You Aren’t Arguing With Experts Online

Everyone has an opinion these days, but you have to decide what that opinion is worth.

The people you are arguing with online are not "experts". Experts are off doing expert-y stuff, chief among which is, not being on Facebook. Scholars, experts, and professionals don't have the time or patience to discuss the issues of the day between videos of monkeys peeing in their own mouths (which should also be a great analogy for someone giving an opinion on Facebook).

My favorite online "expert" is the one who always says, "well our founding fathers thought..." Right there I call bullshit. First of all, you aren't psychic buddy, you have no idea what someone thought, you only know what was put down on paper and it's highly unlikely everything they thought was written down. Second, I don't care what somewhat thought over 200 years ago. Over 200 years ago you could die from a splinter. Benjamin Franklin did not make band-aids with little kites on them. So why am I going to take advise from people whos contemporaries believed in witches?  I hate to sound like "the Purge" here, but maybe we can get ourselves together with some New Founding fathers, ones that know how to use Google.

The point is, discussions are important, but you're just dealing with schmos, so don't let it get to you. These folks have one page open bitching at you while another is open to Wikipedia allowing them to make themselves look smart to you on the fly. It's all opinions on the social media level, and those opinions aren't worth more than the electronic sprites it takes to display them.