Read the Whole Thing, Man

Why Skipping the Article and Jumping to Comments

Is the Least Dude Thing You Can Do

Look, I get it. The internet moves fast. Your feed is a firehose of hot takes, clickbait headlines, and AI thinkpieces that all blur together like The Dude’s acid-trip bowling fantasy. You see a post title, your brain fills in the blanks, and your fingers are already typing a comment before you’ve scrolled past the header image.

That’s a problem, man. A real problem. And it’s one I keep running into in publishing circles, writing communities, and pretty much anywhere people gather to talk about books, craft, and the business of getting words into the world.

So let’s slow down. Pour yourself a White Russian—or a coffee, I don’t judge—and actually sit with this one for a few minutes. The rug really does tie the room together, and you might miss it if you’re not paying attention.

The Comment Section Is Not a Speed Round

Here’s what keeps happening: someone shares an article about AI in publishing, or copyright law, or the future of editing, and within minutes the comments section looks like a barroom brawl. People are swinging opinions at each other without having read a single paragraph past the headline.

Take the big debates rattling around the author world right now. You’ve seen them. Maybe you’ve participated in a few:

·AI is going to replace all human writers within five years. (People either panic-quit or rage-comment without reading a word of the actual argument.)
AI will make editors obsolete. (Same energy. Nobody reads the piece, but everybody has an opinion about whether their career is over.)
You don’t need to register your copyright or buy your own ISBNs. (This one can actually cost you money if you follow bad advice you didn’t bother to verify.)
AI-generated work is copyrightable if it has a certain percentage of human input. (People grab onto a number and run with it without understanding the legal landscape underneath.)
You don’t need to disclose AI use to Amazon or the Copyright Office. (Some people love this take because it’s convenient. Others hate it because it feels dishonest. Very few actually read the reasoning.)

The thing is, any halfway decent article on these topics is going to present nuance, evidence, and perspectives you haven’t considered. But you’ll never encounter any of that if you treat the title like a complete summary.

That’s not being informed. That’s just being loud.

We All Have a Bias. The Trick Is Knowing Yours.

I once edited a manuscript for a therapist—a Christian therapist who wrote a parenting book. Right at the top, he said he hoped his book would reach Christian and non-Christian parents alike. Noble goal. But the content was deeply rooted in a faith-based perspective, and anyone outside that tradition was going to feel it immediately.

So we adjusted. We clarified that his target audience was Christian parents, and that others might find value in the work, but his lens was his lens. Acknowledging the bias didn’t weaken the book. It made it more honest.

I brought my own bias to that project too. I’m not a practicing Christian, but I grew up in Christian education and attended Bible college, so I speak the language. That combination meant I could spot where he was leaning too far into assumptions his broader readership wouldn’t share. It worked because both of us were honest about where we stood.

When it comes to the big industry debates—AI, copyright, the future of editing—I’ve got my own lean. I think AI is a powerful tool when used thoughtfully. I once worked with an author who had Parkinson’s and could no longer type. AI helped him get his manuscript drafted, and I edited it at a steep discount so he could share his story with the world. You’ll never hear me say AI is inherently evil.

On copyright, I’m a literalist. I interpret the copyright clause in the Constitution as tightly as I can, and I consult with attorneys who actually practice IP law to make sure the advice I pass along to authors is as solid as possible. That’s my bias. Yours might be different. And that’s fine—as long as you know what it is.

Because if you never read anything outside your confirmation bubble, your bias stops being a perspective and starts being a cage. And Dude, nobody wants to live in a cage. That’s very un-Dude.

Ignorance Isn’t an Insult. It’s Just a Starting Point.

People get touchy about the word “ignorance,” but it’s not a dirty word. It doesn’t mean you’re unintelligent. It means there’s something you haven’t learned yet. Welcome to being human. Population: everyone.

There are a few flavors of ignorance, and most of them are completely understandable:

You’ve simply never encountered the information. Nobody handed you the facts, so you had no chance to learn them. No fault there.
You’ve avoided the information for emotional or personal reasons. This happens a lot in belief-based communities, and it’s sometimes called spiritual avoidance, though it shows up well beyond religious contexts.
You’ve seen the facts but dismissed them because they didn’t fit your existing framework. This is confirmation bias doing its job, quietly whispering “that can’t be right” before you’ve actually examined anything.
You’re just not that interested. I find string theory fascinating, but I’m not about to carve time out of my writing schedule to truly learn it. Some ignorance is just prioritization.

The shame around not knowing something is what makes people fake it. And faking it in a comment section is like Walter pulling a gun at the bowling alley—it’s aggressive, it’s unnecessary, and everybody’s uncomfortable.

Ignorance is normal. It’s unavoidable. And it’s fixable—but only if you’re willing to actually read the thing in front of you instead of performing expertise you haven’t earned.

The Difference Between Humility and Just Saying You’re Humble

Commenting on an article you haven’t read is a pride move, plain and simple. You’re telling the author: “I already know everything you could possibly say, and here’s my rebuttal.” The Dude would not abide.

Every time I sit down with a piece I disagree with—even the most doom-and-gloom AI-will-eat-your-career stuff—I walk away having learned something. Sometimes it’s a new angle on the argument. Sometimes it’s just insight into the author’s own bias. But I always come out a little less ignorant than I went in.

False humility is its own breed of annoying. You know the type: “Oh, I’m always learning!” they say, right before delivering a thirty-minute monologue about everything they already know. That’s not humility. That’s a TED talk with a humble-brag bumper sticker.

We recently had a copyright attorney on our podcast, and I’ve been in this industry for roughly two decades. I’ve worked for major publishers, owned two publishing companies, and edited more manuscripts than I can count. And I still learned things in that conversation about contracts, terms of service, and the fine print of copyright law that I didn’t know before.

That’s what genuine humility looks like. You sit down, you listen, and you let the people who’ve gone deeper than you have fill in the gaps. The Dude didn’t pretend to understand nihilism. He just wanted his rug back.

Expertise Is Earned, Not Assumed

Here’s where it all ties together—like a rug in a well-appointed living room.

Expertise is not something you pick up by scanning headlines and writing hot takes. It’s education plus practice, applied over years. That’s the formula, and there aren’t shortcuts.

My partner Holly is a dental hygienist. She earned a bachelor’s degree, did clinicals, practiced for over two decades, and still takes continuing education every year. My daughter is finishing nursing school after earning her LPN and working in hospitals and pediatrics. Lawyers study for the bar, then go into practice. Doctors complete medical school and years of rotations. Editors build their craft through training, publishing work, and ongoing professional development.

Notice the pattern? Education. Practice. More education. More practice. Nobody wakes up one morning and decides they’re an expert because they read a Reddit thread and watched a YouTube video at 1.5x speed.

I know a lot about copyright law. My business partner Stacey and I have read stacks of contracts and engaged with IP issues on behalf of clients for years. But are we copyright attorneys? Nope. That expertise requires actually practicing law—arguing cases, advising clients daily, keeping up with new legislation and case law. Those folks carry malpractice insurance for a reason. Their expertise is tested, documented, and legally protected.

It’s a little like watching a prescription drug commercial, Googling the symptoms, and walking into your doctor’s office to tell them what medication you need. We’ve all been tempted. But that doesn’t make us doctors. And nobody is giving you malpractice insurance for your WebMD habit.

Just Read the Thing, Man

I’m not asking for a lot here. I’m asking you to slow down, read the articles people share, watch the videos before commenting, and resist the urge to treat every headline like a call to battle.

You might learn something. You might adjust your bias, even slightly. You might discover that the person you were about to argue with actually agrees with you on most points, and the one thing they got wrong is easily addressed in a thoughtful reply instead of a knee-jerk explosion.

Read the whole thing. Digest it. Think about it. Then comment.

That’s how you learn. That’s how you grow. And that’s how you become the kind of person whose comments actually add something to the conversation instead of just adding noise.

The Dude abides. But only after he’s heard the whole story.

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“Plot Nihilists believe in nothing. Don’t be like them.”