Your opinions can (sort of) kiss my arse by Matt Comras

Thanks for Matt Comras’s thoughts, Brooker

Brooker

Dirty Harry claimed that, “opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one.” Old filthy Harry was certainly right about one thing, opinions are like arseholes, but only because they stink.

They stink because they’re someone else’s. They stink because they waft into our lives, float round the room, everybody has to sniff it and even when they’re gone, they’re never totally gone, you’ve just got used to them. (They’re in the fibres!)

As you know, the opinion piece is the villainous vehicle for the stinkiest of opinions. Great big whoppers of opinions, coming at you in a 600-800 word beautifully written article that crawls through your eyes and stinks up your cranium.

Here’s the problem. Given the abundance of opinions on offer, I’ve lost the power of independent thought.

On occasion, a subject crops up that I think I’d like to able to talk about. Thing is, rather than do the research to find out what I actually think I just read an opinion piece on the matter by Will Self or Caitlin Moran then simply reappropriate their thoughts as my own. I morph into a thought conduit. I become a vessel for other people’s opinions. I’m a little teapot, short and stout, tip me up and I’ll tell you exactly why I hate atheism, courtesy of Charlie Brooker.

The upside is I’m extremely interesting at a party (providing you haven’t read the same article I have). The downside is I can no longer think for myself. I can’t research, I can’t find truths, I can’t form opinions of my own. True story, at the moment I really want to know how I’m supposed to think about pornography but no one has written the appropriate opinion piece yet. Come on Stewart Lee! Where are you Mary Beard? Am I allowed to wank or not? Tell me what to think!

Opinion pieces are killing independent thought, infecting young minds and didactically dismissing patent truths. But you know what? In a shock twist to this tale I say keep ‘em coming. I want more. I want them all day. Why? Because I don’t have time to be coming up with a load of good thoughts to say to a sexy someone about something I don’t know. Fill this grubby little teapot up with your under-researched garble and misinformed viewpoints, I’ve got a dinner party to go to.

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