There was an article published by Odyssey back in May about being “over feminists.” The article was written by a woman that attends the University of South Florida and, like all other Content Creators of the publication, she decided to write about something that she had an opinion about, something she took a stance on. The article has garnered a lot of popularity recently and has been shared on Facebook by 410,200 people, and that’s a lot of people. But don’t be fooled so easily, not everyone who shared this piece was agreeing with the writer, many were lambasting her for being “uneducated” and wrong.
Social media has made sharing our thoughts, opinions, feeling and emotions so easy that we almost do it before we can stop and think whether we want to share this part of ourselves with the rest of the world or not. Anything we post has the potential to blow up and attract views from all over the world; that’s the beautiful and horrifying reality of the internet. But millions of people do it every day. We scroll through our social media feeds and come across anything from a video that sucker punches us right in the heart to a profanity-filled post about why the presidential candidates are not who many people envisioned would be running our country. But for every post that catches our eye, it has the potential to evoke an emotion or an opinion or a feeling in us that we feel inclined to share with others, like this feminist article did with thousands of people.
The purpose of Odyssey is not to intentionally infuriate our readers, but to start a conversation. To evoke responses from people who may have otherwise never stated their opinions. It’s an outlet for Creators to share their thoughts and to reach out to people who might have the same feelings, or even the completely opposite point of view, but one we want to hear about. It’s not that we’re sharing our opinions in an attempt to prove anyone wrong, most likely there’s 20-plus years of influence that has shaped a reader’s ideals up to this point. We’re not trying to tell you that your opinions and feelings are wrong; we just have an outlet to share our opinions with the rest of the world. So if those opinions infuriate you, make you angry, make you feel something for a topic you’d never cared about before, or even just because they made you laugh, we want to hear about it. We want the good, the bad and the ugly. At least then you’re talking and our purpose in this setting is fulfilled.
And just as everyone in the world is opinionated in their own way, whether outwardly or not, no one’s opinions are wrong, that’s why they’re all different. We’re all entitled to the freedom to say and think the way we want to. That being said, people are often enraged by opposing opinions as if everyone who doesn’t think the same way is automatically wrong. But who’s to say that any of it is correct? So why do we get so heated about topics that so many people are extremely opinionated about? Topics like feminism. All opinions about feminism aside, this Odyssey Creator did a great thing: She influenced so many people to share their thoughts on a hot topic, whether that was through a three paragraph response telling her she was wrong or simply by someone retweeting the article with a thumbs up.
Like the article says, “Beliefs are beliefs, and everyone is entitled to their opinion.” And that’s why we’re here, to bring the beliefs and opinions out of the minds that make the world go around. To start a conversation for the masses. We’re here to shed a little light on a topic. After that, it’s up to the readers to decide how to react.
