I often wonder why we prefer to step outside in our finest clothes, even though comfort awaits us in the unkempt ease of our homes. Why do we take pictures only when the light flatters us, deleting those that show our real, unfiltered faces? Why do we hide our bodies beneath fabric, our secrets behind smiles, our pains behind screens? What strange instinct teaches us to protect our nakedness: physical, emotional, moral from strangers, yet allows us to expose it to millions of unseen eyes on social media?
These questions haunted me as I watched the unfolding saga of Nollywood actress Regina Daniels and her husband, Senator Ned Nwoko, a drama not just of love and pain, but of the new media age and its distortion of intimacy. What began as a family quarrel transformed into a digital carnival of accusation, sympathy, and spectacle. It was as if private life had become public theatre.
It all began with an online outcry by Regina’s brother, Sammy West, who alleged that the senator had beaten his sister. Within hours, his furious post exploded across the internet, amplified by blogs and tabloids, and soon Regina herself appeared online in tears, declaring she could no longer endure the violence. The internet lit up; hashtags multiplied; fans, critics, and moralists each took a seat in this virtual courtroom where evidence is emotion and verdicts are instantaneous.
Then came the curious twist—a resurfaced video from weeks earlier showing Regina filming her husband in a bathroom, a clip both playful and provocative. With a trending TikTok soundtrack mocking husbands, the video blurred the line between intimacy and mockery, between content creation and self-exposure. Suddenly, the private couple became a public brand—two souls caught in the vortex of what Marshall McLuhan once called “the global village”, where nothing remains private for long and the medium itself becomes the message.
At this point, I found myself asking: what compels people to turn moments of pain into performances? To cry before a camera rather than a confidant? Sociologist Erving Goffman might have called it “the presentation of self,” the human urge to control how we are seen. But today, social media is not just a stage—it is an audience that demands blood, beauty, or both. What once belonged to priests and elders, to family gatherings and communal counsel, now belongs to followers and algorithms.
To be clear, I do not dismiss the gravity of domestic violence. No woman deserves to suffer in silence. But what I question is the impulsive rush to the public square before even the truth is settled. When one is in distress, recording and uploading a video should not be the first instinct. It is as though the pain is not real until it trends. And yet, the internet, unlike memory, never forgets. Long after forgiveness blooms, the scars remain archived, searchable, and permanent.
There is something tragic in this new culture of self-betrayal. To humiliate the father of one’s children is to humiliate oneself, for families are not like strangers that can be unfollowed. They are extensions of our identity, woven into our own name. Every insult hurled at one’s spouse rebounds upon one’s children, upon the very fabric of one’s home. The philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote that “privacy is the place where we learn who we are,” but in the digital age, privacy has been traded for applause, reflection replaced by reaction.
What saddens me most is how we now equate public sympathy with healing. The crowd we call “friends” online are mostly shadows, unknown and faceless, who will mourn with emojis but vanish when the lights fade. They can lend us pity but not peace, outrage but not order. They will help us fight our battles, but not feed our children.
It is not everything that deserves to be dragged into the open. Silence is not weakness; sometimes it is wisdom. Dignity resides in discretion. Even when anger burns, there should remain a sacred line between what belongs to the home and what belongs to the world. For what is marriage without privacy? What is love without the mystery of trust?
I do not defend abuse, but I defend restraint, the kind that recognizes that certain wounds heal best away from the crowd. Had Regina taken her grievance first to family elders, to the council of wisdom her culture still reveres, perhaps she would have found more peace than pity. The Igbo and the South-South traditions teach that elders are custodians of reconciliation; their words are not hashtags, but healing.
But today, in the glare of new media, people mistake exposure for empowerment. We forget that what we post defines us as much as what we hide. We think we are proving strength, yet we often reveal fragility. The paradox is that even in rebellion, we are still seeking validation from strangers, from screens, from the same crowd we secretly despise.
And so, we wear neat clothes, take beautiful pictures, and post our brightest smiles because we cannot bear to be naked in a world that feeds on nakedness. Regina’s story is not just hers; it is ours, a generation seduced by visibility, confused by freedom, addicted to attention. We no longer live our lives; we stream them.
In the end, the tragedy is not that Regina Daniels cried on camera or that the senator stayed silent—it is that the world has become a stage where no one knows when to step off. We have mistaken applause for affection, and performance for truth. Perhaps that is what makes this new media age not just weird, but profoundly human in its confusion, a world where everyone wants to be seen, yet no one truly wants to be known.
Bagudu can be reached at bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com or on 0703 494 3575.
