I've tried to write this essay multiple times, and there is a graveyard of drafts and attempts sitting in my notes. I initially titled it "Consumption and Production", with reference to what those two terms mean in the modern technological world, but there was a missing piece to tie the ideas together.

I got the missing piece a couple nights ago, when I went to a club meeting presentation focused on Iran, led by a Cal Poly faculty member. It was less of a direct presentation and more of a discussion, with many people contributing ideas. Aside from the seriousness of the topic at hand, I was struck by how people did not immediately agree with each other, and how they challenged each other's ideas. The presenter in particular was careful to maintain his own opinion rather than absentmindedly agree with everything the audience said, and that kind of stalwartness is refreshing to see. It is immensely valuable to be in a space where I must defend my ideas.

Part 1

I'm on Instagram a little too much, and I've noticed that if I am not careful, a lot of my thoughts get influenced by what I see on there. This was especially true last year when I had a very mopey romantic phase that wasn't helped by all the dramatic poems and songs and such I saw on there. The problem is that Instagram reinforces opinions you already have, and doesn't do much to guide you away from sketchy ideas. It shows you things you agree with, and then you like those things, so the algorithm shows you more of them.

Unlike the presentation I went to, Instagram never challenges your ideas. The algorithm is not going to show you something you completely disagree with, because you'll just scroll past it instead of sitting with it for a moment and allowing it to change the way you think. You end up with a feed of ideas you already agree with, which doesn't allow for much intellectual growth. To grow as a thinker, you have to sit with complex ideas, especially ones you don't immediately agree with or understand. Instagram does not incentivize that sort of content.

You might argue that it doesn't really matter, because Instagram is for silly things like cat videos or sports clips or memes. I disagree, primarily because I saw the role Instagram played (and continues to play) in discussions surrounding Iran over the past few months. I would continuously see videos from Iran, and then videos showing how those videos were propaganda from the regime. I would see video debates between members of the diaspora, one making a point, the other responding with a bad faith counter argument, and so on.

There was debate, but with none of the friction or accountability that comes from sitting in a room with someone you disagree with. On Instagram, you are less likely to see negative feedback. You can receive positive feedback in the form of likes, but if people disagree with your thoughts, you probably won't realize it (unless they leave a comment, but then you'd have to actually read the negative comments, which I don't think most people do). This was an important part of the discourse I saw in that club meeting presentation, the process of having your idea dissected and challenged in front of you. Instagram doesn't provide you with that. On Instagram, if you don't like what someone is saying, you can simply block them or scroll past them until they disappear from your feed altogether.

Most people on Instagram have an agenda. They want to shape the way you think, and will abuse the algorithm to do so. Instagram is a human made system, and is therefore subject to human manipulation. In the case of Iran, if I wasn't careful, I'd end up liking something I didn't wholly agree with, and then Instagram would show me something similar, until what I agree with completely shifts from my original opinion, without me even realizing it.

The bigger problem, in my eyes, is that Instagram does not emphasize critical engagement with the content you watch. The original idea for this essay came back in October, when Instagram had recently introduced the ability to "repost" other people's content so that it would show up in your friends' feeds. Moreover, what you repost shows up on your profile, as an archive of all the things you decided to repost.

This feature, along with the icons of friends who liked the reel you are watching popping up, and the ability to scroll through the reels your friends have liked, is a further push by Instagram to define users not by what they create, but what they consume. Being an Instagram user is slowly starting to become less about the photos and videos you've taken, and more about the content you've watched and liked.

You are slowly being defined by the opinions you agree with, rather than being forced to come up with your own opinion. You don't even have to write anything at all about something you repost, you can just hit the button and it'll pop up in your friends' feeds. This makes it incredibly easy for people with an agenda to gain a platform, using your like or repost as a way to increase the strength of their own opinion rather than making you present your own.

This isn't how the platform should be used. If you are going to advocate for an opinion, it should be in your own words. That's the only way to make sure you are advocating for something you actually believe in. I make an effort to not repost anything, not to my story and not using the repost feature. If I am going to have an opinion on something, it will be in my own words, because forcing myself to sit down and write what I think forces me to challenge my own ideas. It introduces friction to the process of discourse that I think is sorely needed in the modern world. It also forces me to maintain consistency between my ideas, and attempt to connect new ideas back into this nebulous cloud of ideas I already have.

If you repost content, or post someone else's words on your story, I'm not trying to criticize you. It would be extremely hypocritical of me to criticize something like that when half my essays are full of quotes and ideas I got from other people. Just last week I wrote an essay that is chock-full of ideas I got from Anthony Bourdain. This essay is also probably derivative of something I saw somewhere.

I am also not telling you to get off Instagram, or to stop reposting stuff. In fact, I think reposting is still majorly valuable, simply in terms of normalizing talking about certain topics. Reposting about Iran was valuable, even if you were not contributing new ideas to the discourse, because it exposed existing ideas to a potentially new audience.

I do think you should be including your own thoughts along with what you repost, though. It is important to come up with your own thoughts and opinions so that they don't get co-opted by someone else's agenda that is being pushed through the algorithm.

I'm biased, but I think you should be writing personal essays like this one. Forcing myself to stare at a blank screen and put together my ideas into a cohesive format designed to be read by other people has been an excellent way for me to develop my ideas and identify flaws in my argumentation, even without direct negative feedback.

Part 2

The second part of the original essay had to do with production, meaning the type of content we produce. I think there's also parts of this process worth criticizing, namely with the rise in AI usage and how we tend to use it. I'd like to preface this section by saying that I do not use any form of AI for writing, proofreading, or editing my essays. I write every word myself. I only get feedback on my essays from my roommates before posting.

The process of writing these essays, as I mentioned earlier, has been instrumental in helping develop my thoughts. The issue, though, is that I am seeing people who are a lot more concerned about the final product than the process of creating that product, and thus rely on AI to do the whole thing for them. To illustrate this idea more clearly, let's look at AI artists.

AI artists are people who come up with a prompt to generate an image using their generator of choice, and then present themselves as the creator of that image. Some of these images will be incredibly technically proficient, mimicking the style of masters like Monet or Miyazaki. The issue is that the value of art does not come from the product, it comes from the process of creation. The reason art is so worthwhile is because it allows you to connect with another human, it allows you to see the world through their eyes for a moment. For instance, when I look at a Monet painting, it shows me the way he saw the world, from the colors he chose to the way he depicts shapes. Even his choice of subject is indicative of something about him. The final product is beautiful, but thinking about why Monet might have made certain choices or why he decided to represent this particular thing is what makes the art so impactful. Sometimes you'll run into an artist who captures the world exactly the way you see it, who makes you feel seen and understood.

This is why our relationship with art can change over time, because we accumulate more experience and are able to connect with new kinds of art. A poem about lost love feels different right after a breakup, and perhaps comforts you in knowing someone else has been through what you are experiencing. It's not about the words themselves, it's about how those words make you feel. You'll likely forget the poem, but you won't forget the feeling.

Generative models are great at mimicking the structure of profound art, but their lack of lived experience makes it hard to connect with them. Whatever they produce might look good, but it misses the point of why we create art in the first place. We don't need a bunch of technically perfect poems and paintings. We need human connection. The process of pouring ourselves into our art is more important than the final product.

Beyond just art, I think this emphasis on the final product has made it even more difficult for us to be patient and sit with our thoughts. We're so dependent on instant gratification nowadays that it is hard to let ourselves not know something, to sit with the ending of a movie and come to our own opinion of what happened. It's similar to the problem I identified earlier with Instagram. Instead of coming up with our own opinions, we take the frictionless option of finding an opinion online or generating one using ChatGPT that we agree with.

I think it's more important to have an idea that is wholly your own than to have an idea most people agree with. In most scenarios, there's no ground truth, so the most agreed upon interpretation is no more correct or valuable than your own. The process of trying to understand is more important than the understanding itself.

This essay is titled Have Your Own Opinion because I think it's important for us to have an identity of our own, rather than simply basing our identity in what we like and what we agree with. Struggle with your thoughts a little, and write them down. Maybe it won't be perfect, but it will be yours.