I’ve spent years arguing about things that didn’t matter to people who weren’t listening.
It took me until my forties to fully see the pattern. Something would happen in the world—political, cultural, professional. I’d have a strong opinion about it. I’d share that opinion, sometimes with arguments, sometimes just with contempt.
Then I’d move on. But the impression I made stayed with the people who heard me.
This played out everywhere: at dinner parties, in group chats, at family gatherings, in professional settings, and especially on social media. Someone would bring up a controversial topic. I’d weigh in—sometimes forcefully, sometimes dismissively.
Eventually, as I sat down one day to run some analytics and cleanup on my X/Twitter account using AI, I asked myself: what did any of it accomplish?
The Uncomfortable Math
Minds changed: Essentially zero.
Has anyone ever changed their position because someone called them naive, blind, or stupid? That has never happened. People don’t update their beliefs because someone was louder or more contemptuous. If anything, they dig in harder.
Persuasion doesn’t work through force. It works through trust, patience, and genuine curiosity. A hot take has none of those.
Relationships affected: More than I realised.
Some people argue back. Most don’t. They quietly adjust how they see you. Not as someone with interesting views—as someone who can’t help themselves. Someone to be careful around. Someone who makes gatherings tense.
You won’t get feedback on this. People don’t announce that they’ve downgraded you in their mind. They just stop calling.
Opportunities lost: Unknown, but not zero.
In professional contexts, the stakes are higher. Potential clients, partners, employers, collaborators—they form impressions quickly. A reputation for being argumentative or contemptuous follows you in ways you can’t track. Doors close silently.
Satisfaction gained: Brief and hollow.
The feeling of being heard, of having said your piece, lasts seconds. The consequences last much longer.
The Name-Calling Trap
When you disagree with someone, there’s a temptation to escalate. Not just to argue the point, but to characterise the person: idiot, sheep, clown.
It feels efficient. It communicates contempt without requiring you to engage with their position.
But here’s what it really communicates: that you’ve run out of argument. That when frustrated, you reach for insults. That you see people who disagree with you as beneath respect.
Calling someone a clown doesn’t make them look like a clown. It makes you look like someone who calls people clowns. Everyone listening notices, even if they don’t say so.
The Certainty Trap
Nothing ages worse than predictions made with confidence.
Every time you declare that something will definitely happen, that a trend is unstoppable, that anyone who disagrees is blind—you’re creating a record. The future has a way of humbling the certain.
It’s not just financial predictions. It’s political predictions. Cultural predictions. Predictions about technology, relationships, how situations will unfold.
Being confident feels like being informed. Often it’s just being loud. The difference only becomes clear in hindsight—when you’re the one who was wrong.
The Illusion of Action
Part of why we argue about big topics is that it feels like doing something.
You see something unfair or stupid. You react. You speak up, share your take, make your position known. There’s a sense of having participated, of not staying silent in the face of wrongness.
But nothing has actually moved. The thing you’re angry about continues unchanged. The people you’re criticising don’t know or care. You’ve spent energy and emotional bandwidth, and the only concrete result is how others now perceive you.
Expression is not execution. Venting is not action. Feeling like you did something is not the same as doing something.
If you actually want to change something, that takes quiet, sustained effort—not public commentary.
The Acceptance That Changed Everything
Somewhere around forty, something shifted.
I accepted that many things in life are broken. Some ideologies are incoherent. Some systems are corrupt. Some people will always believe things I find absurd, and they’ll believe them passionately and permanently.
And I can’t do anything about it.
Not through arguments. Not through hot takes. Not through calling out the wrongness for everyone to see.
Once I accepted that, a strange thing happened: the urge to engage started to fade. Not because I stopped caring, but because I stopped pretending that my commentary would change anything. The world will continue being messy and irrational whether I weigh in or not.
That’s not cynicism. It’s clarity.
Where the Frustration Goes
Staying quiet doesn’t mean suppressing everything. That just breeds resentment.
The frustration needs somewhere to go. For me, it’s a small circle of close friends—people who think similarly, who won’t turn a vent session into a debate, who have the emotional intelligence to offer perspective when I need it and simply listen when I don’t. Some are older and more experienced, able to offer another angle with tact. Others just let me get it out of my system without adding fuel to the fire.
I also built a private community for this purpose: The Good Life Collective. It’s a place where I can share thoughts that previously would have gone on a public platform—but with people who are more aligned with my thinking. It makes no sense to broadcast opinions to a public audience full of strangers who are fundamentally different from you and will only be enraged by anything you say. And vice versa. A curated space changes everything.
The difference between a private outlet and a public broadcast is enormous. In a trusted circle, you can say what you actually think. You can be wrong, be angry, be unfiltered. You can work through your reaction without it becoming your permanent public record.
Find people like this. Share your frustrations with them. Save the public-facing version of yourself for things that actually matter.
When It Is Worth Speaking Up
I’m not arguing for silence in all situations.
There are moments when staying quiet is cowardice—when someone’s being mistreated in front of you, when your expertise is genuinely needed, when your silence would be complicity. And there are times when speaking up—even publicly, even passionately—is exactly the right thing to do.
Years ago, I wrote a long article about why I left Malta. It was personal, detailed, and critical of the place I grew up. I didn’t hold back. And unlike a reactive hot take, that piece resonated. It has hundreds of comments from people who felt the same way, who needed to hear that they weren’t alone in their frustrations, who used it to help make their own decisions about whether to stay or leave.
What made it different? It was thoughtful. It came from lived experience, not a reaction to something I saw online. It was about something I had standing to speak on. It wasn’t name-calling or contempt—it was an honest reckoning with a place and a culture I knew deeply.
Being vocal about problems in Malta was met with resistance at the time. People tried to shut me down, told me I was being negative, that things weren’t so bad. But I kept speaking up, and eventually I left. That decision was one of the best I ever made. Sometimes the resistance you encounter is a sign that you’re touching something real.
The goal isn’t to have no opinions or to become someone who never speaks up. It’s to be intentional. To distinguish between the urge to be heard and the situations that genuinely require your voice.
Most controversies don’t need you. A few will. Know the difference.
What Doesn’t Compound
I think a lot about where to put my energy—what compounds over time and what dissipates.
Arguing about big topics doesn’t compound in any direction that matters. It doesn’t improve your health. It doesn’t build wealth. It doesn’t deepen your relationships. It doesn’t make you wiser.
At best, it’s neutral. At worst, it actively degrades the things you care about—your reputation, your relationships, your peace of mind.
The things that do compound are quieter: building something, learning something, strengthening the bonds with people you actually know. None of that requires public commentary on whatever controversy is dominating the discourse this week.
What I’ve Learned
Having opinions is fine. Broadcasting them is optional.
You can think something without saying it. You can believe someone is wrong without announcing it. Your opinions don’t require an audience.
Arguing about big topics rarely changes anything.
On divisive issues, people aren’t looking to be persuaded. They’re looking for validation or a fight. You’re not going to change minds with a hot take. You’re just going to reveal how you behave when you disagree.
Contempt is expensive.
Dismissing people as idiots or sheep feels satisfying in the moment. But it marks you as someone who reaches for insults when frustrated. That reputation is hard to shake.
Anger is a signal, not a script.
Frustration tells you something matters to you. It doesn’t obligate you to broadcast that frustration. You can feel something strongly without performing it.
Certainty ages poorly.
The more confident you are, the more embarrassing it is when you’re wrong. And you will be wrong more often than you expect.
The costs are invisible.
You won’t get a notification when someone decides not to work with you, not to invite you, not to trust you. The downside of running your mouth is almost impossible to measure. That makes it easy to ignore—and dangerous to underestimate.
Silence is underrated.
You don’t have to weigh in on everything. The arguments will continue without you. Your silence costs nothing. Your words might cost more than you’ll ever know.
The Question
Before weighing in on any controversial topic, I now ask myself:
What does this accomplish besides making me feel heard?
If the answer is nothing, I stay quiet.
The world doesn’t need my take on every controversy. My relationships don’t benefit from my political opinions. And calling someone a clown has never once made them less of one.
Some lessons take longer than they should.
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