We’ve got a problem with opinions.

The problem, I think, is twofold. There’s too many of the bloody things, and no-one will put their name to them.

But that’s just my opinion.

I noticed this trend first in the Nexus Lettuce to the Editor page, which constantly drives me crazy, even though I should know better by now. Letters upon letters, full of drivel, defamation, idiocy and even evil. A lot can’t be published, even in a student magazine. We get the occasional good one, and I’d love to see more, but even they have a problem. More and more letter-writers demand a pseudonym instead of their real name, even for serious topics which have traditionally attracted plenty of people wiling to sign their name to them. What’s behind this?

To me it’s a curiosity. I stick my name on nearly everything I do – every hasty opinion, every slipshod editorial, every painstakingly thought-out article, partly because I’m contractually obligated to, but also because I was taught you’re supposed to own your opinions. You’re supposed to be able to debate with people who differ from you, and you’re supposed be able to stand up for what you believe.

But less and less people seem to be doing this. Someone sends in a totally innocuous letter, something that makes a bit of sense (a rare thing, given the quality of a lot of the letters we get) and they refuse to put their name on it. Not even a question of it. It’s hugely frustrating. I know who a lot of these anonymous personages are, and contrary to popular thought, none of them are Nexus people filling up the letters page. I think it’s part of the reason the Letters page are a permanent mess. People don’t mind sending out pure drivel if they’re confident they’re not going to be identified as idiots. A vicious cycle, because as soon as I threaten to run letters under real names we stop getting any.

I think a big part of this problem has been the Internet. A great, anonymous, amorphous blob of people and meta-people randomly spewing information all over. A community founded on the notion of anonymity, which has given rise to the bulletin board/forum, and in turn terms like “flame-war” and “troll.” A culture in which blogging about minutiae is the norm and having opinions of all kinds, no matter how ill-formed, is expected.

So what we have is a generation of people to whom it is second nature to spit vitriolic drivel and who aren’t used to signing their names to anything. That alone, I think, isn’t the problem. The main thing is that it’s easy to get bogged down in the vast information-swamp of the Internet.

Here’s an example; climate change. I, personally, believe it is at least partly anthropogenic and that we should be attempting to do something about it. But the key thing is that word “believe.” I don’t know this with any degree of exactitude, thanks to the thousands and thousands of different opinions swirling about cyberspace. There is too much information. And, not being a trained scientist or climatologist, I cannot sort through the information to select the good from the bad. I go with my gut, and hope the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change isn’t misleading me. (Actually, it would be brilliant if the IPCC was misleading me and climate change wasn’t happening at all, but I don’t think that’s the case.)

So, what we have is a generation full of on half-baked opinions formed of too much information and an unwillingness to own any of them. Perhaps because of the anonymity culture, or perhaps because they know the opinions aren’t all that.

But we still have small, local presses, like Nexus and I think it’s much easier to get an approximation of actual facts on a small scale. The macro scale of something as big as the Internet distorts everything, but in a (relatively) small community like a University, we can hope for a return to some kind of debate based on facts. Old-school. So, please, letter-writers. I’m asking nicely. Have some real opinions. Write them properly and spell them good. Then send them to us, and please, don’t be afraid to sign your name. Having a well-formed opinion is a mark of pride, and I think genuine debate would be a good thing to rediscover. But that’s just my opinion.