Everyone Has Opinions. That Does Not Mean You Have to Share Yours.
The phrase is "opinions are like assholes, everyone has one." Which is true. The follow-up question, which the phrase does not address, is whether anyone asked to see yours. Because there is a meaningful difference between having an opinion and deploying it unprompted on someone who was minding their own damn business and did not request a review of their life choices.
The Unsolicited Opinion and Its Natural Habitat
The unsolicited opinion arrives most frequently in the following situations: when someone has just made a decision, when someone is in the middle of doing something, and when someone mentions anything about their life in passing. You have a new job. You have a new relationship. You are eating something. You are wearing something. Someone has a thought about it. They share the thought. You did not ask for the thought. The thought is now in the room and you have to do something with it.
The thought is usually framed as helpful. "I'm just saying" is the standard opener, as if prefacing an opinion with those three words reclassifies it as a neutral observation rather than what it is, which is a person inserting themselves into your decisions without being invited. "I'm just saying" does not make the thing that follows more welcome. It just announces that the speaker is aware it might not be.
The Distinction Worth Making
There is a version of this that is fine. If someone asks for your opinion, give it. If someone is about to do something that will actively harm them and you have information they clearly do not have, say something. These are situations where the opinion is either requested or genuinely relevant to the other person's wellbeing.
What is different is the opinion delivered because you had it. The comment about someone's food order. The take on their career decision. The view on how they handled a situation you were not part of. These are opinions produced not because the recipient needed them but because the speaker wanted to express them. The distinction is entirely about whose needs the opinion is serving.
How to handle one
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Say "thanks for that." Not thank you. Thanks for that. Two completely different sentences. Thank you is gratitude. Thanks for that is a receipt. It comes out warm and it lands like a parking ticket, and the beautiful part is they can hear something in it and they cannot find it. There is nothing in those three words to point at. If they push, say it again, warmer. Let them try to explain to somebody later that you thanked them in a mean way. They will sound unwell.
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Agree too much. "No, you're so right." Early. With feeling. Then keep agreeing, past where a normal person agrees, past where it's comfortable, all the way out to the edge where it stops being agreement and turns into something else. "Honestly, thank you for saying that." Now they are being thanked, at volume, for a thought they had in a parking lot, and somewhere in the middle of it it dawns on them that this is not what winning is supposed to feel like. And they cannot say a word, because what are they going to do, object to being agreed with.
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Ask them to say it again."Sorry, say that again?" Then listen. Really listen. Full attention, head tilted, the entire performance. Then nod slowly. Then "okay, yeah."The second time is always worse. Always. Nobody in history has said one of these twice and had it improve. They hear it coming out of their own mouth in a quiet room with somebody paying close attention, and about four words in they realize it was never that good, and now they have to finish it anyway, and you get to watch that land on their face in real time.
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Make them say it to the room. "Hold on. Hold on, everybody. Say that again, they need to hear this." Now the room is quiet. Everybody has turned. And you have done nothing but praise them. You called it a good point. You gave them a stage. There is not one word in that sentence anybody could ever hold against you. And they have to do it. That's the trap. They cannot say no, because saying no means the thing they just said with total confidence to one person is not something they will say to eight, which is an admission, out loud, in front of everybody. So they do it. And it comes out smaller. It always comes out smaller. The delivery that worked in a kitchen doorway does not survive a room, and they can feel it dying about six words in, and they still have to get to the end. Then you say "right?" to nobody in particular. And nobody says anything. And that silence belongs to them now.
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Compliment the delivery. Never the content. The content was never the point and they know it. "WOW. You explain things really well." Warm. Sincere. Straight in the eyes. They are going to think about that in the shower. For days. They will try to bring it up with somebody and there will be no way to say it out loud that does not make them sound like a lunatic. "She said I explain things well." And the other person will say that's nice. And it will get worse from there.
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Say nothing and hold eye contact. Through the entire thing. Every word. Do not nod, do not make the small encouraging noise, do not do the thing with your face. Nothing. And when they finish, do not blink. Do not look away first. Let it sit there in an empty room until one of you dies.
Frequently asked questions
Isn't this post an unsolicited opinion?
Yes.
Doesn't that make you the asshole?
Yes.
Are you going to address that?
No.
What if somebody asks for my opinion?
Then give it. The real one. The one everybody else in their life has been too polite to say. Do not soften it. Do not open with something you like about it. Just say the thing. They asked. And they will never ask again, which is the reward
So when do I share a take?
When a person makes a sound that has a question mark at the end of it.
A note on safety
None of this is advice, which is itself an opinion nobody requested. Number four escalates fast. We sell merch. We are not qualified to tell you how to handle your uncle, your coworker, or the man at the parts counter who has strong feelings about the vehicle you have already bought. Do what you want. You were going to.
