Fence-sitting & Its Effects: A Study in Subjectivity

While an image of sitting on spiky fenceposts certainly conjures a few giggles from a wide audience, its consequences aren’t as funny. We’re taught mainly to evaluate other people’s writing in our primary & secondary education; only rarely are we encouraged to express(or form, for that matter) our own opinions. I find it ironic that our society encourages individualism, but rarely provides resources in formal education for developing this critical skill. This combined with a need for expression often leaves us in a state of heated confusion, tangled in a net of our own thoughts with no way to express them.

A true subjective exploration of a topic is just that: an exploration of the situation and the data by which it is surrounded. The best op-ed authors establish their philosophical/socioeconomical/ideological foundation, draw conclusions from a combination of that background and a variety of sources, and provide a clear call to action(or, in some cases, thought). The transition from objectivity to subjectivity to me means I am no longer letting myself sit on a fence  of indecision. Some authors I found that do an excellent job of crafting subjective arguments are Zac Stone, who penned a piece that was half tribute to his father, half admonition of a lack responsibility “marketplace” startups get away with,  Sarah Jaffe, who wrote about the duality of Amazon’s grip on city governments and those city’s seeming ignorance of underlying societal issues, and Noam Scheiber’s piece on a formerly incarcerated lawyer who caters to people who received similar sentences.

In a recent interview between John Mayer, a prolific musical artist, and Jerry Lorenzo, founder of streetwear company Fear of God, Lorenzo explained that people have a tendency to stay in tune with what’s happening, but in particular, we pay attention to what’s missing. I reflected on this and found many of my strong opinions were based on what I see as missing: the gender inequality in technology, entrepreneurship, and venture capital. I also have interests in the  ethics of computer science and the bias that programmers now are subconsciously incorporating into the algorithms that will continue to dictate what we see, eat, buy etc. Some current rhetorical situations I might consider responding in the next week to include the controversy surrounding the Grammys, the antivaccination movement, and the effect social media is having on our generation. 

For some, op-eds are important places to learn information about the other side of an argument. For some, they’re “lie-riddled” black holes of fallacy. For the majority of us, the op-eds are fact-based reinforcements of what we already believe – a security blanket stitched together with positive affirmation that our opinion is justified. Because op-eds usually draw heavily on emotion and the author’s personal background, they can be especially difficult to read for people who have opposite beliefs. The charged atmosphere of many op-ed alienates the people who belief differently. In addition, because of the algorithms applied by many of our news sources, we’re more often shown articles that we are most likely to click on – more ad revenue. This directly correlates to a silo effect when we read opinions similar to our own.

Because fence sitting isn’t as much an issue of people not having an opinion as it is them being afraid to express it incorrectly and be demonized in the press and among their social circles, I’m glad we were assigned an op-ed as one of our RWS assignments.