The prolific and mobile writer’s life is a thing most fluid. One can write anywhere, and often, ‘anywhere’ is a cyber – especially if you are like this writer who, in the last week alone, has operated from a penthouse and a cyber in Eastlands, a bus, a beach, a matatu and a plane.

I heard a passerby scoff, as I wrote this piece from a virtual café in South B, “you mean people still use cyber cafes? Na vile siku hizi kuna cheap Zuku (internet)!”

And I thought – what a wannabe! These are the kind of people who, having grown up on analogue channel (pal, some of us were bred on bad old VoK) think, the minute they are on a pay channel, let alone cable TV, they have somewhat arrived. Wannabes, combing out their airwave weaves!

I will tell you who is my super non-wannabe hero right now, that CBK Governor, Dr Njoroge Ngugi, who has been to Yale, pulls a hundred grand a day, but when the government gets him a job with palatial homes in Muthaiga and three motis in the mix, a Range Rover, Passat and Mercedes Benz, the gentleman tells them politely to ‘go to hell’ and continues living his simple, non-wannabe life.

But we were talking cybers. And the simple wannabes who crowd them. A lot, not all, of the young men who run cyber cafes in our towns and estates are wannabes of the simplest kind. Inundated with films and with access to all sorts of walks in life, they live a cinematic wanna-beeism.

I have not seen a group of youth so enthused about action movies, ‘manze, huyo jamaa ni m-deadly’ kind of variety talk, since the late 1980s (when I was 10 and Ainea Bolingo was 29)!

Boys, please leave over-effusion and excitement about Schwarzenegger type of films to boys in their pubes.

These young wannabes also live life like it is one of the series they are selling out. They imagine leverage in the ruthlessly materialistic world of nowadays is deducting a Sh20 from the finje (Sh50) fee of a film. Like the ladies are ‘Lady Gaga’ crawling across the floor just so, in your foolish wannabe head, you save them an ashu (whatever that is) on some dreadful series. Get serious!

These cyber wannabes also spend, or waste, their youth becoming foolishly skilled in video games, where they measure the weight of their virtual testicles against each other in eternally meaningless games against one another in the cyber café.

It does not matter how many times you beat your buddy at Fifa World Cup or club football on video, boys, or at those beer bottle top tournaments of pool at the local.

The truth is, Cech and Hazard and that guy in Gor are up early daily to practice their skills in real life, as I may be at forty past four am to skewer the wannabe. Daily!

Do not become one of those wannabes who live life, vicariously, in virtual reality. The only thing we do equally is breathe – God’s oxygen.

Refuse to be a wannabe, living life through any other person or a video game in a cyber café. That’s why those wannabes who become ground potatoes, as well as couch potatoes, drink ‘second generation’ brews.

They are too wannabe to be originals, even if what they consume is Glenfiddich.

tonyadamske@yahoo.com