As students and citizens we are always being taught. We spend 8 hours a day, approximately 180 days a year in school. And even when we aren’t in a school building we are constantly being presented with information. Most people think nothing of it and boil it down to “society being pushy with opinions” but it’s almost always more than that. Even when we aren’t intending to remember things our brains are still storing the data.
Furthermore, would you be surprised to know what your opinions are actually grounded in? Have you ever questioned why you might think something beyond just the situation you’re in? More than likely not. As people we often operate on instinct because it’s the safest option when it comes to critical thinking, especially in social situations. This is not to say that your thoughts aren’t your own, but have you taken a real look at the information you encounter every day.
Everyone experiences public and private influence, we all think things because someone else said they were true from time to time. It’s not some grave fault, but it’s also not something to let go so easily under the radar. We as a society need to remember that people are not always right just because they are the first to say something. As people we are very impressionable and we often take on the opinion that we see benefit us the most. In doing this we confirm our own biases. This waters down the individuality of society, and before you know it we are all marching blindly into something we hadn’t even signed up for.
A lack of vetted counterarguments to an original point leaves vulnerable space for manipulation and propaganda, including in situations involving gossip and rumors. Boy A and his friend Boy B are talking about Girl A. Boy A says that Girl A dated his best friend and cheated on him. Boy B now thinks of Girl A poorly. Girl A was not given the opportunity to make a counter argument or defend herself. But now what Boy A said is treated as true because no one else could debate it. Then Boy B tells Girl B and so on and so forth. This happens every day, someone says something and it’s immediately carried down the grapevine without being fact checked. Eventually it’s not a rumor, it’s recognized as a standalone truth.
Brands like Lululemon and Brandy Melville are where they are specifically marketed to people who fit a certain criteria and therefore can have extremely limited perspectives on which customers get to be considered. As a consumer do you know this? You might think that the things that you’re purchasing from your favorite stores are designed to appease the general customer. But they’re not. It’s not curated for you. It’s curated for a certain group of people and nobody else gets to be in on the trend. You have to be able to afford the expensive brand and fit into the buyer profile. This means that things like durability are only examined by a certain group which in turn means that quality is only good for certain people. Just as some products have historically been designed around a limited group of users, these brands are designed to keep the most favorable consumers happy.
So why should you care? What does this all mean? All of these things have to do with information. The information we take in, the information we find valuable and the information we want to hear. And all of these examples are of information being ingested and then distorted. It appears one way and then when you look a little further it’s a whole other claim. This is why you have to be aware of what you are grounding your thoughts, biases, morals, and your claims in. What you see is almost never as it appears. Even this article should be examined before being used as yet another thing to believe in blindly.
