Now Everybody's An Expert

Juggling four offices and a 60-hour work week in his forensic counseling practice, my husband rarely has time to chill out and watch TV.
So it was an occasion worth noting when I walked into the family room and saw him seated in front of the big screen chuckling to himself.
“What’s so funny?” I asked him.
“This info-mercial,” he replied. “This so-called therapist is hawking his book and tapes on how to change your life by changing your attitude.”
“So?” I shrugged. “It’s not like we haven’t heard that song and dance before.”
“Yea, but I personally know this guy,” said my husband, shaking his head. “He doesn’t even have a degree in psychology much less a license to practice. All he has is a hypnotherapy certificate. Where does he get off posing as if he’s some big expert?”
“That’s just the problem with society today,” I told him. “Everybody thinks they’re an expert whether they truly are or not.”
Yep, that’s one of the reasons I’m sitting here at home blogging and collecting unemployment instead of doing something productive like looking into the reason for cost overruns on what should have been a routine road construction project.
I’ve been replaced by citizen journalists and user-generated content providers who can do my job for free.
Well … they could do my job. Except they don’t want to make the effort to sit through boring meetings, wade through reams of boring documents, makes tons of phone calls and interview tons of people to get both sides of the story and then go out of their way to make sure the story is well-written, interesting, factual and, most importantly, credible.
I’m flabbergasted as I read through endless streams of blogs posted by self-professed authorities on various subjects and find fiction presented as fact, propaganda passing for information and self-serving punditry qualifying as legitimate truth.
Where can the public turn for fair, unbiased information in this digital age? The public doesn’t have any guarantee that its getting facts or half truths from the Internet. After all, who is holding the blogger accountable?
In this information era when we’re being bombarded with content from televisions, computers, phones, IPods, radios and anywhere else marketers can think of to infiltrate our brains, we’re getting carpet bombed by a generation of self-proclaimed experts who have established themselves as bloggers and twits with forums that provide them with a semblance of legitimacy despite the fact that they have no credentials.
Sites such as HubPages, Allvoices.com and Examiner.com have recruited bloggers on virtually every subject matter of interest in every community across America.
For instance, Meryl Lee, the Tampa Beauty Examiner for Examiner.com, is available to provide all sorts of practical advice on fighting frizz and keeping your skin smooth.
“We all have seen the commercials for Smooth Away promising lasting hair free results. Now you can buy them in any store. The question is, do they work.” said Meryl Lee in her blog, minus question marks and hyphenation.
I’m anxious to hear what Meryl Lee, who looks about 15 years old in her photo, has to say. After all, she’s the Tampa Beauty Examiner.
“The result is no they don’t. I wanted to try these because I hate shaving. Also my skin cant tolerate shaving my legs more than once every two weeks.”
Thanks for sharing and forgetting the apostrophe, Meryl Lee.
She ended her blog saying that Smooth Away does have some redeeming qualities.
“I would add that the smaller pad is great for little patches of hair. If you have a few hairs on your toes or stomach that you would like to get ride of this works really well.”
Hey, guess what Meryl Lee? You’re a freak. I don’t have hair on my toes or stomach.
As a Tampa Bay homeowner, I especially appreciated this blog on AllVoices under the headline “Tampa Bay Real Estate Great Place For Your Investment.”
“Tampa real estate is the place where to look for quality of home to purchase whether it is a vacation home or a place where to retire to. If you are thinking of place to relocate, you do not have to worry because Tampa can provide you all that you need and trying to look for.”
Whew. Now I can sleep tonight, especially since this report received a top beta rating by Allvoices.com.
According to Allvoices.com, “This beta report credibility rating is intended to help our community sort through uncensored citizen media reports. The credibility is based on community interaction and response, reporter reputation and the power of the Allvoices intelligent news analysis platform.”
Alrighty then. On the HubPages. This is a site that allows creative, intelligent people to establish blogs on any area of interest. You’re probably going to get blogs from geneticists sharing the latest genome research or historians exploring how the Great Depression compares with today’s economic woes.
Or, more likely, you’ll encounter Sandra Rinck discussing female orgasms despite the fact that Rinck is the first to admit she’s no expert on female sexuality. In describing herself, she says, “I have two personal blogs, one for fly-fishing reels and equipment and the other is a rant blog about why religion is dead.”
However, she had no qualms about telling the world her opinion about female orgasms.
“I have totally heard about women who cannot get an orgasm or have never had one,” she tells her blog fans. “I think, wow! That must really suck. But obviously there is something going on mentally that is preventing you from having one.”
And this is one reason why I am no longer able to continue my lifelong desire to be a working journalist. No, that really sucks, Sandra.