Courtesy of Drue Sokol
It’s my humble opinion that you’d better keep yours to yourself. There are far too many opinions these days that are thought up or — even worse — expressed. If you disagree, keep it to yourself for once. Opinions hurt the innocent, society at large and yourself at small.
Here’s the fuck why. It’s my theory on mouth openings. Every time you open your mouth, two things can happen. Either stuff will go into your mouth or, unfortunately, stuff will come out. When you eat food, you energize yourself and keep yourself alive for the betterment of society. You can perform your job providing goods or services and the people who enjoy your lousy company get to keep that crap up. But the moment an opinion escapes your gaping maw it all goes to hell in an “I’m sick of your canned phrases” hand basket. Opinions are divisive, so no good can come of them.
Each opinion can have one of three effects on others:
1. You make a nice person angry because he disagrees with your opinion.
2. You make a nice person sad because he disagrees with your opinion.
3. The jerk agrees.
The fact is, option three is far less common than the first two. Sure, your friends and family who think like you — or even worse, look like you — might agree. But the further an opinion spreads, the more likely it is that disagreements will occur. Internet commentary inevitably devolves into trolling and flame wars. If you point to positive feedback you’ve received online, I’d say, “gee, you’re really good at recognizing sarcasm, pal.” The spread of opinions is the spread of pain.
The worst offenders are letters to the editor. Some sap writes his op-ed and a bigger sap writes a response. That’s two opposing opinions guaranteed to make every reader miserable. These all get printed up in newspapers, thus killing the poor saplings who know better than to express themselves: the trees. To express yourself is to kill (trees).
You may then say, “Jack, I express opinions for the sole reason that I want people to like me.” Well, then you’re a politician, and everyone hates you. Your need to express yourself doesn’t just ruin the world around you, it craps on your parade, too. Every opinion you put out there makes people less likely to befriend you and more likely to throw sharp or smelly objects at you. It’s part of evolution, or something. Logically then, the man who lets out the most divisive opinion of all will have fossilized Neanderthal feces thrown at him. Don’t be that guy.
Opinions hurt your love life too: The blander you can be, the more people will love you. Take Mitt Romney — he has a personality that rivals that of a toaster. He will never disagree with your taste in music, even if it involves Ke$ha. Mormons are like that. And — historically — they tend to have the most wives.
I long for the times when opinions were limited to the king, the pope or a similarly funny-hat-clad individual. Back then there were only one or two opinions. They went something like this:
Guy 1: The King/Pope/Country Singer is perfect in every way. Long live him!
Guy 2: I love the King/Pope/Country Singer even more than Guy One, who is actually a traitor.
Those were the days.
But don’t give up hope. We can all do our part to make the world a happier place. Next time you form an opinion, quickly stop and think about what you’ve done. If you feel that you cannot contain the urge to express it, let the opinion out someplace devoid of human life, such as Newark.
So now I’ve put my opinion out there for all to see. You probably think I’m an idiot or even hate me for it. That’s my point.
Shamosh is a member of
the class of 2012.
