As an artist especially a screen printer I have received bizarre
even gross requests by customers who want to customize their shirts and tell
their message from T shirt prints.
Perhaps that has been why I have to date obsessed with
reading T-shirts messages and I bet you’ll be chuckling at some of the message
people brazenly display on their bosom and backs.
It is however undeniable that it commands sheer creativity
and by God some out of the world messages that make me wish I could buy a shirt
off someone’s back or better still retweet it on my own in a later time.
Perhaps that was why tweeter attracted me so. At first I
used to think that 140 characters are too limiting even for those with lack of
what to say. But to see how t shirt art is being innovatively run down my TL I think
it’s exceptional.
Legitimacy of KOT by HumanIPoDebate (http://www.humanipo.com/news/5339/The-HumanIPO-Debate-Is-KOT-a-legitimate-organisation-with-worthy-motives) got me thinking of how
connected tweeter and t shirt art is. The funny pics, the commercial messages,
the crazy observations, inspirational quotes, biblical verses, protests and
poetry, and the retweets.
Thinking about the lot of Kenyans wearing different shirts
with different messages and sometimes e.g. during political campaigns and civil
outrage wearing #someonetell t shirts as a legitimate voice of a people in one
polity doesn’t sound odd to me at all even when offensive.
There need not be organized group of people to make #KOT
legit but by virtue of millions of Kenyans expressing themselves on twitter its
a legit group with concerns that are varied but discussed on a similar
platform. The complexity of new technology lends people to judge such
‘unbridled’ ‘irresponsible at times’ or 'offensive’ tirade without really
putting it in context that it is a traditional function to write what you feel
whether on the T-shirt you are wearing or on a twitter update.
Surely a debate whether #kot is legit is irrelevant, it like
asking whether all the people wearing funny messages on t shirts in Kenya are
legit, they are.
