Here’s why your opinion doesn’t matter

Five Mistakes Aspiring Opinion Havers Make

I have had strong opinions for 30+ years and shared too many to count

Author, getting ready to share his opinion — Wiki Commons

I’m an opinionated individual who joined his school’s debating club in 5th grade, even though it was open to 7th graders and higher. I started having opinions at age 2 and continuously held strong opinions for three decades¹.

In short, which I don’t like to be, I’m a professional opinioner, and I’m dogmatic.

But with the rise of social media, I have seen too many people thinking that having an opinion is easy. It’s not. And I’m not even talking about having a correct opinion.

Here are five common mistakes aspiring opinion havers make:

#1 — Failure to understand their opinion isn’t original (at all)

It’s a variation of the Dunner-Kruging effect. People read a blog post or scroll TikTok, see something newsworthy, think about it for a second (at best), and form (if you can call playing with mud sculpting) an opinion.

They believe this opinion to be original and worthy of further communication.