Too Many Voices, Not Enough Thinking
I’ve made the mistake, again, of spending time on Nextdoor. And once again, I’m reminded exactly why I left Facebook: Too many people have voices now.
Not thoughtful voices. Not informed voices. Just loud ones. People whose feelings outweigh their intellect on a given topic, but who are armed with a megaphone they absolutely insist on using. Volume over substance. Emotion over logic. Certainty without reflection.
Thirty years ago (yes, I’m old enough to say that) most of the nutjobs didn’t get airtime. Not because they didn’t exist, but because they had to go through gatekeepers. Editors. Journalists. People who asked annoying questions like, “Do you have facts?” or “Can you support that claim?”
Most of the unpolished thinking got filtered out. Most of the fact-free bullshit got stopped at the door.
Then came the internet.
Comment sections. Social media. Platforms that require absolutely zero effort to broadcast an opinion. No vetting. No accountability. No work. Just a burning need to be heard.
Because let’s be honest: these people don’t want discourse. They don’t want to earn an audience. They just want to speak and be listened to.
Like royalty. Without the responsibility.
Nextdoor, like most social platforms, started as a decent idea. A hyperlocal bulletin board. “Old Mabel saw someone peeking in windows.” “There’s a massive pothole forming, call the city.”
Useful. Practical. Community-oriented.
And then it devolved, because any platform that lets everyone speak, with minimal moderation, inevitably collapses into the chaos of free thought.
Yes, liberty includes freedom of speech. No, that does not mean everyone’s thoughts are worth hearing.
Liberty, at its core, is the right to have a thought. The second part, the one everyone conveniently forgets, is the right to act on that thought only so long as it does not infringe on the liberty of others.
Scrolling Nextdoor now is like watching ideological whiplash in real time.
People screaming for more government control where it absolutely does not belong: housing markets, pricing, economic intervention-essentially begging the state to tinker with free markets. That’s not compassion. That’s a dangerous fucking slip-n-slide of unintended consequences.
And in the same breath, those exact people oppose government intervention where it does belong: basic public order. Laws around decency. You know… like not allowing people to shit on sidewalks.
Pick a lane. You don’t get to demand regulation when it benefits you and cry “freedom” when it doesn’t.
None of this makes sense. Are we really this backwards now? Do we no longer teach what liberty actually means? Do we gloss over the sacrifices made in its name and replace them with feelings, slogans, and moral tantrums?
Or did we just decide that thinking is optional as long as the comment box is open?
I don’t know what the fuck happened. But I know this: not every thought deserves a microphone. And pretending otherwise is how we end up shouting ourselves into stupidity.
