Tag Archives: voice

Hot topics and doing your own research

Hot topics

It’s hard to write daily and not touch on hot topics. But I also know that it’s hard to discuss hot topics without being misunderstood or offending people either by intentionally being one-sided or accidentally by making unclear or poor analogies and comparisons. I wrote a whole post today on one such topic then I read and participated in a private conversation with my sisters and deleted the whole post. I didn’t save it to my drafts for later, I deleted it.

There are too many people already writing polarized views on hot topics, completely missing the point that ideas fall on a continuum, on a spectrum. I realize that I’m not knowledgeable enough to share my polarized view. I will upset people, and I will not change any minds… that’s not a good outcome that accomplishes anything.

This is a time for many to speak up, and it makes me feel like I should too. Then I try and realize my voice is the wrong voice. I wish a few more people would think the same way. We have entered a social media culture that says everyone has a voice, and there is a flood of voices not worth listening to.

Do your own research

The solution often given to so many voices sharing information is to ‘do your own research’. What a bunch of bullshit that is… ridiculous advice to solve a problem in an era where anyone can find the information they are looking for to support their already established views. Doing your own research suggests you have the background in doing research, it suggests you can read a scientific paper and understand and meaningfully interpret the data… in a field you probably know very little about.

Yes you can share your opinion, No it doesn’t hold more water than another opinion because you spent 20 minutes or even 2 hours researching it on the internet. Most serious issues are far more complex and nuanced than that. I’m not saying to not do research, however I am saying that you might find research that only supports your bias, and that research may not be interpreted properly by you or the so-called experts you choose to listen to.

It’s extremely unlikely that a blog post from a non-expert is going to change minds unless it’s intentionally deceptive or already leaning in the polarized direction you were considering. So I won’t throw my opinion out into any current polarized arguments right now. I probably will at some point if I’m writing every day, but for now I think I just need to shut up with respect to hot topics. Being vocal might make me feel good but my voice will contribute nothing new, nothing profoundly insightful. It will be nothing but another angry voice screaming on the internet. I haven’t done enough real research to believe I have anything of value to add.

Anti-social media

I was in a Twitter conversation recently that went a bit sideways. I don’t want to get into details, but I want to talk about a landscape of social sharing that is exhausting me. Is it just me or does every challenging conversation seem to go somewhere it doesn’t have to?

Pick any prominent public figure, if they say anything germane to a serious topic, the comment responses are caustic and angry. It’s like people are trolling just to attack. That’s not what happened in the conversation I was having, but that’s where my mind went.

What happened to me was that I went silent. I had more to share, but saw no use in saying more. The conversation between two others went to a place where I could add no value. It was upsetting. I am not someone who likes to walk away from something unresolved, but I didn’t have the words. I typed a response, then deleted it. I did this again.

I can’t stay on Twitter and only share things I think will acquire likes and positive comments. I’m not a poop disturber either, but I want to be able to go to hard places sometimes, to question and to learn. But I’m not feeling like good discourse can happen on social media anymore. Discourse has become argument and different views are not tolerated.

What I’m talking about goes far beyond the conversation I had, but what I’ve seen recently has pushed me away from following conversation threads on Twitter… Not because I’m not interested in the topic, but because I’m not interested in the polar, angry, and even nasty comments that fill any (even slightly) controversial thread.

Social media seems a lot less social these days.