The tweets, and us.

Yes, this is about Simi and the trending tweets.

It’s also about us. Especially us.

I was inside a danfo when I started writing this piece.

Two girls and some guys sitting at the back were discussing it… the tweets, the whole mess. I wasn’t paying attention at first because honestly, it was everywhere.

I was already mentally drafting my newsletter.

But then, amidst the noise from the conductor and the usual danfo chaos, I heard something from one of the girls.

A statement.

“Even though”

I turned. Triggered.

Because I knew where that sentence was going.

And it went there.

“Even though , it’s Simi.”

She said it.

Even though:

The universal disclaimer we use when we’re about to defend something we know is indefensible.

Another girl, clearly annoyed, cut her off.

“If your baby brother, or your child, was in that daycare, will you say what you just said?”

Immediately, she responded.

“My baby brother or my child ke? God forbid oo.”

And I laughed.

Not because it was funny.

But because that right there, summed up everything wrong with us.

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The Tweets

Old tweets resurfaced. Tweets from years ago when Simi worked at her mother’s daycare.

Tweets about a four-year-old boy.

The content? Disturbing enough that if you read them without knowing who wrote them, your stomach would turn.

The kind of tweets that, in any other circumstance, with any other person, would have the internet in flames.

But they were written by Simi.

And that’s where everything got complicated.

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The Twisted Defenses

Here’s the exhausting part.

This was the argument that led to the girl in the danfo saying “even though”.

The fact that people think this is a targeted attack because she spoke about rape. She said the right thing. As it should be said, and that’s valid.

So all of a sudden, the tweets shouldn’t matter?

“She was young.”

“She worked at a daycare, she was just describing what kids do.”

“Context matters.”

“People grow and change.”

“Cancel culture is toxic.”

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The Patterns

Affection bends standards more than we admit.

It’s not about what was said.

It’s about who said it.

If you’re “our fave,”

You get the “even though.”

You get the benefit of the doubt.

But if you’re not?

If you’re just a name without a massive fanbase, a man, without an army of defenders, someone we’ve already written off…

There’s no “even though.”

A girl made a comment about this whole saga, guess what? They started calling her a pick me.

Is that why we’re here?

I’m particularly concerned about how the patterns are crazy! And the double standards stinks.

Because, why is no celebrity setting ring light?

I’ve not seen those videos that they usually make inside their cars, dishing out words.

When it’s someone whose music we love, whose voice has been the soundtrack to our healing.

Suddenly, we need to understand what was happening before we judge.

Suddenly, we remember that people are complicated, that no one is perfect.

That girl in the danfo understood this perfectly.

“Even though the tweets are bad, she’s still….”

But when it became about HER baby brother?

“God forbid.”

When someone you admire says something troubling, your first instinct is not outrage.

It’s negotiation.

If it were a man,

He should be burnt to ashes.

Suddenly everyone would be screaming protect the girl child.

Boy child nkor? They’re not created by God?

If it were someone outside our emotional circle?

We start a war. Based on emotions.

We have seen how quickly careers unravel when old tweets resurface. We have seen how aggressively people are condemned.

But when the person at the center is different, something shifts.

And that shift tells us more about ourselves than about them.

We do not just respond to actions.

We respond to attachment.

We like to believe our principles are solid.

But sometimes they bend under familiarity.

Many of us do not separate talent from morality.

We turn artists into moral anchors.

Build pieces of our identity around them.

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A kind of silence.

Simi is my fave.

I’m talking about how I can sing all her songs from start to finish. How I love the way her voice is so soothing.

When I saw those tweets , it took me hours to process them. I thought my eyes were playing pranks on me at first. I went silent.

I’m talking about the stunned kind of silence.

Not defensive silence.

Not strategic silence.

Not “let me protect my fave” silence.

But the kind that comes when something doesn’t fit the version of a person you built in your head.

That’s when I had to sit down, and ask myself some uncomfortable questions.

Because if you have used someone as a moral reference point, their misstep feels personal.

Not just disappointing.

Destabilizing.

It is difficult to process the flaw of someone you quietly placed on a pedestal.

And a lot of us do this without realizing.

We borrow our language and standards from public figures.

So when that figure falters, it exposes something uncomfortable:

We outsourced part of our conscience.

And now we have to retrieve it.

That retrieval is not loud.

It is awkward, reflective, and sometimes silent .

Idolatry does not always look like worship songs and shrines.

Sometimes it looks like uncritical admiration.

It looks like assuming someone’s talent translates to moral clarity.

But celebrities are not moral compasses.

They are humans with microphones.

If our sense of right and wrong collapses every time a public figure stumbles, then perhaps we leaned too heavily on them in the first place.

And that’s disturbing.

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The thing we secretly hate

This whole situation exposed something I’ve been avoiding.

We don’t actually believe in accountability. Infact, we hate it. Secretly.

The trending tweets will fade.

The discourse will move on.

But,

If a male artist wrote those exact tweets, would we be this forgiving?

If it was someone we didn’t have a parasocial relationship with, would we even be looking for context?

And the most uncomfortable one,

Why do we stop negotiating, when it becomes ours?

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