The era of the Professional Bad Opinion-Havers
Let us now praise unserious men, and the tweets that begat them.
No matter the topic. No matter the circumstances. No matter the time of day. No matter if you wanted to see them or not. The internet landscape has become infected with them.
Like nightcrawlers who bubble up to the surface of your front lawn after a summer rainstorm, these people appear every time a trending topic is born. They have created a cottage industry out of their bad online opinions and takes. They find it quite easy to capitalize on your attention; whether that attention comes in the form of rabid agreement, rage-filled disagreement, or a passive rolling of the eyes, the direct deposit always goes through.
Just like those fat worms, the ones you find in the fridge at the tackle shop, there’s good money to be made in cheap bait. In the attention economy, all buzz is good buzz.
As a result, we have an elite class of Professional Bad Opinion-Havers. These people have gone pro in satisfying our society’s addiction to spending our leisure hours outraged over something somebody said. And the demand is still increasing for these bad takes from the PBOH.
Who are these professionals? They are a loose collective of people. Generally, their names will be known to you but mostly only because you hear them in passing. Some once were people in power who have lost their titles, a few once held occupations that signified respectability but no longer hold the same gravitas, and others have long since slipped into the realm of just being known for being known.
And they pontificate in sound bites of information intentionally crafted to provoke, proclaiming their takes in a confidence only the uniformed poses.
What do they speak about? Everything and nothing but some favorite opinions are about wearing masks, men crying, popular music, trans people, kids these days, the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine, critical race theory, or this week’s special, Simone Biles and mental health. They are out there peddling these takes because this is what the market demands.
The Bad Opinion-Havers have come to dominate the discourse with a combination of weapons-grade stupidity, bad-faith arguments, and complete disgust and contempt for people who are different than them.
It does not matter if these opinions are wild-caught or farm-raised, formed from a genuine set of values or spouted simply because not having a take is akin to death for the PBOH, the mass of consumers are not finicky at all.
And to counter them is to enter their arena and accept the premise that their bad opinion was valid. Live worm or spoon lure you still swallowed the hook.
These bad takes usually first appear on social media. That’s where the PBOH peddle their product to the internet wholesalers. If you aren’t on social media and believe you avoided all this don't gloat because their words will spread to any social media network or website or neighborhood message board you frequent. Thanks to the online content industry based upon getting as many keywords into stories and headlines, these bad opinions on the story du jour will be fed to everyone, no matter the demographic.
The content aggregators of the internet do most of the heavy lifting of distribution for the PBOH, you see. The argument, the counter, the rebuttal. All of it is packaged up. This is a symbiotic relationship. A partnership built upon mutually beneficial indignation. A true American renewable resource.
If you use the internet or watch television news you are included in this customer base for the Professional Bad Opinion-Havers. These 'articles' and TV stories about a PBOH all follow the same two basic premises: "You know that person you hate? They said something awful on cable news about somebody you love" and his cousin "You kinda know that one person who sometimes you hear saying wild things? They said something incredibly dumb on Twitter about something you might have seen on TV.” You will see those stories while scrolling through Facebook later today.
What was the take about? That doesn’t matter. Who said it? That matters even less. All that matters to the machine is that somebody somewhere in the ecosystem of online opinions says the thing which gets enough people to react with sufficient intensity.
What about cancel culture? Puh-lease. The audience is here for what’s inside, they don’t care about the name on the wrapper. And how could anybody ever be barred from a game in which the opinions are always getting worse? Don't doubt our ability to dream big.
At the end of the day, one lucky PBOH gets to be the Ruler of the Discourse, their reward for dominating that day’s allotment of our collective internet attention. Then the board resets for tomorrow. This business is like baseball: we do this every day.
Who is to blame for all this continuous deluge of drek?
The Professional Bad Opinion-Havers, primarily. (The semi-pro and amateur ranks who are not yet able to fully monetize their trade deserve mention, too.) The people who reprint and rebroadcast those intentional bad opinions for personal gain and without regard for the impact on society? Sure. And all the rest of us for not being able to control our urge to gawk at the bad opinions as they come bubbling up from the mud before waving our friends and family over to join in our disgust or to revel in others’ sorrow or to add to the debate.
For now, the game will continue. There is an entire universe of wedge issues. And plenty more cleavages to exploit.
Tomorrow we will get a new topic. Another PBOH will be crowned. Rinse and repeat. The clouds burst, the rain comes, the worms return.
Take your pick, they all catch the big fish just the same.
Ben Krimmel is a writer from Baltimore who lives in New York.