Facebook and Mau Forest: an analogy

There are several ways in which Facebook could suitably be compared to Mau forest. Let’s roll down a few years to 2004 when Facebook was launched. Then it used to be a nerdy paradise to the technologically savvy students only. When loading to the site, they could look at the bits transferred per second rather than the time it takes to get into the site. Once inside Facebook they could compare toe the dynamism of the site and the programming that took place to realize such. Even when admiring the pictures of fellow nerdy girls, they don’t concentrate too much on vague words like ‘hot, fly, cute’ rather they look at the pixels that were taken to realize such a picture. Then someone called a ‘celebrity’ managed to ‘discover’ the site.

A few years ago, the Mau was predominantly occupied by the Ogiek. Given that these are the people whose lives revolve around forests, they are wont to appreciate them. The thicker the forest the better for them because the greater the adventure. They are also the guys who would appreciate various tree species knowing which ones are useful for curing certain diseases, which ones produce the best firewood, which can be used in the construction of huts and which can be used for bee keeping. Then someone called a ‘politician’ managed to ‘discover’ the forest.

The celebrity managed to realize that Facebook can be a one stop shop for his/her fans. That is the point where they could be updated for what the celebrity had been up to. For fans what a celebrity touches instantly turns to gold and that is when, they trooped to Facebook in inestimable numbers. The fans too discovered that they could make themselves famous and that gave birth to ‘Facebook Celebrities’ which is a story for another day.

The politician discovered how he could turn the forest to ‘usefulness’. He swiftly moved to the area and demarcated his huge portion running into thousand of hectares. He saw the ‘useless’ strands of trees, the monotonous thickly covered forest and decided it was time for an ‘extreme makeover’. After clearing the land and admiring its size-disappearing to the horizon, he felt that some cash crop like tea would keep his bank account full, while he nitpicked at debates in parliament. However with time, the discontented constituents were at his house every day and that is when he decided he could make even more money with them. He headed back to the forest, cleared a ‘few’ more thousands of hectares and sold to them at trivial figures. The deal too good is what a desperate electorate wants to hear and soon they were there in plenty and even while there, they discovered they could extend their portions by just clearing as much land as they could.

Now, the government is pussyfooting at trying to save the forest but if we don’t pressurize them, they won’t take any other action because honestly they don’t care!