What are you saying that doesn’t need to be said?

We live in a culture of ever increasing noise. The amount of information that is available for us to consume and the entertainment options, products, and services clamoring for our attention are expanding exponentially.

So I ask you again, what are you saying that doesn’t need to be said? What are you writing that doesn’t need to be written? What has already been said better by someone else? What don’t people need to know? What questions don’t need to be asked or conversations don’t need to be had?

Something that I’ve been thinking about recently is just how much is out there to read, and how some of what I write may be worthless. If I write an inane blog post and 50 people spend three minutes reading it, I’ve just wasted two and half hours of other people’s time.

Perhaps it would benefit all of us to consider what benefit is being derived from what we write before we publish it for the world to read.

While I think I have presented a compelling case without bringing faith into the discussion, those of us who are followers of Jesus should consider His words in the book of Matthew, “But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” Or as the King James Version translates it, “But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment (emphasis mine).”

I haven’t done any real study of this passage, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt, but while Jesus seems to be talking about good and evil thoughts and words in the preceeding verses, the words “careless” and “idle” are translations of the greek word “argos” which implies laziness, carelessness, idleness, and having no return and is a negation of the word “ergon,”¹ which means business, employment, enterprise, undertaking, etc.

In other words, Jesus seems to be saying that we will be held to account for the things that we say without sufficient thought as to their value or whether or not they need to be said.

I should end by saying that I do recognize the irony of writing about the idea that one should be careful what one writes.

1. Here “a” is a negator. (I.e. an a-theist is one who is not a theist [believer in God].) Definitions taken from StudyLight.org’s interliear Bible and An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (founded upon the seventh edition of Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon).

Or at least those willing do some research. Brian Stelter of the New York Times is something of a phenom when it comes to news about the TV industry, having started the influential blog tvnewser.com and subsequently being hired by the New York Times straight out of college, but his article on the “It’s 3 AM and I’m ready to be President” campaign ads of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (embedded below – hat tip to TechPresident) shows that being an expert on one medium doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re qualified to discuss other types of media.

Mr. Stelter states that “Three days after it made its television debut, the Clinton commercial had registered more than 600,000 views on YouTube, and Mr. Obama’s recorded over 200,000, making the dueling advertisements the first breakout hits of the YouTube campaign. (Some campaign videos are lucky to receive 10,000 views.)”

While it may be true that some campaign videos don’t hit 10,000 views, I’m not sure what metric that Mr. Stelter is using to determine what makes a YouTube video a “breakout hit.” By far, the biggest video of the campaign season is “Yes We Can” by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, having received over 12 million views spread across the numerous copies posted to YouTube, but we can look back much farther for breakout hits. Perhaps the first big hit of the 2008 Presidential election was 1984/Vote Different by Phil de Vellis with over 5 million views (again over multiple uploads), and who could forget Obama Girl. None of these are candidate produced videos, but we need only go to Obama’s response to the State of the Union (1.3 million), Obama’s victory speech in Iowa (1 million), and many others to find videos that have been viewed many more times than either of these. In fact, Obama’s SOTU response has been watched more times than both of those ads put together.

I’ll admit that I may be overly defensive of new forms of media, be it blogs, online video, or social networks, but it irks me when someone in the mainstream press makes a blatantly untrue statement that trivializes the revolution that is taking place in the field of communications.

Since this is my blog, I’m also going to take the opportunity to editorialize on the videos just a bit and note that YouTube users have rated Clinton’s “3 AM” video with one star out of a possible five (Obama’s version has four) and that tens of thousands of her views have come from an extremely heavily trafficked DailyKos post slamming the ad.

Hillary’s 3 AM Ad

Obama’s 3 AM Ad

Yes We Can

1984

Obama’s SOTU Response

Obama’s Iowa Speech

Obama’s New Hampshire Speech (Just because I love it and because it’s been viewed more times than Hillary’s 3 AM ad.)