Wings Over the Pyre

Current Location: 30045
Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: Bullet for My Valentine - Curses

A few notes on discussion and disputation in online fora:

• If you find yourself responding to a multi-paragraph section with a single line ... you've lost. Concede the field gracefully and conserve what egoboo you've got left for a later engagement.
• If you find yourself doing a point-by-point Fisking of someone else's piece, make sure you're right, but moreover make sure you look right.
• While the guy with the most words isn't necessarily right, that's the way the audience will lean.
• If you complain about the words your opponent is using, you'll prove he's got the better ones, and you lose.
• • Corollary: Arguing semantics is a fool's game.
  • Second Corollary: If you're going to argue semantics, be right.
  • Third Corollary: If you're going to argue semantics and you're not right, be good at it.
  • Fourth Corollary: A spelling flame will automatically contain one misspelling. Plus, you lose.
• Emotion is the enemy, but passion sways an audience. It's a hard line to walk, but the key is to keep your arguments passionate and lure your enemy into emotion.
• Remember that whatever argument you engage with paints you in the same muck. Choose your engagements carefully. There are many times a casual, short, simple reference with an implied shrug is a far better weapon than a Fisking.
• A clever turn of phrase is better than the truth.
• Once your enemy makes a misstep, you don't have to do anything. Doing nothing draws attention to their mistake, doing something makes it yours.
• • Corollary: The wise man keeps his mouth shut and is thought a fool. The idiot opens his mouth and removes all doubt. As true today as it ever was.
• The single best winning move is not to care.
• If your enemy is of the opposite sex, you can just assume you've lost up front. It's faster and puts you in the right mindset.
• If, by mistake, you actually do care, your only hope is to produce more substance than your enemy. Run them out of substance and they'll retreat to one of the above failure modes. Then you win.
• Winning requires no announcement. You decide when you win. The audience decides when you lose.
• When in doubt, say something useful and practical.
• The audience doesn't care, either.

Man, a lifetime of dealing with people online, and the core of it can be summed up in a page of bullet points.

The key issues are all about engagement. Whenever possible, pick the field. Whenever necessary, pick the weapon. Joshua was right, the only winning move is not to play, 99.9965% of the time. If you're going to play, know what you're doing and why. Before you engage, know where you'll disengage.

Blogs have actually made things a lot more reasonable in many ways. I don't have to allow comments on my postings. If I choose not to respond to commenters, it's seen as my prerogative, not an abdication of the position. In many ways, blog-mediated discourse is much more civil.

Just stay out of communities and fora and you'll be fine.

This has been a Public Service Announcement.