Fight Tactics for the Online Crusader

As I mentioned the other day, in the weeks since the Clackamas Town Center shooting and the mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, I’ve engaged in many debates with people on Facebook about gun control.

I’m not going to repeat those arguments . . . yet. What I wanted to examine today was the meta-issue of how to talk with people you violently disagree with, and probably more important, why. As a veteran of several decades of online firefights -- back in the days of Usenet, some of the most heated arguments I got into occurred on the Camille Paglia discussion list -- I’ve had a lot of experience with Internet battles.

I have a couple of Facebook friends -- people I probably linked up with as friends of friends, rather than people I know personally -- who are staunch gun rights advocates. I don’t go out of my way to antagonize these folks; I just calmly dispute some of their assertions to one another on an irregular basis. We go back and forth a while, and then I wander off.

A few days ago, one of that crowd typed in a comment whose like I’ve seen many times in the course of Internet debates on any number of subjects. “Give it up,” he told the ally who was arguing with me; “Not going to change a liberal mindset … Can’t be won.”

Noticing that I was putting time into these arguments, my wife said pretty much the same thing to me. Why do you waste your time? You’re not going to change anyone’s mind, she told me.

But that’s not why I do it, I told her. If I went into this thinking I was going to change people’s minds (at least, the people I’m directly arguing with), then I’d be dooming myself to frustration.

I find it interesting and useful to listen to, and argue with, people who have a very different point of view from mine because I learn more -- not only about what and how they think, but about what I think. If I don’t test my beliefs and ideas against those of people who disagree with me -- if I only hang out with people who see things the same way I do -- I’m not going to learn very much.

I think it’s in Ecce Homo that Nietzsche says most people read only what they already know. By testing my ideas against people who don’t automatically go along with them, I can learn where some of the assumptions and blind spots in my beliefs are. It’s often the case that I have only the fuzziest notion of why I believe something until I have to devise a defense of it in the face of someone else’s attack.

It’s also training in good manners and respectful discourse. To argue firmly and unflinchingly with people who don’t accept what you say, without antagonizing them enough to switch you off (or in the case of Facebook, “un-friend” you), tests your ability to avoid cheap shots, name calling, and other forms of verbal abuse. Obviously, it’s also a measure of their tolerance, or perhaps their comfort level in a forum where you’re the intellectual minority and they have plenty of friends who will take up the cudgels in their defense.

Then there are all the silent hundreds (or maybe just dozens) who silently read what the two or four active disputants are writing. Some of them may be confused, on the fence, or as yet unclear about what they think. Hashing things out in front of them may help them decide where they come down on the matter. In that sense, an online debate can be a kind of public service.

It’s important to protect your own mental health in these scuffles. If you take them too seriously, if you let your pride or will to win take over, you’re going to upset yourself needlessly. Remember the following tactics:

• Reread each post you compose carefully before sending it. Watch for unnecessary insults or cheap shots, and remove them. If you see insults and cheap shots coming from the opposition, point them out only once, if at all. Otherwise, ignore them and let them speak to all the observers who are not ostensibly arguing but will take note of them. It’s much more effective to let the other side dig their own grave rather than to try to shove them into one and risk coming off as the bad guy. Accept from the start that you ARE the bad guy, then show everybody how classy a bad guy can be.
• Don’t let the battle consume you; every time you post, go off and do something else, such as talking to other Facebook friends, or even logging off for an hour or a day instead of waiting around for the next response from your opponent(s). Things have less of a tendency to get overheated if you pace yourself.
• If you feel yourself getting overwhelmed, give up. Walk away, without announcing that’s what you’re doing (which is just another way of trying to score a point without actually making one). If you just disappear, without saying you’re leaving, it’s never quite clear whether you gave up or simply had to go offline to meet real-world obligations. Nobody’s really keeping score, anyway. The point is not to “win,” whatever that means, but to have stated your position as best you can, and possibly to have learned something yourself that you can take away to the next battle or discussion.

When I say that everybody can learn from these disputes, I speak in ideal terms, of course. Often, I suspect a remark like “this is unproductive; nobody’s going to change anybody’s mind” actually means “I’m getting tired of this argument, and I want to stop now,” whether the speaker realizes it or not.

You might take it as a compliment to your debating skills when the opposition says it to you.