I see a particular allegation thrown at people who write their own multiple opinions posts daily on social media, “Are you an expert on everything that you have to share your opinion on everything?” This question is a disguised allegation meant as a put-down.
I don’t write multiple opinion posts daily on social media. As a result, I have not yet been the subject of this question. Still, at the risk of sounding prematurely defensive, I feel it is essential to defend and encourage non-expert opinion-sharing.
It is both accurate and cliched to assert that everyone has a right to their opinion. I will go further and say that in a democracy, everyone has a right and an obligation to share their non-expert opinions on topics in the public realm. That is the only way to test and shape ideas against other ideas and reality. Before the rise of social media, the only non-experts who got to share their opinion widely were celebrities, politicians, and op-ed writers for traditional media. Most op-ed writers are not experts on any of the topics on which they write. They are just informed non-experts.
Indeed many share ill-informed opinions on social media. But that, by itself, is not the problem. Discussions in real life and social media become toxic when ill-informed or closed-minded people refuse to leave a conversation without having the last word. Our inability to distinguish between political opinions and immutable laws of nature poisons our discourse. We would rather lose friends than lose face.
It’s not non-expert or ill-informed opinion-sharing that makes social media so toxic. It’s lastwordism that makes things toxic. As a sidebar for the purists who want to say that “lastwordism” is a made-up word, I share my favorite exchange from all the Marvel superhero movies. This happens in Avengers: Infinity War.
Thor: I need to go to Nidavellir.
Drax: Nidavellir? That’s a made-up word!
Thor: All words are made up.
Especially when sharing opinions outside of their professional expertise, as long as a person maintains a degree of doubt about the plausibility and credibility of those opinions, we have no grounds to critique them for sharing their views.
There. I just shared my opinion, but I am willing to change it.
[Featured image by: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay]
