Opinion pieces are making you stupid

Here’s why

I couldn’t find an image of a exploding world in my photo library.

Another day, another opinion piece is sent into the world, so that the algorithm lapdogs can chew a bone.

The topic varies each time, from identity politics, through literature, to the science of climate and space travel and pandemics and vaccines and robotics and the Labour Party and the Nasty Party and foreign policy and table manners. And anything you could possibly imagine, since there’s nothing the Opinion Sage won’t tackle. This modern day sage (sophist?) has an infinite arsenal of ideas to deploy for actual expertise ins’t what matters in this game. What matters here is the talent for producing clickbait to a deadline.

And once inside the opinion economy the Opinion Sage’s ideology matters little as well. By partaking in the intellectual bankruptcy of the game the Opinion Sage ends up adopting the selfsame identity, becoming a member of the Commentariat — a muscle hired to keep the Spectacle alive¹.

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The more an …