Whenever I see a comment on social media that I think is wrong, I feel the need to correct it. These arguments can go on for days, even weeks, and if I don’t win the argument, I get overly fixated on it, wondering where I went wrong and so on.
Whenever I see a comment on social media that I think is wrong, I feel the need to correct it. These arguments can go on for days, even weeks, and if I don’t win the argument, I get overly fixated on it, wondering where I went wrong and so on.
Gotta have a strategy for deciding on a stopping point. A good overall goal for a social media argument is to get people reading to consider things they might not have thought about or been aware of before, so it’s probably not going to help if all you have left to say is finding new ways to rephrase the points you’ve already made, or explaining in detail basic uncontroversial things that your opponent is playing dumb about. It isn’t bad to let them have the last word if there is nothing that you really need to clarify or address.
Unfortunately when you get an inbox notification and read some inflammatory things, making that call to walk away is hard because emotionally you get worked up about it. This is why I think “disable inbox replies” is a good feature Reddit has and threadiverse software should implement it, a lot of the time you know in advance that you’ve already said your piece and whatever someone writes in response to you, it’s very likely going to be a mistake to respond again, and it helps a lot to just remove the temptation.
These two are the main points in my eyes.
I do engage in responses and discussion to a specific comment or person, but only so far as it seems like a productive and good or decent-faith one. Beyond that, I consider whether it’s worth it to set the record straight.
If it’s a public, shared resource that we have to cultivate. Giving it up to the loudest or strongest-opinioned would be a negative influence on the community. I think a sense of justice, correctness/validity/truthfulness, and moral also plays into it.
I enjoy reasoning and formulating, and also thinking about how best to approach or defuse (bad) arguments/bait. The act of doing so is practice as well, useful in other situations, too. So, even ignoring the public record/shared resource aspect, it’s not like you gain nothing from formulating responses.