by Dean Shutt

Created on: March 06, 2007   Last Updated: May 17, 2007

In My Humble Opinion

They say that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. While that is true as far as it goes, you are allowed to think whatever craziness you like, no one ever said that you were entitled to share your opinion. You see there is a huge difference between you believing that Hurricane Katrina was god's punishment for the wickedness of New Orleans and you telling me the same. In the first instance it is only your fevered little noggin that is polluted by your silliness. In the second, I am forced to expend valuable energy dismissing your addled imaginings. So by all means hold whatever opinion you like, just keep it to yourself.

I blame the internet for this insane notion that everyone has something valid and worthwhile to contribute to the public discourse. Fifteen years ago the only outlet for cranks was the water cooler and the letters to the editor page. These folks that desperately felt the need to tell me what was really going on could be easily avoided. Now though, anyone that can turn on a computer is able to broadcast their silliness to the world without a filter. This causes those of us that are attempting to use the internet to find actual information, to inform actual thoughts, to wade through thousands of words of gibberish to find the one person who has actually met a fact and recognized it as such.

Of course the genie is out of the bottle now and there is no getting it back in. Now we even have an "encyclopedia" and I use that term loosely, that is made up of tens of thousands of people's opinions about historical events and even scientific facts. The technology for broadcasting your opinions grows easier every day. Now with YouTube and podcasts you don't even have to know how to type to get your crazy notions out into the ether. The day is coming when the internet and even more traditional media is nothing but one vast cacophony of uninformed yahoos voicing their opinions. The destruction of knowledge is at hand.

The only way to stop this ugly future is for all of us to do our part. The next time you are about to hit "post" for that blog stop and reread it one more time. Does it really say anything? Does it contain a single piece of information that a rational being might find useful? Do you really need to tell anyone that the original Star Trek kicked TNG's ass? If the answers to these questions are no, then please for the love of all that is holy and the future of civilization as we know it, just hit the "delete" key and go on with your life. You may not have shared your opinion, but you will be secure in the knowledge that at least a few people were spared the knowledge that you are in fact a moron, and doesn't that make the world a little better for all of us?

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