While I’ve never been a big content creator on social media, I recently started to appreciate the creators far more. Expressing your opinions helps you to share reactions and detail your thoughts. Facebook and others have made it easier than ever to express your opinions through the content of others, such as journalists, bloggers, and YouTube stars. Beyond that, it’s far easier than ever to reach a huge audience with your thoughts. People ingest far more opinions, news, and ideas than ever before.
The new methods of sharing content, and work required, have created a wide spectrum of reporters and opinion makers. Sharing of an article can be a lazy way to hop onto the rhetoric of others or a heroic act of supporting an opponent’s views. It’s the 140 characters and context that support the article which is where the meaning lies. Writing with the ability to break away from these bite sized opinions provides an entirely different set of challenges.
Writing opens the box for any thought to penetrate the story and lead the idea. Writing requires an analysis of many different options, not a binary response to reading another’s work. The way that these decisions are made, how ideas are presented, and points of view explained, gives character to the writing and insight to the reader.
I’ve often struggled giving my full respect to those who scream their opinions on social media as if they mattered. Much of this is dictated by my history with Facebook, 10 years now, in which nearly every person I’ve met in that time has become a connection. My thoughts attached to someone else’s work feels like a better way to lose friends than make them. And when I disagree with others, I don’t plan another’s words to cause that rift. The access to so many has given me pause when expressing my ideas.
If I insist on being the writer and feel left out by not sharing my ideas, it’s time to start writing.