Broadcasting Every Thought

Ah, another post on my opinion about how posting our opinions online is a bad idea because they are irrelevant and change so easily.

I am exempt from my own opinion.

I do wonder if we are at a new and unique place in history as far as how much people value what they have to say. The internet has offered everyone, literally almost everyone, a platform for their opinion. Instead of being limited to the few dozen people at the bar or the local diner or church, now we can shoot our thoughts out to thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of other people with the click of a button. We can force what we think on everyone who follows us on social media or whoever gave us their email address for any reason with chain letters about whatever topic is most dear to us at that moment.

At the same time, we can cultivate an impenetrable echo chamber for our opinions and beliefs. Thanks to online communities and commentary masquerading as news, we never have to step outside what we believe or be challenged in any real way.  We can be internet-based experts on a range of particular topics.

Anyone can throw their opinion out there.

Even a random idiot in West Texas with a laptop and an internet connection can inflict a daily blog on a relatively large number of people.

What is the world coming to?

I kind of miss the days when I wasn’t aware of what every single person I knew thought about race and class and gender and movies and music and politics and geopolitical events and the latest episode of whatever show is popular right now. I’ve found that I don’t like some people quite as much as I thought I did once we are on social media together. I have to believe some people experience the same thing with me.

We may not always believe what we believe today.

I do try to be careful about my thoughts and opinions because of this, but I am sure I slip up and say broadly stupid things and express ideas that will make me cringe in a year or two. Or tomorrow.

There’s no going back on this either. We can’t unring this bell without a worldwide catastrophe (which we are all secretly hoping for it seems).

I am not sure what it is that makes us value our own opinion so much, or what it is that makes us think there is some victory in forcing it on others.

I don’t know why we have such a hard time changing our opinion, or remembering the times we believed something that turned out to be completely jackass. We seem to settle into the idea that what we believe at this moment is the truth and always will be, and Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr and Instagram and our cute little blog are there to broadcast it to anyone lucky enough to be associated with us in some way, no matter how tangential.

It’s a good thing everything I believe is perfect and unchanging.