"No Opinions? No Problem" (Wired)

[On the Road]

Commentary by Lore Sjöberg

---snip

The Enigma
Don't want to take a stand on a controversial issue, but are dying to contribute to the conversation anyway? Just share a single, vaguely pertinent fact. Context-free data is to an online discussion as raw meat is to a cage full of starving Rottweilers and indignant vegetarians. Say you're looking at an article about gun control. Just pop in and say, "Over 10,000 unarmed people are shot to death by criminals each year."

Are you in favor of gun control or against it? You're not saying, but people on both sides will leap to the attack. You'll be the belle of the brawl. By the way, I just made that statistic up. You can go ahead and make up your statistics, too. It just gives people more to argue about.

---snip

The Cynic
This is one of the easiest techniques, and one of the most powerful. Just remember this handy phrase: "What did you expect?" Did the president get caught trading endangered tiger skins for high-grade heroin? "What did you expect? Politicians are all corrupt." Did tornadoes grind Topeka into a fine, wheat-scented powder? "What did you expect? It's in the middle of tornado country." Did alien amphibians descend upon Canada and devour everyone amid bilingual pleas for mercy? "Come on, there are 100 billion stars in the galaxy. Did you really expect that not one of them would be home to carnivorous toad-people?"

Because everything you're "predicting" has already happened, nobody can prove you wrong!

http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70124-0.html?tw=wn_index_5

Boy, do those tactics strike a chord. Leave it to Wired to distill a technology life-style issue into a few entertaining bites.

[henslee]

1. What did you expect? And are you that suprised?

[regularguy]

2. Owned!