A Day Without Opinion

Way back in 2000 (yes it was twelve years ago), I can remember watching a breakfast television news report. It was probably on something really meaningless because, let's face it, at the turn of the millennium we had a Labour government that seemed to actually be doing something...well...good, no one had heard of quantitative easing, 9/11 and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan hadn't happened yet, rock music was still in the UK Top 40 and everyone was doing jolly well for themselves - not aware of the fact their reckless spending and accumulation of debt was going to force us all into financial oblivion. I was only 9 at the time, so my vision of 'the year 2000' (as it was still then known) may be a little skewed, but I also know it was meaningless because it was on GMTV; sadly now defunct.

Anyway after the news report had finished, the presenter then asked us, the audience, to text in 'our thoughts'. Wow...wait hold up! You want our thoughts? The general public? That's taking a bit of a gamble isn't it? And thus one or two people text in with some odd opinions, as they a. had a mobile phone capable of text messages (this is 2000 remember) and b. had nothing else to do at 7.45 in the morning.

I bet you had one of these didn't you? My highscore on Snake was something like 430. 

Now let's hit 88mph and come back into 2012, and all of a sudden everyone is commenting everywhere. Twitter is the main culprit of course, and you can't get up in the morning without checking your smartphone and having several vaguely famous people's opinions shoved down your throat over whether or not David Cameron's cat is evil...or something. Frankly, Twitter, and loads of other online forums and blogs, are fantastic. (On a slight side note however, it does worry me how lazy journalists seem to relay everything that has been said by someone on Twitter - especially if it is even remotely controversial).

But the problem with all these opinions is that your mind is constantly bombarded with them all the time, and simply cannot cope. The worst culprits for this are the online newspaper comments pages, from The Guardian, to the always entertaining and enraging Mail Online. And that's before we even dive into online forums, the murky waters of YouTube and countless other websites where Web 2.0 long outlived its cliche.

So how about a day where we can just switch off? Just for 24 hours shut Twitter down, so that random people can't abuse random celebrities (how to they actually get away with that?). Just one day to close down YouTube comments so that you can watch the video to A-ha's 'Take on Me' in peace without all the probable racist, homophobic and idiotic comments underneath. A day without having to be enraged by a Daily Mail online post that's been linked to you.

Yes we'll hate it. And I'd be one of those howling the most. But after just one meager, insignificant day (say some random Thursday in February so it doesn't clash with anything significant) thinking just for ourselves, we'll probably feel a lot better for it.