"You Know Nothing!"
Never look back at your previous 300 character limit posts, or you'll end up scoffing at yourself and writing a whole 1200 word piece why.
I made the mistake the other day of going back through my BlueSky profile feed, looking through some of my posts gawking and muttering “you idiot, why did you post that?”.
It’s a symptom perhaps of my low self-esteem and self-confidence that any thought I blurt out on the internet is immediately filled with momentary regret that my takes are either ill-informed or just wrong. Sometimes I feel they are wrong enough for me to delete my posts, but most of the time that feeling is just momentary and those thoughts of regret disappear as quickly as they came.
Why then do I feel like this, when posting on social media about important and/or random politics takes up an obscenely large portion of my day? (as my husband will attest to). A few things came up this week which gave me a clue to that, though not all evident at first.
I watched Goldfinger last week. I’m not expecting Bond aficionados flocking here, but many will remember the well-referenced scene involving Sean Connery strapped to a table with Gert Fröbe’s Auric Goldfinger pointing a laser at his crotch. Anyway, as Bond squirms fighting not to be slowly lasered in two there comes this excerpt:
BOND (calling) You're forgetting one thing! If I fail to report, double-o-eight replaces me!
GOLDFINGER I trust he will be more successful!
BOND Well, he knows what I know!
GOLDFINGER You know nothing, Mister Bond!
BOND Operation Grand Slam, for instance!
GOLDFINGER Two words you may have overheard which cannot possibly have any significance to you or anyone in your organization.
BOND Can you afford to take that chance?
Bond looks at Goldfinger again. Goldfinger smiles, relenting. He turns back and snaps his fingers (soundlessly) at his assistants.
GOLDFINGER You are quite right, Mister Bond. You are worth more to me alive.
Bond uses an anecdotal phrase he has heard, for which he has little to no understanding of other than of its importance, and uses it to persuade Goldfinger he is worth keeping alive. It’s a fantastic piece of filmmaking, combined with John Barry’s outstanding and tension-building score.
Watching it though, in-between posting, made me think how often I use the same trick of ignorance in persuading others that I may know what I’m actually talking about, when it is mostly based on quick searches I may have seen or googled - except instead of stopping my followers slicing me in half from the crotch up I’m just trying to get some dopamine inducing engagement.
After all I cannot say I’m necessarily qualified to discuss the things I post, in fact I feel like I’m not an expert in anything. I’m not university educated, I don’t work any sector where I influence government policy, I certainly know I don’t read enough to qualify as well-read - so what use does my opinion add to any sort of debate? I am as ‘random man on internet babble’s his opinion’ as you can get.
I was particularly struck in by a post I saw the other day which I’ll have to paraphrase “just because you’ve quickly googled it does not mean you’re right” and it hit me and I imagine many others in the gut, because half the posts I do are based on quick google of current events as they happen. When Trump threatened 25% tariffs on Colombia the other day I didn’t know the US had a net surplus in trade, yet I posted about it anyway.
I’m not dishonest in my approach, I endeavour to make clear my lack of expertise in the topics I post about (as some others perhaps should do) but there is a niggling feeling that that lack of expertise, or even academic education in critical thinking disqualifies me from blurting out such opinions at all, regardless of whether they actually are correct or add to the quality of the debate.
Our society is not a technocracy though, and by gosh does that apply to social media - nor should it be. If contributors to social debates and our politics were of those who were expertise in such fields then could anyone argue with all sincerity that it would enhance our social and political environment, in fact not only could it push confirmation bias but it risks alienating swathes of people who feel such topics are limited for them.
The same goes for our politics - as frustrating as it is to see government ministers clearly be misguided because they lack the proper expertise around them, can we really say that if each department of government was headed by someone within that field would be better suited than politicians? I’ll leave that for you to decide, but elected officials who have to deal with competing needs beyond their Ministerial brief are better placed to use advice to make decisions which relate to what the public voted for (in theory at least, practice, well…).
Limiting or ignoring public conversation against those who are not experts would be self-defeating. The people I follow are incredibly adept and in my opinion much cleverer than I pretend to be but they are not all experts in the topics they discuss, nor should they be. I see dozens of exchanges every day from people engaging with members of the lobby, scientists, economists etc who make extremely valid and salient points which enrich debate and bring something new to the table. If we were to give in to that low self-confidence thinking of ‘I have no right to speak on this due to my lack of expertise’ then we all suffer as a result.
For all the talk of misinformation on social media, it’s the intent, malice and contrition of those posting falsehoods who turn misinformation into disinformation. I would even extend that not just to those who post misleading information but those who share it/emphasise it without even a modicum of fact checking with reputable sources. The distortion of all that, whether it be how social media companies like X boosts those who deliberately mislead, to the increased distrust in Western democracies against ‘mainstream media’ is a topic evidently difficult to challenge, let alone by lil’ ole’ me.
As much as I scoff at myself, this long rambling post won’t stop me from posting about topics for which I have less experience and expertise in as others, neither will I pretend that I do.
Will I still cringe at my previous posts and belittle myself for my intellectual shortcomings? Probably - and perhaps it’s a sign I should go offline more and post less. Not because I’m wrong, but because I feel like I am.
As if to emphasise that point, I really feel like this could have been a skeet.
