A lot of people protect their opinions/egos by putting implicit question marks on all of their utterances to give the impression that their real opinions are actually vague notions. If you have a dumb opinion, you’re dumb… but if you have a dumb, vague notion, who cares? It was just some off-the-top-of-your-head bullshit anyway, right? These kinds of people reserve their strong opinions for the ones given to them by tastemakers that have been vetted by their community. For instance, here is a list of opinions vetted by the hipster tastemakers:

• Tim & Eric and Neil Hamburger are the only examples of comedy in existence.

• Friedrich Nietzsche is a genius. (Now say one intelligent thing about him before nonchalantly changing subjects.)

• Stuff you haven’t heard of rules.

• Stuff you like sucks.

The video isn’t totally fair though because most people absorb a way of speaking from the people around them. It’s non-conscious, and so I’m not sure if we can call them cowards for speaking like that. We can still call them annoying though, so that’s good.

Many people though, speak with those implicit question marks because they are as confused as they sound, and speaking with conviction would just belie their genuine feeling of confusion about pretty much everything. Don’t worry about those people getting offended. They didn't read this far into this article.

Video Transcription:

In case you hadn’t realized, it has somehow become uncool to sound like you know what you’re talking about. Or believe strongly in what you’re, like, saying? Invisible question marks and parenthetical “you knows?” and “you know what I’m sayings?” have been attaching themselves to the end of our sentences, even when those sentences aren’t like… questions? Declarative sentences, so called because they used to like you know, declare things to be true? Okay? As opposed to other things that are like, totally, you know, not? They’ve been infected by this tragically cool and totally hip interrogative tone? As if I’m saying, “Don’t think I’m a nerd just ‘cause I’ve like noticed this, okay? I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions. I’m just like inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty? What has happened to our conviction? Where are the limbs out on which we once walked? Have they like chopped down like the rest of the rainforest? You know? Or do we like nothing to say? Has society just become so filled with these conflicting feelings of *nyuugh* that we’ve just gotten to the point that we’re the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since, you know, a long time ago?! So I implore you, I entreat you, and I challenge you to speak with conviction; To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks the determination with which you believe it, because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker, it’s not enough these days to simply “question” authority. You gotta speak with it too.