A quote that jumped out at me in the TV series House of Cards:

“Public opinion doesn’t have a law degree.”

When we think about the cascade of information that circulates about ourselves as individuals, as well as the ensuing analysis of it, it’s tempting to believe that people who encounter it will – with at least some degree of effort – seek to discern the facts and extract a reasonable conclusion from them.

Instead (and what I think the above quote succinctly captures), nearly all information that travels through the public domain does so emotionally. It gets passed from one party to another with some colour of emotion added and some finer details eroded at every step, even if done so subtly or without any real intent.

This is easy to forget, especially for those of us who lead fairly ‘normal’, non-PR-controlled lives outside of a mainstream spotlight. Yet, even on a micro level (among friends or within one’s workplace, for example) it’s worth remembering that our actions, interactions, opinions, successes, and failures will rarely be experienced or analysed by others in the manner of a law graduate sat down at a desk – scroll and fountain pen before them – working to a standard, coolly and carefully trying to get the facts straight.

Aware of this, it’s worth thinking twice about what information we send along this path about others, as well as being in less of a rush to take the anecdotal information we receive at face value. It might not be official, and it might not feel that important, but once we mouth off, we’re contributing to the colour and trajectory of information.