Loud and wrong

This week I was at my mum’s, cleaning out the last remnants of my childhood from my old bedroom wardrobe. I found a stack of school reports, old exercise books, and feedback from teachers. Ploughing through all the paper and boxes felt like opening time capsules, some funny, some mortifying, some heart warming.

“Confidence is stronger than her competence.”

Wrote Ms.Wilde, my year 10 textiles teacher.

Fifteen year old me must have been raging when I read that. Clearly she disliked me or felt threatened by my potential brilliance and was trying to bring me down a peg or two…

Fifteen year old me 100% would have deserved this review — for this class at least.

For context, my grandmother (God rest her soul) was a brilliant seamstress. Which, in my adolescent logic, meant I was essentially couture-adjacent by bloodline and would create the most beautiful end of year project without having to put the effort in throughout the year.

I could not, in fact, sew properly. I was pretty mediocre.

But I could speak confidently about sewing. Which, in my mind, was nearly the same thing and my competence would catch up eventually.

Loud. Certain. Under-informed.

Watching the social media discourse following the BAFTA Awards, I could see others were also loud and wrong like me. Commentary about Tourette’s syndrome despite a clear lack of understanding about how the condition works was something that was all too prevalent and created misjudged and ill informed perspectives.

People who had never studied (or even Googled) neurological conditions were suddenly experts. People who had read perhaps one headline or watched one TikTok were dispensing moral verdicts.

My two pence: Ultimately the BBC/BAFTA’s didn’t do enough to safeguard everyone involved and we know Free Palestine would have got censored…

Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger identified this tendency in their research at Cornell University, now known as the Dunning–Kruger effect. Their findings showed those with the least competence in an area often overestimate their understanding the most AND often they lack the tools required to assess themselves accurately.

So if you don’t know much, you may not even know that you don’t know much…

Social media has obviously supercharged this. The algorithm rewards speed, quick reactions and hot takes travel further, gathering equally uninformed people along the way to reinforce their own point of view.

I have opinions about a lot of things. Just ask Matt about how much I be yapping! But how many of my opinions are deeply formed?

I don’t think the opposite of being loud and wrong is being silent, static and timid. Maybe it’s simply the process of being informed.

Formation is slow. Another set of content I’ve stumbled across on my many doom scrolls has been about the rise of intellectual content creators in 2026. I think the ‘early adopters’ will be authentic and actual experts in their chosen field whilst your typical generalist content creator will start to pivot to being a specialist with many taking short cuts.

Call me cynical but they’ll consult abuse ChatGPT to make them seem like experts on a chosen niche for the 60-second video they need for monetisation, but when questioned, I suspect there won’t be much beneath the surface. Proximity to wisdom is also not possession of it, reading a thread or Substack is not the same as having studied a subject! Don’t ask me any questions about the Dunning-Kruger effect other than what I shared!

I also think good formation requires accepting correction and accountability by people you trust. The prerequisite of any good published study is that it is peer reviewed. Even real life (not internet) experts recognise the need for others to interrogate and critique their views, in order to get closer to the truth or insight that they are seeking to discover.

So Ms.Wilde, if you see this. I still suck at textiles, but I’ve learned to shut my mouth, listen and take the time to invest in things I need to be informed about before yapping (on the internet at least).