Every so often, someone informs me that a new op-ed has appeared, and I am — once again — reliably informed that I am meant to take it seriously.

I open one. No byline. No credentials. No indication that a human being with an address, a reputation, or even a mildly inconvenient conscience exists on the other side of the screen. Just words. Floating. Untethered. Spat into the ether like sunflower seed shells.

Who is this person? A mashpia? A teenager? Someone mid-rant over a minor inconvenience, promoted in their own mind to a moral crusade? Is there even a chance that this is someone I would stop what I’m doing to listen to in real life? There is no way to know. And more importantly — there is no way to know whether they know what they’re talking about. Not because they’re wrong, necessarily, but because they’ve made it impossible to tell.

And then there’s the final flourish: no name.
No achrayus. No risk.

Write whatever you want. Say anything. Accuse, denounce, scream, condemn. If it lands well, bask in the glow. If it’s nonsense, shrug — no one knows who you are anyway. Accountability is for other people.

The content almost doesn’t matter. Whether it’s machaos or otherwise, fury or faux nuance — it lacks a vital component: intelligence. Not because intelligence is rare, but because intelligence requires restraint, proportion, and the humility to say something normal. Op-eds never do that. Nobody writes, “This is complicated.” Nobody says, “I might be wrong.” Nobody pauses to weigh, to balance, to hesitate.

It’s always absolutes. Always urgency. Always the sense that the author has cracked the code that eluded every serious mind before them — between procrastination and whatever came next.

And why? The reason pains me because, I hate to say it, we’ve hit rock bottom.
Attention. 

Anonymous people shouting into anonymous spaces, hoping other anonymous people will notice. A nod. A share. A fleeting sense of having mattered for twelve seconds on the internet. No responsibility, no follow-up. Just noise answering noise.

Stamp it “op-ed” and suddenly it pretends to be thought.

But it isn’t thought. Thought has a face. A name. A cost.
This is just words—released, disowned, and forgotten—until the next one replaces it.

Yada yada.