We’re drowning in a sea of ill-informed hot takes

Hedgehog warden from Broadbottom with tips on how to craft the perfect Molotov cocktail…

Mother of three (supports NHS) from Congleton explains how to cripple a T72 tank…

Freelance cupcake baker from Nottingham offers NATO generals advice on implementing a no-fly-zone over Ukraine…

Retired traffic warden (Hanwell) explains how the crisis is the result of the Russian tractor oligopoly…

Showbiz journalist in Central London decrypts Putin’s psychology and predicts extraterrestrial intervention…

Coffee-drinking “mummy” to eight dogs from Ealing declares that World War 3 has already started…

Former footballer offers a path to world peace beginning with good cardio…

You can forget about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse now that we have the Four Feeble-minded Hot Takes of the Twitterati. Not just four, in fact, but more hot takes than oligarchs toasting themselves in North London hot tubs.

You can hear their clarion call from afar, more comedy kazoo than strident horn, and there’s not a subject they don’t arrive at without absolute certainty and damning moral authority. It’s enough to make you long for the days when the hot takes were about 4G-enabled vaccines, “mask Nazis”, and the extra-terrestrial origins of a virus. Now it’s munitions, nuclear yields, and logistics of large armies moving across semi-frozen tundra in spring.

Yet it’s not just the perennially madcap who are at it. Take the spelling of the capital city of Ukraine (which, you must also remember, is Ukraine and not “the Ukraine”). It’s a perfectly reasonable point to make but it’s one thing to have an expert in Slavic languages explain the nuances – that “Kiev” / “Key-ev” is the Russian spelling and pronunciation, “Kyiv” / “Keev” the preferred spelling and pronunciation of Ukrainians – but another to have the difference blasted at you by a vegan New Age surfer who only learned the difference half an hour earlier.

“Not cool, dude! Not cool!”

It isn’t simply a matter of their being right as much as their lack of humility in so shamelessly claiming to be right. It is, of course, entirely proper to choose the Ukrainian spelling of the city since that shows support for the people of Kyiv. Where the problem lies is how this arrogance intrudes into other recently learned territories, whether that’s geopolitics, military strategy, or epidemiology. Allow your opinions to be informed by strongly verified evidence but do not then mistake those opinions for certainty. The first sign of true expertise is the humility one learns about the many things we do not know.

Yet it appears that we no longer live in an age that cherishes the humble, the moderate, or even the contemplative. The brash hot take beats all rivals.

“We need a no-fly zone over Ukraine,” cries the thousandth well-meaning misguided person of the morning.

It’s a problem that even extends to journalists, some of whom might have spent last week opining on the colours of Kim Kardashian’s house (white and vacuous) but this week find themselves explaining the complicated ethnopolitics of post-Soviet Russia (white and vacuous). There are so many hot takes out there it’s sometimes hard to find well-informed and considered opinions. And that is the key thing to remember in this rush for information. There is a difference between reading a scholar, say, Sir Lawrence Freedman, the Emeritus Professor of War Studies atKing’s College London, and the opinion of a cartoon rat posing under the username FunkyBob84744. These two people are just not the same (unless, of course, Lawrence Freedman has a burner account he hasn’t widely advertised).

Well-sourced authorities are the only thing standing between us and a descent into the domain of ill-formed opinion. Because in the world of the hottest of hot takes, there is a familiar chain of imbecility that always seems to begin with Right Said Fred retweeting a UB40 vocalist who tweets out a video by an American conspiracist known as “Coach Red Pill” claiming that some of the recent shooting in Kief (sic) was gang-related. The name says it all: “red pill” is now a cliché lifted from the Matrix films, where Keanu Reeve’s character took “the red pill” and this saw the true reality of the world. Previously, on his YouTube channel, this advocate for “truth” argued that “If you live in any of the democracies of the West, you should leave now while you still can…” The reason: the democracies are going to become like New Zealand, which is the “model” for a totalitarian state.

Yes. That land of gulags and secret police: New Zealand.

(Even more appalling is his advice on “Hard Truths About Women and SEX”, a conversation he had with a character called “Bulldog Mindset”, which was to “get some girl, knock her up, have some kids” but then goes on to offer advice on divorce law. And who said incel culture can’t be romantic?)

Pity the poor souls following these grifters down these rabbit holes. Pity all of us trying to keep our vision clear when so much detritus muddies the intellectual waters. Because these are not isolated incidents of stupidity but examples of a whole subculture suffering a collective psychosis. This is apophenia on a grand scale, as people think they perceive meaning in random facts: the stubble on Danny Dyer’s chin maps exactly to the constellation Gemini, proving beyond doubt that Nuneaton’s ring road was built by ancient Mayan lizard lords.

Ignore them all and, above all, stay calm, be coldly rational, and listen to people who have studied these subjects for longer than any of us have known the name of Ukraine’s second city (Kharkiv).

Although maybe that was just my hot take, and you should ignore it completely…