There’s a meta point here: part of becoming a man is developing strangely intense convictions about minor things. Not because the object itself necessarily matters, but because the capacity for strong preference signals something upstream: passion, experience, assertiveness, identity with edges.

For example: believing there’s one acceptable brand of headphone, having a blood feud with at least one airline, guy who loves Linux, guy who loves Apple, there’s “right way” to grill/code/fish/etc., tribalizing along luxury watch lines (Submariners are for poors, etc.), if your truck isn’t diesel you’re gay, etc..

What’s being communicated is:

“I have encountered the world enough times to develop grooves and form.”

The opinion is almost beside the point. What matters is the lens into temperament (disagreeable) and personality that has a definitive shape and color, not some limp noodle chameleon that blends in wherever it goes.

A man with no oddly overdeveloped opinions often feels malleable, soft: like someone optimized for compatibility, harmony (feminine). If you have no enemies, all that means is nobody notices you. If everyone likes you, nobody really likes you, it just makes you safe. You’re like a Windows PC. Nobody brags about their Windows; it’s neither here nor there. It’s fine.

The “everyone’s opinion is valid” guy (womanly) has no gravity. No texture. No aura.

Meanwhile the guy who will die on the hill of mechanical keyboards, handgun brands, or why Spotify’s algorithm is spiritually castrated is letting you know he is lived-in and stands for something. If you get him rolling on the right topic, he will say something that’s interesting.