while Obiora Udechukwu’s painting appears twice as Ada Udechukwu’s and Tayo Adenaike’s works concurrently. Would have been cool to make the list of famous artists, but unfortunately, only images of my work are stolen. Then the authorship is given to others. The second image is part of a poster I designed for my 2013 solo exhibition Autobiographies and Beatitudes, which held at the Pan Atlantic University. The painting is titled The Mourners from The Blessed series, culled from Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. The work was inspired by a period of mourning. I had lost my mother a few months ago and still could not live with the loss. So Google’s search algorithms bring up images of my works when you type Obiora Udechukwu images. That’s how these things happen. Google can help show off how shallow some writers are. Or just lead you to enjoy great writing and stories behind the images. And a lazy journalist looking for cheap fame just downloads the image instead of visiting the site, adds up some stats from Wikipedia, and quickly posts. Sadly, the webpage shows the number of times people have viewed this misguided article a whopping 87.4 times, as at the time of writing this article. Maybe I should appropriate stuff for my blog and get up to a thousand views for one of my articles for a start. Maybe I should get famous for lying. The victims of such lies are everywhere. The one that got famous that way soon becomes a god with clay feet.
The image of The Mourners used in the Ranker.com article-https://nsoforanthony.wordpress.com/2017/08/17/my-dream-show-autobiography-and-beatitudes/ ;
Comments