The rise of social media has had a detrimental effect on humanity – even more of an adverse effect than humanity itself has had. Anyone anywhere can post anything for the entire world to read. Could be real. Could be fake. Could be an opinion. Could be hate. It doesn’t matter. Social media sites rarely filter these streams of consciousness from misinformed, self-important people who share their sometimes ignorant opinions on, well, anything.

One thing I’ve been seeing more and more is someone posting an opinion and then ending their opinion piece with the simple sentence, “Change my mind.”

So this random guy posts a random opinion on Reddit about how he thinks the Iron Man suits looked less realistic the older the MCU has gotten. Great. He has an opinion. He has shared it. It’s not inflammatory. Then he ends his little post with “Change my mind.”

Maybe it’s my lack of sleep. Maybe I’m just having a bad day. Maybe I’ve just finally had enough. All I know is those three words irritated the hell out of me this morning.

What is the end goal here? Are you looking for an argument? Is this some weird flex in which you are trying to assert your mental prowess? Is your opinion right and anyone with a different opinion wrong? My dude, I don’t care that you have an opinion, so I definitely don’t care enough to try to change it.

Social media is a great place for sharing ideas, civil debate, and hilarious memes – when actually used for that purpose. What annoys the piss out of me is when comment threads devolve into flame wars. At that point, civil discourse disappears and the keyboard warriors come out and begin insulting each other’s mothers – just like Al Gore intended when he created the internet. Like watching two people without arms trying to slap each other, it accomplishes nothing and just isn’t entertaining.

Yes, I realize the tone of this post is ironic given its content, but I’m slightly annoyed. Let’s all stop being idiotic and asking for arguments over pointless shit, shall we? Have an opinion you’d like to share? Great! Do it without inviting more negativity into the world wide wastebin. There’s enough vitriol in the world, I don’t think we need to go looking for more.