To learn more about the phenomenon of people feeling the need to assert their intelligence online, we reached out to Clinical Mental Health Counselor Scott Carter, who was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda.

“I find that most people aren't nearly as aware or conscious of their own actions or behaviors as they ought to be,” Scott shared. “They assert themselves as experts, partially because they're failing to exercise sufficient enough awareness to realize that they aren't an expert, but it's more than a lack of awareness. It goes well beyond that.”

“Humans can easily be pulled into their own individual ego's need for superiority. People are always looking for ways to be better or look better than other people, but it's all rooted in the insecurities that they aren't willing to acknowledge,” the therapist continued. 

“Deep down, they feel inferior, and this can seem like an obvious way to overcome that inferiority when it's not. It's a misnomer. People compensate for their deep-rooted insecurity and inferiority in many ways,” Scott explained.

“It might seem like the solution to insecurity and inferiority is for others to view us as smart or having expertise but again, it's a misnomer. When you speak as an expert to things that you know nothing about, you only deepen your own inferiority because you're creating a greater dissonance between what you think you know or making it look like you know versus what you actually do know.”

“But what else should we expect from a culture that is obsessed with hierarchies?” Scott asks, noting that status is everything these days. “Without status, we can't justifiably care about ourselves or see worth or value in ourselves, right? That's how it seems, anyway. Most of us fall for this illusion,” he continued. “That status equals importance, and importance equals respect and love. Making oneself look like an expert seems like an easy way to acquire status.”

The therapist went on to note that people do tend to do this in real life as well, but it’s been accelerated by the internet. “There's a strange phenomenon in which the least qualified and most biased people are the loudest and most aggressive about their perspectives,” he told Bored Panda.

“It's not necessarily that they think they're an expert, it's that their lack of awareness prevents them from seeing that they should probably just say nothing. The ability to be anonymous on the internet though really emboldens some people,” Scott added. “The anonymity of the internet is so much safer, it gives people something to run and hide behind when things get messy.”

Scott went on to note that he’s spoken to many young people who have built and engineered an entirely different identity for themselves online. “They can easily lie about their age, their money, their status and anything else like expertise with little or no consequence,” he shared. 

“If you remove accountability and consequences, it emboldens people to do some really nasty things and there isn't much nastier than deception. They are seeking status, and they are sometimes willing to say or do whatever is necessary to get there.”

We also asked the expert if he had any advice for people who feel the need to prove their intelligence online. “Each person should learn to ask themselves, honestly, if they have any ability to speak about an event or an issue, and they should also examine whether or not they have any experience with that situation,” Scott shared. 

“When the conflict in Israel popped up recently, I saw a meme that said, ‘I'm no longer an expert on Ukraine because now I'm an expert about Israel,’ which I thought was incredibly accurate,” he continued. “I have no doubt that many of the people who have been vocal about these issues could find these places on a map. But everything that I've suggested so far still requires some awareness and insight which has become a rare and precious commodity these days. We first have to ask people to look at themselves, honestly, in the mirror.”

Scott also wants people to accept that it's okay to not know everything. “It's okay to say you don't know, and it's okay to shut up and listen to those who know about it,” he shared. “It's okay to yield to the experts. It doesn't make you less of a person. In fact, admitting that you don't know and you're there to listen and learn is the real strength and the real virtue.”

“The bottom line piece of advice is simply this: For people to practice their own awareness and be honest with themselves,” the therapist noted. “Become more conscious and more aware of your actions, don't just mindlessly do whatever and don't just follow any and every impulse that pops up. Learn how to be more intentional and deliberate about your actions and learn to ask yourself the hard questions. ‘Am I one of those people? Should I take a step back here? Do I really know what I'm talking about?’”

“Intelligence doesn't mean that you know everything. In fact, the most intelligent people that I've known have realized that they know next to nothing and aren't afraid to admit it,” Scott added. “Now that's being smart. The smartest people are also the people who exercise their awareness. Being aware of one's own actions is a sign of true intelligence. A truly intelligent person freely admits when they don't know something.”