Okay I know, that title is harsh, but let me explain myself. Nowadays, there seems to be an epidemic where people constantly act as if they know everything about every topic that has ever existed, and I am sick of it. This “know-it-all” epidemic, as I am calling it, is so simple yet so irritating. If you think this applies to you, I hate to be the one who tells you this, but you can’t possibly know everything about every topic that has ever existed. Sorry, you’re not Gretchen Weiners.
Now obviously when I say “stop talking about things you know nothing about,” I don’t mean that in a literal sense. People talk about things they are uneducated on, every second of every day and that’s okay! Talking about topics is a great way to gain more knowledge in these areas and is a common way to learn. What I am saying is that people should stop talking about topics they know nothing about as if they were experts on them. Now this isn’t supposed to “limit” anyone’s right to free speech, I am just expressing an opinion that pretending to know something when you don’t know it is annoying, and to save yourself embarrassment, I would probably stop if I were you.
I say all of this because I notice this frequently. Whether it’s someone talking in class, someone posting online, a real-life conversation, etc., this rise in know-it-alls just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I have a hard time relating to this phenomenon because I would never act like I am an expert on something and talk as if I am, but I have had people go head to head with me on topics I have known about my entire life that they just learned about a week ago.
It has become such a prevalent issue in my life, that I decided to turn to Google to see if this is a common problem with others and I found an answer to my question: The Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger effect basically states that in some people, when they do not have a lot of knowledge in a given topic and they overcompensate to try to make it seem as though they know the most there is to know on the topic, so their peers do not view them as less intelligent. It is that simple. The explanation of this makes me sad and I hate that people feel as though others will find them unintelligent because they know less about something than their peers. In my life, for example, I know a lot about pop culture and pop culture history, so when people go up against me in an argumentative way when I know that I am right, it makes me not want to engage in these conversations in the future, but it doesn’t make me think less of their intelligence. I don’t know a lot about topics that people talk about everyday, but I don’t feel stupid for not knowing and wouldn’t act as if I knew about them either.
I know this may have just seemed like I was whining about know-it-alls, but I promise there is a point. This deep-rooted need to be the smartest in the room affects our generation so prevalently. If you aren’t the prettiest you have to be the funniest and if you aren’t the funniest you need to be the skinniest and if you aren’t the skinniest you need to be the smartest and so and so forth, which creates intense competition among ourselves and our peers. It also boils down to letting people enjoy the things that they like without turning it into an argument over who knows more about it than the other. If you can’t let people know more on something than you, than that is a miserable way to live if you’re going to make it a problem. And hey, if you want to learn more about something, what’s stopping you? Consult the people in your life who know more and let them teach you! Don’t try and get into a conversation where the two of you go head-to-head.
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