As a kid I and my friends flipped through the pages of entertainment magazines left behind by our elders, admiring the guys there especially when the magazine is rating their fame and wealth.
We always wished to be like them, just like almost everyone would wish to be the entertainer putting up a splendid performance in front of about 20000 spectators, not minding the pains he had gone through at the backstage earlier.
People who often wish to be entertainers forget to read the terms and conditions attached to the celebrity form they are filling. They just want to get to limelight, forgetting that the same light that will show their talent to the world will still be there to show the world their weakness and bad sides.
The dreams and desires that dwelled in our hearts as we grew was that someday, we will be the faces people always want to read about, the faces that will always entertain on stages and televisions, the voice that will be thrilling people on the radio, and the guys posing on the cover of celebrity magazines with the best designers clothes.
When we grew up, we realized that there were so many things we never knew about the people that mentored us while we were growing up.
We forgot that there was another adult magazine that was hidden from us where nude pictures stolen from the cameras and phones of these entertainers were published, and probably there were scandals we never read about because we were not the ones buying the magazines.
When I came of age to use the internet and was able to buy celebrity magazines myself, I realized that being an entertainer is like a two-edged sword with one side sharpened for his good stories, while the other does not hesitate to cut his bad sides.
I started changing my mind when I realized that the media has dubbed most male entertainers as womanizers, while it is all clear that the females, especially most of them repel husbands. Be it true or false, this is what the media made me to understand and they constitute the initial fear of every parent when they learn that their child want to join the entertainment industry.
Entertainers often get angry when they see their names attached to a story, that is probably a bad one, while some others like popular Nollywood actress turned musician Tonto Dike has nothing to do with good news or bad news, all are just news to her as long as ‘Poko’ can come as her response.
Some entertainers think the media are their younger siblings whom they can always tell what to write, they want the media to be their praise singers even when they are not as good as that, hence the term ‘hyping’. They don’t want to be involved in any bad news, but they want to do bad things.
How can your fans know you if they have not seen your strengths and weaknesses, how can they call you a perfect entertainer if they have not seen you walk on the path of any scandal? Even when the entertainer is not involved, he must have been in the picture of something like it before after all; people take group pictures once in a while.
Tuface in the song ‘implication’ said “Just because say I dey there, I follow enter the yawa”, and this will be a lesson to all entertainers who come out to accuse the media of invading their privacy.
Every entertainer should simply know this, there is nothing like privacy for you, you are able to achieve privacy on the things you can conceal from the entire world, as long as you are there with someone else, just have in mind that it could one day get to the public.
The days of success might be too long that no one wants to follow it to the end, but the days of scandals are always too short and people especially your diehard fans want to follow it to the end. This is a plain truth which will tell every entertainer that no matter how much people love, they will be the first to open the link to a story that says bad about you. This is something no one can change no matter how good you are.
Chinedu Hardy Nwadike, writes from Owerri, Imo State, BB Pin 21F3F44F, @hardynwa on twitter
