I really like blogging (hard to believe given the gap between this and the last time I posted … I should fix that). And I love how the internet these days has been giving people the ability and confidence to express their opinions on things. I can read an article about how awesome Pascal from Tangled is, or I can read someone’s opinion on being a vegan for a few days. My favourite part is when I can share an article with someone I know and have a discussion about it and how it may be relating to our lives.
So I finish reading an article and I’m starting to critically think about what I read and form my opinions on agreement or disagreeing, and then I think “Hey I wonder what other people thought!” Lo and behold, ye section of comments is here to save the day with an argument about people who agree or not. Thank you for having an online argument with people you’ve never met before! It’s so exciting to verbally bash each other without proper expression of emotions while hiding behind our screens. It takes so much courage to post on there how utterly wrong they are in a way that can come of lovingly or hatefully depending on the mood of the person who reads it. And I’m sure that person you just tried to blow out of the water appreciates it. They totally saw the error in their ways.
And now I’m left leaving the article completely confused about what I just read, it’s validity, and what I actually think about it. Who needs a university degree anyway? I now know some half-formulated arguments from random people, so obviously I don’t need to bother learning how to think critically. Why learn to think for myself when I can just let other people hash it out for me? I’ll just wait for the official statement to come out on which subjective opinion based side was right, and go from there.
Honestly. We’re going to disagree about things. Part of the internet’s beauty is that I CAN write about Olaf the snowman, my love for radiant orchid, and how much I really want sweet potato fries right now. It’s called expressing myself. Either we let people do that, or we don’t. It doesn’t make sense to me to go and rebuke someone online that you can’t see and have a conversation with. Online conversations I have with people I KNOW often end up in disputes and upset friends, so how is having one with a stranger going to be any different?
I’m not saying that comments sections are all bad. There can be some great conversations that happen, and adding points to things, expressing how you enjoyed something … but if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Or at least discuss it to someone’s face so you can work it out.
padigrumae 