We live in a world where discussion is open for everyone with access to a computer and internet. There are forums online filled with discussion about almost everything, twitter, facebook and many other sites where we openly express our opinions, many times without thinking. We have gathered and discussed questions for many centuries but it has never been this easy to express your opinion as it is today.
This opportunity leads to a world where people are very opinionated and think they know what is going on. We like things on facebook, retweet, comment on articles without actually knowing what is going on and without changing anything. I'm not saying that some people aren't involved and care but many of us are affected by slacktivism, thinking that liking something will actually have an effect when it doesn't. You know it as well as I that kids in Africa won't get food because you like a facebook group. You need to go out and do something about it.
Slacktivism isn't the only thing that we suffer from. We also suffer from "Mr/s Know-it-All" symptom. We are able to access a lot of knowledge online but since we rather spend our time on facebook, 9gag, sickipedia and playing games most of us actually have a lack of knowledge comparing to our future generations that actually had to go to the library to be able to read a book. The world has become a place where we can buy a new book by pressing one button and barely need to read the book ourselves since you can get it as an audiobook and if there is a film we would rather go and see it than read the book itself. We google things we don't know and wikipedia is probably the most common source we use when we reference to our knowledge.
The problem isn't us using internet to learn things or not reading a book, it is us thinking we know everything because we have the access to. By thinking we know it all we also think we have opinion about everything which is unnecessary. We don't know everything and therefore can't have opinions about everything but with twitter and facebook people expect us to. Just take Kony as an example. Many of my friends shared the documentury on facebook or twitter and because of the pressure from them I felt that I needed to share it to. To be honest, I didn't really care because I knew that I wouldn't do anything about it but I didn't want to look bad. I wanted people to think that I cared when I actually should have ignored it and got on with my life. We need to understand that we don't need opinions about everything.
There is nothing wrong with just being neutral and not getting involved. If you don't know what is actually going on there is no need for you to like the cause on facebook or retweet the famous person writing about something going on in the world. The risk with thinking that you have an opinion is that you will be put in a situation where you don't know what to say because you don't have a clue what's going on. In that case you will look even dumber than you would if you said that you didn't have an opinion from the beginning.
Being opinionated is a bad thing because it doesn't change anything. It usually just gets you into discussions and arguments you could avoid by just being honest from the beginning. Instead of having opinions about everything, try to have some opinions and try to understand different sides of it. The material is out there for us to read, we just need to stop being lazy and actually use the modern inventions we are lucky to have.
This opportunity leads to a world where people are very opinionated and think they know what is going on. We like things on facebook, retweet, comment on articles without actually knowing what is going on and without changing anything. I'm not saying that some people aren't involved and care but many of us are affected by slacktivism, thinking that liking something will actually have an effect when it doesn't. You know it as well as I that kids in Africa won't get food because you like a facebook group. You need to go out and do something about it.
Slacktivism isn't the only thing that we suffer from. We also suffer from "Mr/s Know-it-All" symptom. We are able to access a lot of knowledge online but since we rather spend our time on facebook, 9gag, sickipedia and playing games most of us actually have a lack of knowledge comparing to our future generations that actually had to go to the library to be able to read a book. The world has become a place where we can buy a new book by pressing one button and barely need to read the book ourselves since you can get it as an audiobook and if there is a film we would rather go and see it than read the book itself. We google things we don't know and wikipedia is probably the most common source we use when we reference to our knowledge.
The problem isn't us using internet to learn things or not reading a book, it is us thinking we know everything because we have the access to. By thinking we know it all we also think we have opinion about everything which is unnecessary. We don't know everything and therefore can't have opinions about everything but with twitter and facebook people expect us to. Just take Kony as an example. Many of my friends shared the documentury on facebook or twitter and because of the pressure from them I felt that I needed to share it to. To be honest, I didn't really care because I knew that I wouldn't do anything about it but I didn't want to look bad. I wanted people to think that I cared when I actually should have ignored it and got on with my life. We need to understand that we don't need opinions about everything.
There is nothing wrong with just being neutral and not getting involved. If you don't know what is actually going on there is no need for you to like the cause on facebook or retweet the famous person writing about something going on in the world. The risk with thinking that you have an opinion is that you will be put in a situation where you don't know what to say because you don't have a clue what's going on. In that case you will look even dumber than you would if you said that you didn't have an opinion from the beginning.
Being opinionated is a bad thing because it doesn't change anything. It usually just gets you into discussions and arguments you could avoid by just being honest from the beginning. Instead of having opinions about everything, try to have some opinions and try to understand different sides of it. The material is out there for us to read, we just need to stop being lazy and actually use the modern inventions we are lucky to have.
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