Don’t Confuse Volume with Truth
The human species isn’t on a steady decline into stupidity — it just feels that way.
Why? because now everyone has a microphone.
A few decades ago, the loudest voices in the room were filtered by effort, editors, publishers, broadcasters, academics, or sometimes just the looming threat of social ostracization.
If you wanted to shout your theories about how birds are government drones or how Elvis is alive and living in your basement, you’d need to put in some work: submit your nonsense to a newspaper, write a manifesto, shout at strangers in the park, or get your own cable access show. That took effort, money, and a certain level of charisma (or at least persistence).
But now? Now, anyone can boot up a Twitter account, slap some hashtags on a poorly spelled opinion, and go viral before lunchtime.
The internet hasn’t made people dumber, but it has made the stupidity visible. The dark side of having a “great equalizer,” a democratization of the soapbox, is that everyone’s thoughts, no matter how brilliant or ridiculous, have a shot at becoming part of the cultural conversation. This might sound like progress, and in some ways it is, but it also means that the person shouting at pigeons in the alley now has the same broadcasting power as a Nobel laureate. Actually, scratch that — the pigeon…
