I'm a PhD student in political science. I've specifically studied American Politics, State and Local Government, and Political Behavior (mostly political identities). This means that I've personally done research in politics, I know politicians in real life and I've worked in politics in various capacities.

There isn't a day that goes by where I don't get into this long winded explanation about something dumb someone wrote about politics, only to say to myself half-way through it "Why am I bothering with this? They aren't going to be convinced and I'm just going to get downvotes" and delete it and move on.

Problem is, every single other person I know who has advanced specialized knowledge or training does the same thing on reddit and social media since not many people respect academics unless they are directly supporting the argument the person is trying to make.

It's why my colleagues and I don't want to touch /r/politics with a 10-foot-poll. I mean, I'll post from time to time in the circle jerky subreddits that confirm my own biases, but even there I get shit on if I try to correct something dumb or ignorant.

So what happens is, popular opinions that appeal to the masses end up dominating the nuanced (not as fun) explanations of professionals and experts.

This doesn't bum me out because I think I'm better than others, or because I think I'm right about everything, but because I care deeply about these topics and I like talking about then with people. I don't know everything, but I definitely have enough experience to know when I don't know something, but not everyone has that same level of understanding.. So it's frustrating to try and argue or discuss politics with people who have already made up their minds about things. And this isn't something specific to political scientists, anyone who's an expert in some field or topic runs into it.

It's simply because people don't really want to engage with the details when they really only care about the their opinion or being right about their opinion. Bernie Sanders Supporters didn't like it, Clinton supporters didn't like it, and Trump supporters really don't like it.

There's an interesting book about this by Tom Nichols called "The Death of Expertise".

And in true fashion, I almost deleted this post, but I figure I can weather the downvotes that from from it since I do think it's important.