At the 2020 Golden Globes, Ricky Gervais delivered a line that travelled well beyond Hollywood:
“If you win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech, all right? You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world, most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. If you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God and … It’s already three hours long.”
It was comedy — exaggerated and mischievous — but it resonated because it touched a deeper truth: not every microphone is a mandate.
We live in an age of platforms. Awards platforms. News platforms. Political platforms. Social media platforms. Professional platforms. Everyone has one. Increasingly, everyone uses one to pronounce on everything.
The difficulty is not that people speak. The difficulty is that visibility is mistaken for authority. Fame is not expertise. Applause is not evidence. Prominence is not proof.
And this phenomenon is not confined to actors holding trophies. Politicians do it. Newscasters do it. Commentators across the spectrum do it. A press conference can drift into a sermon. A news panel can resemble theatre. A moment that calls for explanation can become an opportunity for moral positioning.
The language may be heartfelt. It may be indignant. It may even be sincere. But sincerity is not the same as substance. There is a subtle distinction between communication and performance. Communication informs. Performance signals.
In law, authority is earned in less glamorous ways — through evidence, precedent, disciplined reasoning, and sometimes correction. One does not rise in court and simply announce a conviction of belief. The belief may be deeply held. It is rarely decisive without support. Yet in public life, strong feeling is frequently presented as sufficient argument.
We should also acknowledge that the information landscape has changed. Many people now receive most of their news in fragments — curated by algorithms, delivered in headlines, distilled into commentary, and shared at speed. Long-form analysis competes poorly with immediacy. Nuance travels slowly. Certainty goes viral.
When public discourse is consumed in short bursts, it naturally favours the declarative over the deliberative. Strong statements outperform careful ones. Emotion outruns explanation. In that environment, platforms become amplifiers. The louder the signal, the more likely it is to spread. The most confident voice is often mistaken for the most informed.
This is not a failure of intelligence. It is a feature of the medium. But it does mean that responsibility rests more heavily on those who hold microphones. When depth is scarce, restraint becomes more important, not less. The danger is not that people care deeply. It is that conviction is now often mistaken for competence.
There is a certain modesty in staying within one’s lane. It does not diminish influence; it strengthens credibility. When a person speaks within the boundaries of genuine knowledge, audiences tend to listen. When those boundaries blur, trust can erode.
Gervais’ joke endured because it reminded us — bluntly but memorably — that a trophy is not a teaching licence. The same might be said of a podium, a panel, or a prime-time slot. Perhaps the better posture — in entertainment, in politics, and in professional life — is this: speak carefully, distinguish opinion from expertise, and resist the temptation to convert every platform into a lecture hall.
The world would likely benefit from more mastery of craft — and a little less certainty about everything else.