So if the rumours are true, Idris Olanrewaju (otherwise known as Bobrisky) has done the unthinkable. He has deleted his Snapchat account, with an estimated 400,000 active followers and moved to a premium account.

For those who don’t understand who Bobrisky is and why we should care about a premium Snapchat account, here is a little context.

In 2015, Idris Olanrewaju first ‘debuted’ as Bobrisky “the Nigerian male Barbie”, on gossip blog Linda Ikeji. Olanrewaju who wears traditionally feminine clothing and heavy make up simultaneously rattled and titillated Nigerians who were looking to see how the newly passed law criminalising same sex marriages and unions.

Blogs like Linda Ikeji, looking to profit off Bobrisky’s controversiality began to lift pictures off his Facebook account for blog posts. At first Bobrisky ignored them, but eventually he decided to get in on the game, creating a Snapchat account and documenting his daily life. Many thought this would spell the end of Bobrisky, but the social media personality however, seemed inured to Nigerian lawmakers and only gained popularity, eclipsing legitimate celebrities and drawing comparisons with Toke Makinwa. By mid-2016 Bobrisky had used social media platform Snapchat to court a loyal if conflicted audience and transformed himself from queer spectacle to a legitimate celebrity. Bobrisky drew fans for being himself.

In July 2017, Olanrewaju began to announce that he was opening a Premium’ account where in his own words, he would become more ‘explicit’ and truly embrace the reality tv star/adult entertainer persona he’d spent the previous two years building. The ‘premium’ Snapchat account is in no way a ‘new’ idea; but it was primarily used by adult entertainers and sex workers looking to share explicit x-rated content on their private social media channels for a fee.

Many thought Bobrisky was bluffing, considering the opportunities the influencer had gained came primarily from his huge (free) following. But after proving via screenshots that up to 300 people had paid the monthly ‘premium fee’ of N10,000 and deleting his account, Bobrisky had made good on his promise to capitalise on his overt displays of sexuality.

Nigerians on the internet have always and will always pay to consume what they publicly denounce as ‘sexual perversion’. They did it during the beginnings of what we now know as ‘Nigerian twitter’, paying users like “Odina Barbie” N5000 for a followback, paying via the DMs for nude photos, sending insane amounts of money to ‘catfish’ accounts for the promise of sex. Bobrisky is only yet another person realising that beneath our public outrage is a private fascination with “perversion”.

And as long as we continue to publicly renounce our sexual differences, people like Odina Barbie and Bobrisky will continue to get rich off our suppressed sexualities.

Editor