What's with America's Obsession with Foolishness?

At this point I'm more exhausted than entertained...

You can draw a straight line from America’s obsession with foolishness to exactly where we are right now. A crumbling, laughing stock of a country. It’s actually our fault though…

We, the people…

We’ve literally spent decades celebrating the loudest, most unserious voices in the room. Prioritizing the spectacle over the substance. Laughing at the chaos instead of questioning it. And now? We have a president (heavy on the lowercase) who can barely string a sentence together. The measles—a disease that should have been a story in our history books—is making a full comeback. Modern Medicine? Science? Basic community responsibility? Never heard of them. All optional now, apparently.

It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so fucking terrifying. But somehow, amidst the crumbling structures, the algorithm has blessed us with a beacon of light:

Miss Onijah Robinson.

And yes, I will only ever refer to her as Miss Onijah Robinson. Full name. Respect to her. Respect to Allah. Respect for the law (again, questionable?)

Miss Onijah Robinson is, without question, my favorite person the internet has brought us in recent years. A young Black woman standing FIRMLY on business, demanding payment for doing absolutely nothing? I truly love to see it. It's revolutionary behavior in a world that has always demanded Black women work twice as hard for half as much. Sis has flipped the script, leaned all the way in, and looks good doing it.

In a society that undervalues and overexploits Black labor, Miss Onijah’s very existence feels like performance art, protest, and pure joy all rolled into one. She’s not asking nicely. She’s setting the terms. And now, with her 30inch buss down… she’s not just acting the part, she’s looking it too. When I tell you the power radiating from her is almost tangible? Goals.

But back to the lesson in all of this...

Normalize Shutting the Fuck Up!

This is bold coming from me—arguably one of the chattiest girls ever. I talk for a living. I talk when I shouldn’t. I talk just to process. I talk because silence sometimes feels like a challenge I don’t need to accept. But hear me out.

What I really mean to say is: normalize shutting the F up if you’re loud and wrong.

Actually, no… scratch that. What I really mean to say is:

I appreciate a formally trained individual.

That’s better.

There’s something so satisfying about watching someone who knows what they’re talking about. Someone who has studied, put in the hours, and isn’t just vibing their way into an opinion like it’s a group project in which they did none of the work. The world is drowning in hot takes, and somehow, the loudest voices are often the ones with the least foundation.

Confidence without knowledge is just loud ignorance. I have nothing against confidence. In fact, I love it—word to Miss Onijah. But there’s a difference between confidence and audacity. And I mean audacity in the worst way possible—the kind that lets people argue with professionals on their own subject matter because they read a tweet once.

Where Does This Leave Us?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the context of my podcast, Doing It All and our recent guest, Lindsay Adams. Lindsay is an artist, and as we talked, I kept coming back to the fact that art is subjective. Clearly, anybody can pick up a brush and make beautiful things that resonate with people. You don’t have to go to art school to be a great artist.

But the world is moving in a direction where we are making stupid people rich, and I hate to see it. It’s one thing for something like art to be accessible. It’s another for knowledge itself to be cheapened—flattened into digestible, viral clips with no substance. We’ve created an ecosystem where people who know the least are being amplified the most, while those with real expertise are pushed to the background, drowning in the noise.

And the consequences? They’re bigger than just bad takes on the internet. Hot takes are all fun and games until they bring back medieval diseases.

Platforming Idiots has Real-World Consequences

Measles is back in my part of the U.S. Because of misinformation. Because folks are out here listening to and sharing the ramblings of some dummy who stayed up all night on Reddit. Now they're not vaccinating their kids at all. And here we are. Diseases we had under control are coming back because someone with a microphone and a false sense of confidence told people vaccines are a scam. Experts, scientists, and doctors—the people who have literally dedicated their lives to this work—are being ignored in favor of influencers who learned just enough buzzwords to sound convincing. It’s dangerous. It’s exhausting. And more recently, my literal neighbors and friends are losing their jobs at NIH, the CDC and various government/health organizations because “the people” chose to elect someone without a fucking clue. It’s quite literally the blind leading the blind. Every man for himself. I’m SHOOK!

Information overload deserves a little blame as well. A big part of the problem is that we’re looking for information in the wrong places. I’ve spent too much time scrolling, too much time engaging with people who have mastered going viral but not their actual craft. I don’t want a content creator performing my surgery. Full stop. We don’t need more content. We need more clarity. We need to get back to valuing the folks who have truly mastered their fields.

Unfortunately the algorithm rewards the loud, not the learned.

Currently? We’re in an epidemic of expertise by vibes. The internet gave everyone a microphone, but not a fact-checker. WE NEEEEEED: Less noise. More knowledge. Less viral. More thoughtful, more studied, more real.

And maybe that starts with me shutting the F up every now and then, too. Listening more. Speaking less. Paying attention to the right people. Because we don’t need more opinions. We need better ones.

That’s when you see the real shift. That’s when you see the true magic. So yes, the country is spiraling, the health system is crumbling, and the political landscape is giving dystopian fiction. But at least we have Miss Onijah Robinson out here showing us how to stand on business, stay pretty, and demand what’s ours.

If you’re reading this please tell a friend to tell a friend to have Miss Onijah call me, immediately. We need her on Doing It All!

Respect,

Maya