The unholy union of microblogging and contemporary podcast culture has made it so that people feel entirely comfortable offering public opinions on topics that they barely understand. This reality is made worse by the idea that someone with “an audience” must have a detailed opinion about every intractable geopolitical problem. It does not matter if the person’s audience was garnered via comedy, sports, or fashion, they are expected to have professional public opinions. There are a number of reasons why the increasing societal expectation for everybody to have a public opinion on practically everything is not a positive development for the culture.
First, opinions without independent study will inevitably lead to the regurgitation of ideas and groupthink. The fact of the matter is that listening to someone else talking about a subject may be a decent way to start thinking about a topic, but it is by no means sufficient to understand the nuances of the topic—and certainly not all that is needed to publicly opine on the topic. If all one does is listen to a few podcasts and read a few articles before feeling confident enough to opine on an issue in public, the commentary said person will produce will be imitative as opposed to proprietary. Inevitably, this will lead to the erasure of the source(s) of their information because they feel insecure about admitting the ideas that they are espousing were memorized as opposed to independently developed.
One can see this simplistic regurgitation of ideas when it comes to topics such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has dominated the news cycle in recent weeks, and the Russo-Ukrainian War. Because people have not studied enough, they simply recite the talking points that they heard from other people in their echo chamber and think that the ability to correctly recite conveys gravitas and intellectual depth. Rarely are these people seen citing their sources. Thinking deeply about a topic takes time, effort, and dedication. It also requires knowing where someone else’s thoughts conclude and one’s own thoughts commence. Most people are not interested in making that investment, but they desperately want to be viewed as esteemed sages.
Second, having “an audience” is not synonymous with expertise. In the heyday of cable news, the medium was inundated with a pundit class that was expected to comment on every notable topic that made its way into the headlines. Any viewer with sense understood that most of these people, mostly armed with undergraduate degrees in communications and journalism, had no clue what they were talking about, but they simply memorized their political talking points and could recite them with some degree of confidence. Interestingly, however, most of those talking heads did not believe that they were actual superstars. Those pundit talking heads of yore have given way to contemporary podcasters, many of whom actually do believe they are superstars. They also think the fact that they have an audience requires them to comment on everything.
Having an audience should never make a person exaggerate their realm of expertise. However, with the ubiquity of popular podcasts out in the world, there are far too many people who think that having listeners is the same as a mandate to speak on subjects that go well over their heads. Confidence and charisma are not the same as knowledge and expertise. It almost never ends well when the former exists without the latter. Getting to the stage of truly knowing what one is talking about takes years of dedicated study and disciplined thinking. It is not something that can be achieved by skimming a couple of articles and listening to a few podcasts. People who truly have knowledge also have the humility to know their knowledge boundaries, and they respect the intelligence of their audience.
Finally, speaking of respect for one’s audience, attempting to have an opinion on everything heavily dilutes one’s persuasive authority. The truth of the matter is that when someone talks outside of their area of expertise, it can only sound convincing to people who are ignorant in that area. However, the moment someone talks without deep knowledge in an area that the listener knows well, the speaker’s ability to persuade that listener will be forever diminished. If one wants to be taken seriously as a thinking person worth listening to, it is important to only opine on subjects where one has meaningful, unique, and knowledgeable contributions to offer.
Fundamentally, it is unwise for every opinion that someone has to be made available for immediate public consumption. Opinions are generally not permanent. They are supposed to change when exposed to new information. The quality of an opinion is generally proportional to the information to which the opinion-holder has been exposed. This is why it is always best to gain more information before making public statements. To be clear, the argument here is not that people should never try to form opinions about the subjects they are learning. In fact, forming opinions is critical to learning. It is perfectly fine to have private thoughts about a subject while still gaining knowledge. That is entirely different from polluting the marketplace of ideas with fraudulent expertise. The quest to publicly feign expertise on everything is highly injurious to public discourse. It is also individually injurious as such people who feign expertise may feel ephemeral satisfaction, but, in the long run, they ultimately end up as experts on nothing.
An excellent and evergreen piece on why “the discourse” (whatever the topic of the day might be) so often consists of far more heat than light, more vibes than true insight.