Opinion pieces are making you stupid

Here’s why

I couldn’t find an image of a exploding world in my photo library.

Another day, another opinion piece is sent into the world, so that the algorithm lapdogs can chew a bone.

The topic varies each time, from identity politics, through literature, to the science of climate and space travel and pandemics and vaccines and robotics and the Labour Party and the Nasty Party and foreign policy and table manners. And anything you could possibly imagine, since there’s nothing the Opinion Sage won’t tackle. This modern day sage (sophist?) has an infinite arsenal of ideas to deploy for actual expertise ins’t what matters in this game. What matters here is the talent for producing clickbait to a deadline.

And once inside the opinion economy the Opinion Sage’s ideology matters little as well. By partaking in the intellectual bankruptcy of the game the Opinion Sage ends up adopting the selfsame identity, becoming a member of the Commentariat — a muscle hired to keep the Spectacle alive¹.

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The more an opinion piece causes a reaction the better it works. Not for the reader, that infant who’ll be once more manipulated into outrage or total agreement according to the day of the week in which the opinion piece is excreted. The larger the reaction the better for the advertisement department of publication X, Y, or Z.

From the candidness of the diet-left columnists and their boutique mental illnesses (cured with essential oils, breathing exercises or the music of Harry Styles), through the pseudo-unbiased pseudo-intellectualism of the centrist scribe, to the miserliness of the right wing contrarians and their love of speaking truth to power by punching down, there is a huge spectrum of opinion to be delivered pedagogically, in short tweetable sentences, masticated into a cretinous pulp, in order to keep us nicely chained to the cycle of consumption, (over)reaction and powerlessness: morons clicking links in autopilot while we happily contribute to the complete and total expansion of a capitalism that more and more is made of data.

Spoiler: this piece also contributes to this process. For the simple reason that anything that uses the same language and media favoured by capitalism in order to deliver a critique is sterile. The most radical act in 2022 is a silent deed.

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“Now we want more than just facts, statistics, quotations and death-counts. We have been anaesthetised to the impact of objective fact by sheer, unsatisfying volume. Only subjectivity can still shock. Cue the opinion piece,” writes Marcus Solarz Hendriks in a poignant essay tracing the genre’s journey from the middle to the front pages.

This is a journey that is marked by subjective shifts in readers but also a total change of paradigm regarding what constitutes the news and how we consume them. As publications continue to move online — and therefore continue to compete for smaller crumbs — a cheap genre like the opinion piece will continue to grow in stature. Journalism is expensive to produce; for an opinion piece you just need the Opinion Sage, a word processor, and the opinion muses.

The Opinion Sage is our Messiah. The Messiah is well-paid.

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Even dissemination is easy.

For once published the algorithm lapdogs will see that every piece of clickbait gets properly disseminated, especially the algorithm lapdogs potentially outraged by a given opinion piece. The opinion economy is ideologically blind here as well. The opinion economy is truly inclusive, doesn’t care who does the work of sending the word out. The opinion economy wants the engagement of even those who are shat on by society. The opinion economy loves us all.

And we love the opinion economy — it’s the one thing we can still believe in. Because the vacuity of our opinions is one of the few places where we don’t feel alone, we feel part of a community. The opinion economy is nothing but a church.

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Soon AI will be writing opinion pieces and opinions will finally be post-human. What will AI opinions be like? Will AI opinion pieces be directed at humans or at other AI beings? Will AI get addicted to opinions too? Will the boutique maladies of AI be cured with essential oils? Will AI be unbiased, like the wet dreams of a centrist dad? Will AI punch up by punching down?

I get the feeling that the end will come not in the shape of a nuclear Apocalypse but as an opinion piece that will make our heads explode like in Scanners. Opinion pieces already made us stupid. They might as well finish the job.

1. Want to water down someone’s “progressive” ideas? Invite them to a talk show. Want to make the ideas totally inane? Make them the host.