I’ve been told before I have a taste for controversy. Well, I did at the time. Since then, I would in some cases rather tend towards the sort of fictional escapism that doesn’t expose me to equally fictional petty injustices, or otherwise seem to challenging. And in my online arguments, I’m now much less willing to argue my point of view with wild abandon, largely because it tends to piss people off (even when I don’t know if it will) and I don’t really enjoy pissing people off. There are some dubious activities I tend to indulge in, however: one is the tendency to fantasize, as a means of blowing off steam about what I’d do if I somehow magically became the mentally unhinged absolute ruler either of my country or the world (and burden my relatives with the details of all the things I’d ban and who I’d have exiled to Antarctica). That is not the main focus of this article, however. The second is looking at other people’s “unpopular” or “controversial” opinions online. This one is.
Now a lot of these opinions, whilst controversial, are not necessarily all that unpopular, nor are they so controversial you won’t find large amounts of ready sympathy online and not be as censored as you’d like to think. These discussion threads, Quora questions, etc. are usually excuses for people with commonly held, vaguely understandable, if not altogether pleasant or helpful or actually fact-based, reactionary views to air them. Stuff like “There are only two genders- male and female, as determined by what’s between your legs!” or “People on benefits are almost all lazy and entitled and need to be made to work!” or “Pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza!” (OK, I agree with that last one- at least if it’s the pizza I happen to be eating.) Nothing as truly unpopular or controversial as “Hitler was right and everything wrong in society is the Jews’ fault! Oh, and by the way, that Holocaust thing never happened, or at least didn’t kill all that many people!” or “Black people should be sold back into slavery!” (If you genuinely hold those latter views, you are genuinely better off moving to Antarctica.)
But recently I’ve come across another, more slangy, phrase that fits much better: the “hot take”. This seems to be largely some sort of hastily produced reaction to something, usually found in journalism, designed to stir up some kind of controversy and not always thought out. Occasionally I’ve had, and occasionally expressed, thoughts that can seem a bit hot-takey. So I thought, maybe I could call them that. But perhaps then again, the description doesn’t fit. And I have a tendency to want to mull these things over in my mind and examine the shortcomings of these points of view. So how about I write one of those things I haven’t done in a long while a blog post (shock! horror!) or perhaps even a veritable series of posts (what?!?) about some of my odd opinions which followed such a format: do a hot take, then attempt to deconstruct it.
Initially this was going to be just one post, but in the interest of trying to break it down and make it more manageable (not to mention fulfilling my undone goal of finally posting more regularly!) I thought I’d do it one hot take at a time, and break it down each post.
The format will go something like this:
Title: Whatever silly thought comes to mind.
What I really mean: Rephrasing the point in more sensible terms.
Caveats: Things that need to be mentioned by way of caution, since these posts could be controversial or offensive to some readers if misunderstood.
Breakdown: Further analysis of the issue.
Expect more soon!
Republic of Lyniezia 