“I can understand that your argument is logical, but logic isn’t everything.”
“Well, of course you’re right, but on the other hand who can really know?”
“What is the evolutionary purpose of [name a totally insignificant characteristic of humans or animals]?”
“I don’t believe in God, but I do believe that there’s a cosmic force in the Universe that influences everything.”
“I can’t believe you really mean what you’re saying.”
“Everybody knows . . . .”
and shit.
For me it’s this response to a reasonable argument: “I am going to pretend that you are now emotional and upset, and then I am going to further pretend that by getting you riled it means that I win the argument.” I can only imagine a 7-year-old in the back of a car going, “Stop hitting yourself!” and then my attention wanders.
In my head, I call it “Dopebating,” as it’s an incredibly irritating style of debate that I rarely see outside of the Dope (although I only visit two other forums).
I don’t know if it’s really a way of making a point, but once folks start making puns, and trying to top each other with their puns, I’m outta there!
The “I can’t believe you’re so worked up about this” defence, usually deployed by somebody who themselves has written the vast majority of the posts in that thread. All you have to go by is a few lines that the person has written on a message board, how exactly do you determine that they are extremely worked up?
“Try reading for comprehension” or “You’re obviously so dumb you can’t read my posts” or “Better go back and read that again”
Just an utterly worthless waste of words.
And its counterparts: “How can you call yourself a conservative/liberal/libertarian/moderate/socialist/anarchist/Nazi? That’s not what a true (blank) believes!”
The thing about that one is, it has given birth to something new I have noticed. A shrill, sad attempt to convince others that one is never worked up about anything ever on a message board, with that pained, strained attempt at posting casually, “Hey, I’m just in it for the lulz. Why, I couldn’t care one whit about anything any of you ever say about anything ever.”
Listen. This is the only site not blocked at work (well it is, but someone gave me a work around, thanks). That means I’m on it at least 8 hours a day, and that doesn’t include when I’m off of work. If something doesn’t work me up once in a while, then I must be numb with Prozac, or Zanax or whatever. It is ok to admit that one gets worked up sometimes.
“You’re Angry, so I win” tends to work in the real world only because too many people are terrified of negative emotions and therefore assume that if you are angry, you are in the wrong. These people are failing to recognize their own emotional response (they’re angry at your show of anger, and allowing it to over-rule their own logical mind).
Unfortunately, there are a lot of manipulative dumbasses who revel in getting other people riled up so that observers will react in this way and judge their target to be in the wrong.
How many times have you been told that you are right in what you say, but you’re wrong because of the way you delivered your message? That’s the excuse. “I’m angry because you’re angry, so I’m going to punish you for it and it’s all your fault!”
I have to say, I don’t quite understand the loathing for this style on these boards. Sure, you can use it to argue like a douche, as your example illustrates…but des arguments douchesque come in all shapes, sizes and writing styles; it’s not inherent to the format.
When I’ve done this in the past, it’s been because quoting an entire five-paragraph post, followed by inline-re-quoting the portion on which I was basing each response or statement, seemed needlessly bulky. I placed my point-specific comments beneath individual quotes, and responded to the argument as a whole at the bottom, using my previous comments for quick reference. After catching hell for “post-parsing,” though (which term pretty much encompasses my problem with people disliking it: how can you comprehend human language without parsing it?), I’ve knocked it off, and allowed the then-inevitable six-post reference clarification exchanges to flow freely.
Hell, I wish honest debaters would answer my posts this way; then I’d have assurance that they’d actually read and understood each portion. I really think it’d prevent any number of skimming-based misunderstandings. But, I guess this is just another case where the jerks have ruined it for everyone else.
(As an addendum to those of you already writing pithy line-by-line responses to this, I’ve already conceded that it’s possible to use this as an asshole-debater tactic, so please don’t bother.)
If you use one of the following smilies
:),:rolleyes:,:p,;), or especially 
in a confrontational post, you lose the thread (no exceptions), and I have no interest in anything else you have to say.
I hate when someone thinks of an utterly contrived, farfetched hypothetical situation as a counterexample to an argument of another post. A real life counterexample would be perfectly legitimate, but something that could only happen in a bad science fiction story makes we want to stop reading.
I agree.
Regards,
Ludovic
There’s a distant relative to this as well. I read “I live my life by logic, not by emotion” all the time. People who say that tend to have watched just a wee bit too much Star Trek, and seem to have little grasp on either logic or emotion. Call them on it and they’ll be quick on the draw with snark, venom, and “a hearty fuck you!”
Poster says something stupid and/or inflammatory in a non-political topic.
Other posters disagree and without crossing any lines, tell the first poster “Hey, what you said was a little much.”
First poster explodes in “You insert random political leaning people always make that point. I can’t say anything here without people like you getting all in my face.”
Wha?
It would be like:
Poster 1: I don’t like teh kittehs. I try to kick them when I see them.
Poster 2: That’s not cool.
Poster 1: You goddamn hippies! You liberals are destroying the world.
or
Poster 1: I don’t like raisins. No one should sell them.
Poster 2: Well, some people really do like them. They’re good for you.
Poster 1: You conservatives! You are destroying the world.
I don’t care what political inclination is being attacked. I don’t understand why what someone’s supposedly political leanings have to do with anything in a non-political thread. You can’t tell someone’s politics on raisins and teh kittehs.
It’s not just on this board. I saw it a lot some other places this weekend and it completely destroys discussion on interesting things.
Posters that are over-the-top mean and say abusive things make me lose interest in not only what they’re saying in that thread, but makes me suspicious of everything they say from then on, because I associate them with being psycho. Some people* really *have anger issues.
Ayup.
This thread is funny, because I’m dealing with someone using several of these tactics in another thread right now–calling me butthurt, telling me to read for comprehension, etc. It’s helping me not get over-irritated at him to read the absurd arguments listed here in distilled form.
Daniel
In most of the threads about politics, I usually abandon hope when I see blanket statements about political phenomena which are usually grossly generalized perversions of something that has a kernel of truth, or just plain wrong. Examples are:
It is so very rare to see anyone actually back up such claims with any evidence. When they do get called on it, they may provide some anecdotal evidence or refer to just one case, and the thread derails from there. For this reason I find most of the political debate on the dope of an appallingly low level, and a level that has little or nothing to do with fighting ignorance.
I dunno; maybe the politics have been so entrenched on the Dope at this point that it’s just the same people, doing the same dance.