How Much Investigative Journalism Do You Do?

These days the concept of "investigative journalism" has gone beyond making verbal inquiries about potential candidates in your dating pool to taking matters right into your very hands and doing the research yourself.  One of my good friends is a certified pro at investigative journalism. She meets a guy and goes to research him on social media, google, and even her State’s Judiciary website to see whether he has any outstanding cases open or closed that she should be aware of (i.e. previous marriages, credit card liens etc). She pretty much doesn’t like to surprise herself and in this day and age where men be pulling James Bond stunts from out of the blue, I aint mad at her tactics at all.
And then I have another good friend is also great at investigative journalism. She knows how to read between the lines on social media. She is probably the reason why some people padlock their Twitter accounts because home girl be on her job with tracking conversations, who liked what and who followed who, who subbed who and who deleted their accounts...I mean, the girl is a pro at putting two and two together. Like I said, I no dey vex at such tactics.
As for me, I do believe in the idea of investigative journalism. I admit to googling men…shoot I occasionally google myself so why should any man be exempt? I will pretty much try to gather as much information out there that I can…after all its all public records innit?

And then beyond researching and trying to gather information about a man who is yet to make the cut, there is also the type of journalism which involves staying in the loop and staying informed about men who have already made the cut i.e your boyfriends or husbands. So now we gotta discuss the other angle to investigative journalism which involves checking phones, emails, etc. This is a topic that has come up a million times for discussion on social media and my stance remains the same – I will check a man’s phone every now and then. Knowledge is power! 

 During a recent cycle of the wash, rinse and repeat Twitter discussion on checking a man’s phone, someone I follow stated that she used to do a weekly sweep of all her man’s devices in her relationship, and I got a very good chuckle out of that. On my part, my approach is this…I won’t always go out of my way to snoop look through a man's phone and similiar devices but if a bruv leaves his phone in my line of vision, I’m definitely going to go through it every now and then and satisfy my curiosities. If I sit down and see an email inbox open, I will take a quick glance through it. There is no shame in my game.

In fact, as some of you may remember, I once blogged about an ex whose email I happened to stumble across (and in this case, I didn’t set out to check, I logged on and he was still signed in), and thanks to my quick sweep of the inbox, I discovered some very incriminating deets including an email professing serious love for a female that he had known for an century and some...as in some "I have always loved you and I will never stop loving you". Hian! based on those findings, I quickly exited the budding relationship and you know, down the line, the bruv actually apologized to me and confessed that he had been fooling himself all along thinking that he had moved on from that girl. He eventually moved across oceans to be with the girl and today they are married. See how investigative journalism saved my heart and my ego? I would have been there playing second fiddle to another woman if I hadn’t stumbled across all of that. Needless to say, I have been a firm believer in seizing opportunities to investigate a bruv ever since then because if you ask me, that was a God-sent opportunity and my Lord did save me from a life of playing second best to another woman.

On the flip, I know some women who are definitely not about the investigative journalism life and I can understand their stance too. The thing fit give pesin HBP when your eye come nack the thing wey you never see before, but I personally would rather be aware and informed than to live in blissful ignorance. And even if a bruv has nothing to hide and the search comes out clean, at least I know that I saw and confirmed that with my korokoro eyes.

And, as usual...that is all she said.

Happy Independence Day Nigeria!

Have a great rest of your week y'all.