“Here’s a quote you’re going to like.”

Seconds later, my phone vibrated, and in my inbox was the following message from my wife:

A fact is information minus emotion. 

An opinion is information plus experience. 

Ignorance is an opinion lacking information. 

And stupidity? Stupidity is an opinion that ignores a fact.

As we once again prepare to enter the soul-sucking, hysteria-ridden, social media-driven, high emotion, largely fact-free presidential election cycle in the United States, it behooves us—ALL of us—to consider those words.

I spent a quarter-of-a-century of my career sparring with the construct of leadership: what it means, how it manifests, how it’s developed and demonstrated, where it leads when it’s executed correctly. I’ve seen breathtakingly bad leadership, and I’ve seen leadership that was so good it took my breath away. 

Simple fact: leaders are leaders because others follow them. Those that follow are called followers. It’s a two-party ecosystem. Back in the 1980s, I saw a sign on the wall of a cubicle at the phone company where I worked. I made a copy of it. It said, ‘WHERE ARE THEY? WHICH WAY DID THEY GO? I HAVE TO FIND THEM, I’M THEIR LEADER!’ 

Nope.

Followers follow because the perceived leader offers something they desire. As many of you know, my definition of leadership is bone-headedly simple: leaders create a vision of what could be, not what is. They provide the mechanism to escape the status quo, and therefore the mechanism to avoid complacency, which if ignored leads to irrelevance and the competitive death spiral. Good leaders show their followers a better future than the one they currently envision, and then enroll them to help the leader achieve the vision. That is leadership at its very best. Leaders lead with a vision; followers engage to help make the vision real. Ecosystem.

It’s a Thing

That’s the current jargon for something that’s trending, usually on one or more social media platforms. 

It’s a thing.

If you’ve read any of my research or papers or blogs over the last couple of years, you may have run across one or more of them that take social media to task. I admit it: I have a problem with social media, because of the platforms’ corrosive tendencies to widely propagate bad data, outright lies, and misinformation, and then hide behind the power of the First Amendment when the prospect of being responsible for their actions inconveniently comes up. 

Social media derives its power from two groups of people: followers, as in, “How many followers do you have?” and the other group, the influencers. Some influencers do good things; I wish their voices were louder. I wish they had a stronger signal-to-noise ratio.

Social media has an outsized voice, particularly among the younger end of society, those who are most easily influenced by misinformation. This morning I did a search on the top ten topics trending on social media platforms. They included the apparently life-changing impact of snail slime on wrinkles, one of the Kardashians talking about drinking her own breast milk for a quick pick-me-up, the it-will-never-go-away trend of swallowing laundry pods, and apparently, rough sex among children as young as 12, including asphyxiation as part of the sex act. 

I have no words. Except these.

A fact is information minus emotion. Correct. And information is data plus context. As Walter Cronkite, the revered newscaster, might have said, “Here’s what we know. Here are the facts. This is what actually happened today. You’re smart enough to think about the facts and decide what the implications are for yourself and your community.”

An opinion is information plus experience. The implication? “I’ve been around long enough to have seen this before, which means that I know what most likely comes next. I suggest the following action.”

Ignorance is an opinion lacking information. My friend Anthony Contino likes to say, “It must be wonderful to go through life, mercifully unencumbered by the terrible burden of intelligence.” Experience is only as good as the breadth of the knowledge landscape that generates it.

And stupidity? Stupidity is an opinion that ignores a fact. Never let the truth get in the way of a well-formed lie.

To return to the construct of leadership for a moment, I’d like to offer an observation. If we apply the leadership model to the social media landscape, a chilling parallel emerges. As I noted, leadership is a two-party construct—the leader, whether good or bad, and the leader’s followers. Social media also has followers, which implies that those they follow are the leaders. You know—the ones who drink their own breast milk, swallow laundry pods, let snails crawl on their faces, and choke young girls during sex. Maybe it’s me, but those aren’t the kinds of leadership role models I want ANYONE exposed to, especially children. 

When I was a kid, my dad told me a joke that I’ve never forgotten. Two kids are walking in a field, and one of them surreptitiously bends down and scoops up a handful of rabbit droppings. Later he shows them to the other kid.

“What are those?” the kid asks.

“Those are smart pills,” he replies.

“What do they do?”

“You swallow them and they make you smart. Here, try some.”

Suspiciously the kid takes a few and chews them carefully. He grimaces. “These things taste like shit!” He exclaims to the other kid. 

The other kid responds, “See? They work! Now you’re getting smart.”

Dad also told me a story about a guy from the east who was visiting a relative in the west. The two were out walking in the barnyard, and the easterner was complaining about how dry the air was, and that his lips were badly chapped.

“I can fix that,” the grizzled farmer replied. With that he bent over and scooped up a blob of chicken poop and without warning, smeared it on the guy’s chapped lips.

“What the hell is that supposed to do?!?” The guy replied, disgusted.

“The main reason your lips get chapped is because you lick them too much. That will keep you from licking your lips.”

I should post that. I could become a wealthy influencer.

Fact? Opinion? Ignorance? Stupidity? We all have a choice.