The Young Turks YouTube channel cops a lot of trolling, ignorance and generally inflammatory rhetoric, but seeing the levels of aggressive ignorance on a recent video was truly appalling. Ignorance, I can deal with, but when when it’s accompanied by this degree of hostility, it fills me with a bitter, despairing rage. So, what was the video about? Well, for this years Halloween, a company released a costume dress titled “Anna Rexia”.
Why the name? Dunno. Seems like someone decided to be puny, but headed in a distasteful direction. The panel was split on whether the company had gone too far. I think the name is offensive, and given the way it’s marked I can understand why there is noise on the subject.
Of course, no one is expecting a rational debate on a platform like YouTube. But I found it deeply disturbing to witness the tirade of statments like, “they bring it on themselves”, “stupid people deserve to die”, “anorexia is a made up first world disease”, etc, etc. And this goes on and on, and some of these “discussions” become brutal, with anorexia survivors (who had the courage to identify as such in the ruthless forum), we told they were stupid, vain, self-obsessed, attention seeking, and so on.
One can only assume that most, if not all of these people’s whole logical process must be something like, “oh, I don’t understand or know anything about anorexia or mental health diseases, therefore all these things are made up, and/or self-created.”
Where does this faith in one’s own ability to know all come from? What makes them believe they know more than the psychologists, and neuroscientists that research these issues? What makes people, in general, think they should even voice an opinion, let alone be highly outspoken on any given subject, when they are running on nothing more than their own assumptions, and the assumptions of similarly uninformed types.
I think we need to discuss, as a society, what is the value of an opinion, and when one should bother to utter their opinion. Sure, we all have that right to free speech, but if we don’t know squat about the given topic then there is a good chance our opinion is worth shit all, and can be more harmful than constructive. I know, let’s teach critical thinking in schools from the very start. Surely these sorts of comments and unfounded opinions are beneath us, as a species.