All opinions matter

I was initially going to do a business piece on why the dress mattered, but everyone was so damn angry all day that it's now after 7pm and I'm just really fed up with the bullshit. So now it's a personal rant.

Note: all use of the word "you" is the general you as in the masses; not any one individual

First of all, let me tell you who the dress color matters to:

• Photographers who deal with lighting and exposure challenges all day, every day.
• Marketers who try to get people to like things and have a harder time when nobody knows what color it is.
• Marketers who want honest feedback from people and need to know what makes them tick so they can give them proper representation of products in the future.
• Retailers who want to sell the shit that customers will buy.
• Retailers who now have a clearer understanding of what lighting does to product placement.
• Manufacturers who want to make the shit the retailers will stock because people will buy it.
• Consumers who only want to know what they are actually spending money on in the first place. 
• Designers who now realize that creating a logo of certain color combinations may result in branding issues.

But this isn't about the dress. This is about the thought police who don't want people talking about the dress because it's beneath the appropriate levels of conversation for everyone on Facebook. For some reason, any time something trends, everyone gets their panties in a twist and wants everyone else to stop talking about it. Meanwhile, you'll all share viral videos of laughing babies and cats all day long. I see the same goofy shit shared over and over. You'll share posts of sick children and claim that a like equals a prayer that somehow makes cancer retreat or sends clean water into African villages.

But heaven forbid we mention the Super Bowl. It's only the single most watched television event in the year every year. Did you know that military members stationed overseas are often given the day off to watch the game and account for the time difference? No? But we should all shut up about it and all you clever bastards want to know, "is there a game on today?" I guess Madison Avenue execs and C-suite employees of every major brand in the world who, collectively, spent tens of millions of dollars all know less than you about what should be popular and trending, right?

So tell me, what should I like? What should I post about? I think you should tell me how to use my Facebook account so we can make sure you're happy every moment of the day. But should I get off track then you'll leave a post like this one.

So not only am I not supposed to bother you and your high brow style of living with such inconsequential peasantry, but I'm also supposed to feel guilty for somehow contributing to the death of this little girl. If I didn't post about the dress, would she have lived? I don't mean to be callous, but is there a causal relationship between the two? Since you imposed guilt, answer the question: is this a corollary or not? We all know the answer is not.

Someone, as I write this, shows up on Facebook saying they are not proud to be an American over this entire thing. Are we really drawing red, white and blue lines in the sand and choosing patriotic teams? 

At the end of the day there has to be more value in saying "why does this matter?" than in saying "this doesn't matter, you're all stupid and shut up about it." Remember the old adage of "if you've got nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all." What is amazing to me is that I'm fascinated by the viral nature of this and all the takeaways and I've made one post (now 2) about it, yet all of the perturbed masses are the ones rambling incessantly about how horrible the whole thing is. Those who hate it have spent more time talking about it than the supporters, by at least one order of magnitude.

So in the future I suggest we all look at a situation and try to find value. If you can't, move along. At a minimum, don't vilify those that do and certainly don't draw awful comparisons about what matters because that is everyone's own personal intention.

Oh and do the math... if something goes viral, clearly more people find it valuable than not so who's really the majority here?