Whenever there’s a news event that has all your co-workers trying to engage you in horrifying small talk, the inevitable backlash includes the complaint that everyone thinks they’re an expert after reading a few articles or watching a few videos. This has recently happened with a criminally confident CEO’s sub imploding and a Russian warlord doing a Zerg rush before realizing he forgot his earbuds at home.
The issue, of course, is that most of the people discussing news online are not experts. They didn’t know anything about carbon fiber before now. It’s frustrating that people online talk with aggressive vehemence about an issue they may have just learned about, especially when they’re wrong. No shit. But the note behind the note seems to often be, “it’s annoying that people are excited to talk about a topic they didn’t care about last week.”
Which is fair.
But also, maybe it’s good that people want to become experts in a topic. I’m not saying everyone should “do their own research” but it might not be a bad thing when people want to learn more about the world around them and how it works. We could use some fucking intellectual curiosity. More people should be reading about physics or foreign affairs. That doesn’t negate the tragedies or news stories that people are talking about - the bad there absolutely outweighs the good. Still, if a lot of people come away with more information than they had before, I’m not sure that’s completely bad. It can be a little bad. Or sometimes real bad! Let’s just go to the next paragraph.
Let’s be honest: very few people who want to be experts are putting this new information into practice in a way that’s going to negatively change the world. Some rando with fifty followers talking about Russian military strategy as if they were raised in St. Petersburg isn’t going to affect global policy. But if they’re learning from decent sources about what’s going on and they’re interested, I don’t see people wanting to be experts as entirely bad.
Yes, this also opens the world up to more misinformation. But we’ve been opening ourselves to misinformation since cavemen lied about being the ones who drew antelope on the wall. However, I don’t think it’s completely bad if, at the very least, someone takes more interest in the world. Curiosity is better than ignorance.
Just, you know, fucking check the source.
I dunno. But I do know that carbon fiber is bad in salt water. I think.