Sources, Social Media, and Society

I am Andrew Goettler, and for approximately three months I have considered starting a blog.


Today I consider no more.


What has finally pushed me over the edge? In essence, the same force that caused me to even consider starting a blog in the first place. I've grown tired of the way the Internet speaks for the vast majority of its users. Both online and off, it seems that few people are able to or desire to speak their own opinions.
Instead, they express their views and beliefs through their responses to social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. A benign example would be a Facebook post opposed to say, school uniforms. People see the post on a friend or acquaintance's wall, and if they also feel opposed to school uniforms, they "like" the post and perhaps post it to their own wall.


The problem is that when I see a post such as this on my friends' walls, I don't know if this is truly their own opinion. I don't know if they simply posted it to their wall because it was popular or they liked the stylistic elements of the post. I do not know, indeed, I sincerely doubt, that they ever thought about their own knowledge and experience of school uniforms or sought out any anecdotal or statistical information concerning school uniforms. And in a digital medium where information is easy to obtain and words cost only the time it takes to write them, that bothers me.


Everything required to develop an informed opinion on almost any subject is easily available on the Internet; the number of ways through which such an opinion can be expressed are vast. Why then, do so many people express, perhaps even form opinions, based on an impulsive judgement, a gut reaction?


I write this blog to set an example; to show that through research, thought, and discussion, it is possible for a person to come up with his own opinion, and to express it to the world.  I speak for myself, and countless sites like Reddit, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and Google+, where many are content to let others speak for them, do not speak for me.
Those who read my blogs will discover what I believe. They will find that my opinion is my own, that it changes, and that it is sometimes ambiguous, not set in stone.


I am Andrew Goettler, and this is my blog.