Having an opinion is hard. Not having one is harder.

Living in an era where it doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong, as long as you pick a side.

When I first got to middle school, public school was a new experience for me after being homeschooled for K-5. It was tough. There were social cues to learn and relationship and clique complexes to figure out.

But of all those things, I was forced into one unnerving debate every single day: Duke or Carolina?

For those of you are under a rock when it comes to the sports world, I’m talking about the University of Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill and their respective basketball programs. It’s a tremendous deal in North Carolina, to put it plainly.

I loved sports, but I hadn’t kept up with either of the teams well enough to make a decision that so decisively divided my group of friends. So I tried to do some research (homeschoolers are cursed with studious tendencies), and objectively they were both great ballclubs and over the past decade had been phenomenal.

But Jesus Christ, saying that to a Cameron Crazy or a Tar Heel gets you thrown directly into a trashcan or some other adolescent cliche. It wasn’t good though. Bringing logic to this debate was going to be like bringing logic to the debate about when exactly The Real World stopped being good, so I decided to take the alternate route and chose Boston College as my basketball team.

And I knew nothing about BC’s program. I do now, but I didn’t back then. At all. I researched enough to know who was on the team and the last time they’d won anything major (which was a long time unless you’re a fan of NIT trophies) and that was it. It wasn’t exactly what my friends wanted to hear, and I took a lot of crap for not liking the popular teams in the state, but I got on with life and so did they.

Now in adult life, surprisingly I’ve found that this trend has overflowed and continued into more important issues. It’s become the defacto way of choosing sides.

Think about it: a politician has a stance on ANY issue or says something controversial. What happens on Facebook and Twitter? Your friends/followers are taking stances on the issue at hand a mere 27 seconds after the incident went viral. And they take a firm stance. To quote Chuck Klosterman:

“Being interesting has been replaced by being identifiable.”

And you know your friends. You know who actually looked into the issue, used facts and figures and their personal principles and formed a real opinion. And you also know who saw their favorite columnist/talk show host comment about it and then echoed the very same sentiment.

The problem, I think, is that there seems to be more of the latter running around.

I pride myself on being a tolerant person. This isn’t bragging, tons of people have this quality. But what I mean is that I don’t care if someone has a different opinion than me on an issue as long as it’s truly their opinion. I’m much more interested in why my friends have their own personal opinions, regardless of whether it differs from mine, than I am about which celebrity they’re trying to be like.

That’s why debates on social media sites are worthless. Many people stake their claim on an opinion and then when it’s questioned, fiercely defend it with what they read. If you watch closely, you’ll also notice them steer the argument toward what they read/heard their columnist/personality say because that’s all they know.

Again, not everyone does this. Just a lot do.

I thought about it and I wondered when and why people decided that having somebody else’s opinion was better than forming their own and I realized I actually had the answer back in middle school: to be cool/noticed/part of the popular scene.

It’s always easier to be in one of the majorities.

I’d bet half of the Carolina/Duke fans I went to school with back then had joined their teams because someone started asking around and the movement grew. Soon enough, everyone was either on one side or the other and at a certain point, they started liking where they were at and stayed. (The whole “is it a lie if you believe it to be true?” idea could probably be adapted to this, but I don’t want to get any more philosophical on my weekend.)

I chose Boston College to remove myself from the equation. I now follow them because it’s more fun to be different. Many people today chose the Independent political affiliation to remove themselves from the equation. Being different means less pressure and more freedom and flexibility.

Even though majorities are founded because they originally held the characteristics that appeal to the most amount of people, after a generation or two, we have to remember to reevuluate what appeals to us, or else we’re all just hitching to bandwagons. And that’s not to say majorities are wrong, or wrong in everything. There is plenty of evidence to support that majorities get quite few things right, depending on who you are. But it’s becoming too abstract and people have to find what they believe or else there’s no evolution (in the non-scientific sense).

I haven’t engaged in a debate on social media that wasn’t something of mediocre, couch-potato stakes (pop culture, sports, and technology are fair game) in a very long time. I’ve chosen not to care publicly. And it’s tougher than it sounds.

I have opinions on a lot of issues today, but I also realize I don’t know enough about a lot more “issues” to have good opinions on them. I’ve accepted this in a blissful way, but probably detrimental-to-society way. I still hold faith that eventually it will become an important enough issue and I’ll do the research in order to vote or whathaveyou. But who knows, really?

ANYWAY, either way, I choose to publicly have no opinion. To publicly not care. I see many people blindly disagree with my thoughts or agree with them for the wrong reason all the time. And there’s nothing I will do about it. No debate to be had in the comments or mentions.

Because it seems, in the end, people are generally going to fall into the Duke or Carolina categories. It’s hard because there’s a clear adversary, but it’s also a much easier and safer bet because being in those camps guarantee certain givens and certain people you’ll be associated with.

Maybe, eventually, people will start learning that there are a lot of basketball teams out there to choose from. Maybe, eventually, people will learn that their individually researched choice is a lot more valuable to society than what others have to say, even if it differs.

Maybe, eventually, we’ll start cheering for the Eagles more.