I like it, I don't like it (day 8)

I used to have big opinions.  Lots of them.  In my 20s life was a series of loud judgments and clear directions.   I was known to be cutting in my pronouncements.  Then I'm not so sure what happened, because getting older coincided with the rise of the web, but I think that by being privy to some many other opinions I suddenly started doubting my own.  Everything started to occupy a grey zone.  I had a crisis of self-doubt that still lingers today but has definitely morphed into more of an equanimous feeling.

Opinions now seem mere daily fickle pronouncements, not driving forces of motivation.  My Facebook feed is full of opinions which I can 'like' or ignore and add my own.  We have a running commentary on a deluge of information -- it's the crowd behaviour at its most chaotic and inane.   It feels good to have an opinion.  It makes us feel intelligent.  As my friend Nathalie would say, it's a quick fix and it creates a lazy brain.

What's easy to forget is that beneath the fine-grained noisy 'feed' is the actual work being done, the knowledge being generated.  Who is doing the work?  and when? Ian Wojtowicz is an artist that is highlighting something interesting in his work at an upcoming exhibit at Skol in Montreal.  From the writeup: "...the artist intends to identify a group of people, for the moment unknown, who constitute, in the artist’s words,"a small group of highly-connected but obscure Montrealers […] the loner friends of popular people"...".  I find this concept very intriguing because I have a feeling that these loners might just be more likely to be effective knowledge producers.  If you're not social networking all the time you might have more time create things.  Of course in the back of my head I hear all kinds of counter arguments to this but seriously the people that are loners but that close to an amazing marketing potential have a good recipe for success.  Have they figured it out?  Or just lucked into that position?  I wonder because something I think bad luck has given me a loner disposition.  But maybe I need to rethink that.