On the cover of the Rolling Stone – It’s all about reactions, and you’re reacting quite well.

It’s all about reactions, and you’re reacting quite well.

I envy those who can be calm, cool and collected. I wear my emotions on my sleeve. I’m passionate. I talk way too loud sometimes about awful topics and make people cringe.

But I’m not alone, and that scares me.

Used to be, I would have a caffeinated fit and write the best comeback I could think of, whether it be on forums, Facebook, Twitter or comments on articles. I’d go back and forth until my blood pressure rose or I looked like an idiot, whichever came first. (Hint: It was the idiot part.)

I looked stupid, and my angry embarrassment was the greatest epiphany I had. Writing “smart” comebacks over the Internet does not a cool dude make.

So, I shut up.

Instead of spouting opinions on topics I knew little about through these channels, I sat back and watched. I bit my tongue, which is a hard task because I read everything these people say.

My reaction is always the same: sighing the Lord’s name in vain and a nervous, negative nod of my head.

It takes a lot for me to spit the venom I once spew a couple years back—all right, I’ll come clean, five months ago. You got me—to this day, I’ll write something crafty, get in an argument, apologize to someone, then delete the entire thread.

You’ve done it, too.

What I witness though is another revelation. Day after day, no matter the channel, everyone’s reacting to something they know little about. The Internet has replaced the workplace water cooler. The great thing about the water cooler was we could leave, and billions of people weren’t hovering around the jug.

Now, it’s this constant “Did you hear?” “No what?” “So and so did this…” “Oh man, that’s awful.” “I know, and this happened.” “Really?” “Yeah, I read it on the Internet.”

Used to be that conversation was noted for its stupidity. In the future, your daily news will be replaced by whatever’s on the front page of your Reddit preferences, full of comments from users whose names are all hash tags and numbers.

Up next on Reddit: #LOLmark49ersfans says, “It’s an Obamination!” with a gif of a dog chasing its own tail. Cavsstink88 agrees. Also today, Courtney Cox hosts “Ask Me Anything.”

The past few days have been filled with outrageous/awful/historical moments, or at least they seem that way because everyone wants to provide his two cents.

Disclaimer 1: I’m not taking an opinion on either of these topics. Disclaimer 2: It’s dumb that I should have to write that disclaimer, but you’re going to react anyway because I uttered a topic you feel you have some knowledge or moral dilemma to speak on, though you don’t.

The two biggest of these ‘moments’ are George Zimmerman being found not guilty, and Rolling Stone putting Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on its cover.

These are two very different topics, yet everyone seems to know something that another person doesn’t, spinning a spiral of stupidity, a black hole of emotion and reaction that replaced our brains.

In the matter of the Zimmerman trial, everyone is taking a side. I’ve seen people write how they know Trayvon Martin said something to provoke Zimmerman. I’ve seen people write how Zimmerman had a bad day. I’ve heard a juror talk about how she felt bad for a key witness. I’ve seen two grown men yell at each other for TV ratings and Facebook presence during a newscast.

Out of all this, no intelligent solutions have come—only hatred and loud voices of nobodies who know nothing wanting to get a sound bite.

Here’s something to chew on: Two people know what happened that night. One of them is dead.

I get that you want answers. CNN gets it, too, and so they’ll bring anyone with a college degree on to discuss the ramifications and speculate.

Here are the facts: I live in Louisiana. I can’t tell you what day this case happened. I can’t say what I was doing when this went down.

If you want speculation, I will speculate that more than 70% of everyone talking about this case has a similar story to mine—no matter if it’s the two impassioned civic leaders I heard on NPR this afternoon or a member of my family.

Of course David Simon has an opinion on it. The dude is still mad you didn’t watch The Wire back in the early 2000s. And anyone who writes about him writing about it will have to acknowledge that his best work was The Wire, and then people who read his response will watch a fictional show that is probably one of the greatest television series.

So you got all worked up and agreed with David Simon, then gave him money and were entertained for a few weeks.

Like I said, I don’t have an opinion on it either way. I’m saying that again because there’s probably still some person out there who thinks I’m making a judgment.

No, and if this topic ever came up, I’d probably walk away and let you be the idiot to fuel an offensive fire. Police officers used to call that arson. Nowadays, it’s normal.

In the case of Rolling Stone, the entire American public was just baited into a reactionary, patriotic brew ha over nothing.

Let’s look at some of the cover art for this year’s Rolling Stone issues: Johnny Depp in garb from the box office bomb The Lone Ranger, Rihanna, Lena Dunham, Bruno Mars, Jon Hamm from Mad Men, Jimmy Kimmel, a wrinkled quartet of dudes who formed a rock ‘n’ roll group years ago called The Rolling Stones.

You know what a magazine’s job is? Sell copies. It doesn’t matter if Matt Taibbi writes the most brilliant piece of investigative journalism, people buy Rolling Stone for the photoset of Britney Spears being half-naked or to read Peter Travers calling Star Trek 2 a revelation in blockbuster filmmaking.

The move to put Tsarnaev on the cover is dumb. It’s like Jann Wenner gave up and said, “Well, Depp’s film was a bomb…let’s roil people up.” I can think of three other ways to depict this topic more credibly:
1) An AP photo from the event,
2) A story from a survivor.
3) Anything else but a picture of the suspect on the cover.

However, Rolling Stone made a grab for credibility. It took a risk, and everyone is talking about how the magazine is funding terrorism, or hates Boston, or likes when people are killed.

Never mind that the headline attached to this picture reads that the story tells the tale of Tsarnaev becoming a monster.

No, you—yes, you—reacted. You created memes. You said you’d burn the magazine you paid $5 for, $8.63 if you add that tall mocha to the bill. You made outlandish statements that Rolling Stone knows nothing of patriotism, but you do, even though you were in Louisiana at the time of the bombing and knew no one at the race.

You said Tsarnaev was a terrorist and so was the person who defended Rolling Stone because you thought everyone needed to know how stupid everyone else was.

You ended your venom with a few lines from “America, the Beautiful,” but you botched them because you haven’t sung it since the sixth grade.

Have it your way. I’ll continue to bite my tongue.