Lifehack: Did you know that your opinion on whatever you just watched on Netflix doesn't matter?

Here's something your friends and family—but especially you—can keep in mind next time you watch something on Netflix and get the inclination to share your thoughts on what you just saw: nobody cares.

Not one person cares.

You may think that your opinion matters, but it really, really doesn't. If millions of people are talking about the same show you just watched, the odds of your opinion being novel, interesting or insightful in a way that hasn't been enumerated ad nauseam are very low. In fact, it's zero. But here's the good news: you can avoid sharing it by just not.

Don't. If you think that might not work, try not doing it some more. Wait a while. Repeat steps 1-4 forever.

Want to tell us what you thought of the new hyped-up bullshit that everyone is watching? Try this neat trick:

That's all it takes. It's easy to remember, but I've made a simple mnemonic to help you remember to not share your opinions on Netflix shows: YOONSDM, which stands for Your Opinion On Netflix Shows Doesn't Matter.

Did you know? Every time you share your opinion on something you watched online, it's an infinitesimal contribution to the failure of social media as communication platform?

There are exceptions to the rule, of course, like if you're someone who writes movie reviews or TV shows for a living. Why? Well think about it this way: it's their job. They do this shit all the time, so people have come toexpect something you lack: consistency and an established point of view. It'd be like if someone espoused a negative review of a steakhouse that you later found out the person was a vegetarian. It would be helpful to know that ahead of time so you can dismiss their opinions outright, and yet few people are as transparent or well-known enough for their opinion to matter.

Movie and TV show reviews are similar in that certain people love or hate certain genres of entertainment, and knowing what they love or hate ahead of time is necessary for their opinion to matter. For example, if a person hates horror movies, I know their opinion doesn't matter because they are cowards.

Did you know: shut up.

The fact that most social media is intrinsically geared to discourage long, thoughtful points of view make it nearly impossible for you to even write anything that would even begin to make your opinion matter. Twitter has an arbitrary 280-character limit, which requires people to write long, disjointed threads that are broken up in small disparate chunks that can then get "re-tweeted" out of context, dashing any hope of a cohesive thought being communicated.

Nobody will ever see this.

Facebook has the notorious "see more" link on posts longer than a few sentences, which is about as close as they can get to telling their users to "see less." Verbosity isn't a virtue, but neither is arbitrary brevity and social media has imposed a coherency penalty. Some opinions can't be expressed in social media. In fact, most opinions. But the good news is, knowing that your opinion doesn't matter helps soothe the sting of not being able to express it in the first place.

Next time you're mouthing off about how much you love some bullshit you just watched, unless the majority of your audience knows who you are and what you like, remember YOONSDM. And in the event that your audience does know who you are, like your friends and family, it defeats the purpose because they already know what you think. And if you're still not sure, just play it safe by deleting your social media account. Remember: over 7 billion humans all think they're unique and that their voices matter. Some don't. Most don't. LIFEHACK!

102,859 people think their opinions matter.

© 1997-2017 by Maddox

© 1997-2017 by Maddox