Hi, Peak reader. As one of the Ghosts of Opinions Section Past (my tenure was from February–April 2005; I replaced a guy who got fired mid-semester for kicking one of his fellow editors), I’ve been summoned back to these pages by a complex incantation involving pig-hoof potions and nicely worded emails to relay something that might be of use to the SFU student body of 2015.
Which is perfect, really, because I actually do have a piece of advice that I try to impress upon just about everyone. Better yet, it’s actually got to do with opinions.
Specifically: You should have fewer of them.
I mean, look. I get it. It’s fun and convenient to walk around casting stone-cold judgment on everything you see, hear, and read. And nobody’s going to retweet you for saying “This is a multi-faceted issue I haven’t had a chance to think through in detail yet.” But it’s a big world out there, and there’s always more information to be had. More context, more dissent. Which means it’s harder than ever to fully understand any single issue — yet people chime in anyway. Lord, how they do chime.
Have you ever challenged someone, only to realize that they were talking out of their ass the whole time?
It might not appear to cost anything to blurt out an opinion, because the Internet is basically infinite, but people’s attention spans aren’t. Every minute you force someone to engage with an undercooked yes / no verdict is a minute that neither one of you is getting back.
Have you ever taken the time to challenge someone, only to realize that they were talking out of their ass the whole time? Or, even worse, have them retreat into feeble mumbling about ‘playing devil’s advocate?’ I spent hours of my undergrad in beige tutorial rooms, staring daggers through variations of this same dipshit. No more. Be it resolved that in 2015, friends don’t let friends play devil’s advocate.
And now, some overdue atonement for my own sins. When I was in my second semester at SFU, barely 18 years old, The Peak handed me my own column. I quickly realized I had nothing intelligent to say, but scrambled to fill my pillar of text anyway. Results were, let’s say, mixed. (As one fan put it: “If you write one more column about writing a column, I’m going to stab your eyes out.”) At the time I defended myself with some vague claim to satire, but even then I knew that was some pretty weak sauce.
These days, I write another column — this one about books, for the Edmonton Journal — and I like to think I’ve learned my lesson. Just in time, too, since the literary world is notoriously bad at barfing out overly hasty opinions. That’s because books take kind of a long time to read, and the window for hot takes seems to shrink by the minute.
In the first instalment of this new column, in 2012, I took a vow of considered thought, and asked my readers to do the same. “By all means,” I wrote, “be curious. Be sceptical. Have high hopes, as well as high standards. But there’s no shame in abstaining, or in taking time to privately mull things over. In fact, it’s kind of liberating.”
Is it ever. If you don’t already know the sweet, sweet relief of not having to pretend to give a shit, I urge you to get familiar with it. As in, now. I didn’t figure out how to pump these particular brakes until well after graduation, when it became a legitimate quality-of-life-on-the-Internet issue. And the best part is that once you’ve opted out, you can use that newly freed mental RAM to be legitimately useful in that percentage of conversations in which you are qualified to run your mouth. Imagine that.
Have fewer opinions. While you’re at it, ask your friends, your date, or your mail carrier what they think. Or how about your grandma? That’s my second piece of advice: Call your grandma. She’d love to hear from you.
