The internet has made a lot of people armchair experts happy to offer their perspective with a degree of certainty, without doing the work to identify gaps in their knowledge. Often the mark of genuine expertise is knowing the limitations of your knowledge.
This isn’t a social media thing exclusively of course, I’ve met it in the real world too.
When I worked as a repair technician, members of the public would ask me for my diagnosis of faults and then debate them with me.
I’ve dedicated the second half of my life to understanding people and how they work, in this field it’s even worse because everyone has opinions on that topic!
And yet my friend who has a physics PhD doesn’t endure people explaining why his theories about battery tech are incorrect because of an article they read or an anecdote from someone’s past.
So I’m curious, do some fields and experience this more than others?
If you have a field of expertise do you find people love to debate you without taking into account the gulf of awareness, skills and knowledge?
I do main title, motion graphics, animation, 3D/2D, composite fx etc.
Most challenging to my expertise is someone looking for the same job. They don’t understand how it doesn’t just come together instantly. That there is some magic trick to land the right gig that immediately sets you off into the good life.
I have worked some rough gigs to get where I got. I had to prove I wasn’t a slouch or a rube. Every job I took was calculated on who else was working it, if they could meet my rate, and if the deadline was realistic.
People starting out or trying to fake it get culled pretty quickly in my field. They inevitably fall in love with their own work and get stubborn protecting it which leads to a whole new set of problems.