It's widely acknowledged, whether we think it applies to our own childhood or not, that our primary school teachers were blatantly lying when they told us “no opinion is too stupid to say out loud”. We all came to the bittersweet conclusion that the teachers only said that so that they could go back to their staff rooms, their family dinner tables, their social media accounts and regale the town about what stupid thing the stupid kid said today. Town crying like “Here Ye, Here Ye the child under my tutelage said the most outlandish thing. He inquires if the moon were fashioned from cheese? Oh how his dimness does entertain me.” But here’s something I truly never figured out: What exactly deems an opinion..bad?

Now I know the definite bad opinions. No matter what the Stupid Kid says, I know the Earth is not flat, the wealthy are not in the Deep State or lizard people and that the 2016 United States Election was not rigged by Mark Zuckerberg and his Bro-tocracy buddies. At least that’s what Reddit user38376675 told me was a bad opinion. And they told me again in 2024, quite aggressively actually, in case I forgot. So that must be a bad opinion, right?

But why? Maybe because of how I said it. I remember the afternoon clearly. I was in my Oodie, you know that blanket hoodie that is the official garb of those who have nothing to do but think. It’s ancestral actually. Socrates wore a toga when he bragged about knowing nothing and I wore an Oodie when I typed “the election was rigged lol!!”, signalling the same to every fire truck red Reddit user within a five pixel vicinity. Maybe it’s because I didn’t include that I’d studied political science at university and went on to do a Master's in corporatisation of media with a special focus in political campaigns. Maybe it’s because I had the audacity to type in all lowercase. Maybe it’s because I should’ve assessed my biases before I said anything.

They hated that I was too knee-jerk, so they downvoted me. Perhaps if I’d provided my research, linked my sources and supported my judgments, it wouldn’t be a bad opinion. But as far as I know, all the people who jumped down my throat in big capital letters didn’t have a relevant degree. They didn’t cite their statistics, so aren’t their opinions bad too? But now that I’ve been relegated to the table of bad opinions, wouldn't it be hypocritical for me to assign someone to the same fate? Or am I now qualified to?

It didn’t used to be like this. I think as soon as they placed that blanket ban on politics at the dinner table, it snowballed from there. Suddenly, politics tainted the flavour of our bread, and then it tainted our schoolrooms, and then it had nowhere to go but our comments on social media. Poor thing, it was so pent up. Then suddenly they started yelling at us for that too. And I can’t say it’s all bad. To be honest, some days, I yearn for when I could spend my days decaying my brain from cute cat videos. But when I told my friend that, she told me that was a bad take. So allow me to defend myself.

We hate censorship because it reminds us too much of that horrible nauseating anxiety when a swear word would show up during your turn to read aloud To Kill a Mockingbird or in year 8 when “lilly livered” and “pox fleshed” were snuck into your vocabulary because you were too scared just say what you mean. The same way we hate it, you can’t deny that sometimes it’s convenient.

Remember when Twitter used to have a ban on hate speech? That saved us all so much time, didn’t it? We didn’t have to wade through all the slurs, the bigotry, the constant racism, and that was just one guy who got bored with his hotel chain. Despite how controlled we’d feel, wasn’t the peace and quiet nice? Wasn’t there something so comforting about going on the internet and knowing that you couldn’t run your mouth but neither could they? Orwell warned us this would happen, but if he knew how often his book was recommended by every platform out there, now that his ideas seem more relevant, I’m sure he would have changed his mind.

See, my problem was never with my opinion being deemed “bad” or being told I was unqualified for the discourse. It’s more so that I don’t understand where to earn my course credits. When will I have the certification? And if I never earn it, will I never be able to speak my mind without people jumping down my throat to ask me to cite my stats? But really, I don’t think I would mind, if it wasn’t for the random lotto process we’ve got going on. It just strikes me as unfair. If discourse is no longer a civilian sport then can I at least watch some professionals? And not just the Stupid Kid saying Stupid things.