Nowadays, people often have strong opinions on many different topics: politics, pop culture, religion, wars, and even everyday issues like what movie to watch. However, over the last decade or so, people have made everything increasingly controversial. Like you have to pick a side, and no matter what you choose, someone is going to be upset with you. Why is that? Why does everything have to be an issue? What can we do to make that stop happening and make everyone feel included? When did this even happen?
I would like to say that this is an opinion article; you may not agree with everything said in this article, and that is ok. Again, this is my opinion; if you disagree, you do not have to read it. Enjoy!
I personally had a tough time writing this article because of how controversial everything is. When I tried to write something, I would delete it almost every time because I didn’t want to offend any group of people. I want to use this as a demonstration to show how bad controversy has gotten. It’s to the point where some people are taking things so far out of context, or interpreting them differently than the way they were intended.
One question that has to be answered is whether people are more opinionated or if they are just sharing their opinions more openly due to social media. I believe that people are just more open to sharing their opinions online. Picture this: you are scrolling through TikTok, and you see a video about politics or something like that, and you look at the comments. You see every person saying that they hate this person and that no one should like them, or that anyone who doesn’t like them is crazy, or people arguing about genuinely irrelevant things. This is really annoying; it makes people feel like having an opinion is illegal, which the First Amendment protects.
Another thing with social media: when you are online, you are hidden behind a screen. There is no one to hold you accountable for the things you say, no one to even know who you are. I honestly think that this is part of the reason people say some very offensive or controversial things. Developing those habits of sharing your
opinions openly is not a bad thing. It might even be more beneficial than not talking about your opinion, but it gets to a point where some people are scared to talk about things because they are scared of getting “canceled”.
Which leads me to the point of my writing this. I want people to realize that not everyone will agree with your point of view, and that is perfectly ok. On top of that, just because you don’t agree with their point of view or opinion doesn’t mean that you have any right to exclude them or think of them as less than because of their opinion. That’s what the word opinion means; there is no right or wrong answer, it is different for each person. Some people are treating certain topics like there is a right or wrong answer when in reality, it’s just your point of view. So the next time someone disagrees with you, hear them out rather than argue.
