Tag: someone is wrong on the internet

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someone is wrong on the internet you need to do better

People who disagree with you are not stupid. Or insane.

Just as a quick note, since I know a lot of people (including myself) have been scratching out heads over the avalanche of straw men that kicked off this mess, and wondering what the heck is going on with that. I’ve had and observed several conversations that basically go:

  • Other person: Alex said X.
  • Me: No she didn’t. She said Z.
  • Other person: No, she said X.
  • Me: But see here? Look. At the words. She says Z.
  • Other person: Well I disagree. She said X.
  • And so on forever until I gnaw on my desk.

I know I’m not the only one. And I’ve seen a lot of dismissive variations on “these people are idiots.” Yeah, I get that this is frustrating, when you can’t even get the other person to acknowledge that a fact is, you know, actually a fact1. But it’s an enormous mistake to dismiss people who disagree with you like this as stupid/delusional/insane2.

[ETA: Please note that this is specifically in regards to arguments that involve untrue facts or statements that are provably untrue. Policy arguments, value judgments, and the like? I don’t think you should be dismissing people as stupid/delusional/insane over that either, but it’s also not the topic at hand here.]

To start with, then you start sounding like people who say things like, “All liberals want to destroy free speech.” Or whatever. It’s sloppy thinking, it’s dehumanizing, and if your opponent in an argument is doing a thing that’s pissing you off, it behooves you to not retaliate by doing the same thing.

The thing you have to realize is generally, people who point at an untrue fact or statement and indicate that this is the hill they are willing to die on are not stupid. They are more likely just very, very invested in a worldview that requires said untrue fact or statement to be true.

Carol Tavris did an excellent talk about this at TAM 2011, in regards to dissonance theory: (start at around 10:30 for the really pertinent stuff)

This is the money quote:

The problem we face then is not just bad or foolish people doing bad and foolish things and justifying them. It’s good people, smart people, ethical people, competent people who do foolish and wrongheaded things and justify them in order to preserve their belief that they’re smart, good, ethical, and competent.

Does considering the situation from this angle make any difference to the current argument? Eh, probably not. Lines have already been drawn, and I feel like a certain set of self identified “conservatives” are invested in the idea that Alex is the evil queen of the liberal literati and wants to force every writer to adhere to a ridiculous checklist. Somehow. (Originally a hyperbolic statement? Quite possibly. When it’s being repeated and defended like actual truth, though, it stops being merely a ridiculous rhetorical device.)

But I really wanted to point this out because it happens on the internet. A lot. And it’s easy to dismiss other people as stupid and willfully blind, particularly when the frustration level starts to climb. But if nothing else, going to that mental place effects your rhetoric, which can mean sounding like a total jerk if there are undecided bystanders, and also act as confirmation for such belief affirming statements as, “all [group] are whiny assholes.” Etc.

And I also wanted to point this out because each and every one of us is capable of being in this mental position. (I know I sure have been before, and it’s not a fun hole to climb out of.) So be mindful of that. Be as critical toward your own reasoning as you are to anyone else’s.

As in all things, your mileage may vary. Goodness knows I’m not perfect at this, and I have zero room to be preaching at people. But I felt compelled to point this out because I’ve been making a very conscious effort lately to be mindful of the basic humanity in other people, even if they lack the courtesy to recognize my basic humanity and that of my friends in return.

That’s the kind of person I want to be. Even if sometimes I can only manage it after I’ve stepped away from the keyboard, taken some deep breaths, and counted to ten. Twice. In every language I know the numbers for.

 

1 – Welcome to the goddamn life of anyone who has ever done any research related to climate science. Whee.

2 – And seriously stop using insanity or implications of mental illness as a go-to. Political opinions and nearly all conspiracy thinking are not mental illness. This is not a path you want to go down, and it’s extremely insulting and dismissive to anyone who has an actual mental illness. (And this is a thing I need to be aware of myself, since I have a tendency to throw around the word crazy. Sigh.)

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someone is wrong on the internet

Don’t you have something better to do with your time?

Look, this isn’t hard. I saw something that bugged me. You don’t have to agree with me that it’s a problem. In fact, it’s totally fine if you don’t. We’re all along the spectrum of human experience and I am comfortable with the fact that we’re on different wavelengths.

That said, since I’m not you and you’re not me, I’m entitled to my goddamn opinion.

This is the hardest part of discussions when it’s about feelings and reactions instead of facts. Everyone is informed by their own life experience, and that life experience is likely wildly different from yours. Unless their reaction is downright inhumane, you don’t get to tell someone that they’re wrong to feel the way they do. Well, unless you want to come across as a dismissive asshole who has his or her fingers firmly planted in ears whilst chanting lalalala, and then sure. Go wild.

If you don’t want to sound like a dismissive asshole, here’s an example of what you can say: “I don’t agree with you and I feel differently, but I see where you’re coming from.” It’s really not hard. Cut and paste that if you like, until you can type it with feeling. You don’t even have to give me credit. It’s something every reasonable and empathetic human being should be able to say.

Also? “You shouldn’t talk about this because children are starving in Africa” is also incredibly dismissive, for the record. And stupidly hypocritical, since apparently you don’t have anything better to do with your time either. Those poor kids.

This is me. Every night.

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logical fallacies someone is wrong on the internet

Straw men

This is a term I’ve used in the past on my blog, and I bet most if not all of you already know what this is. But just in case, let’s cover it briefly, because this is something anyone who has, say, ever watched a politician speak ought to understand.

A Straw Man is a logical fallacy. If you’re not familiar with logical fallacies, there’s an excellent summary over at the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, which is worth reading. In summary, a logical fallacy is an incorrect argument, normally due to an error in logic or rhetoric, and either purposeful or accidental. There’s a massive list of formal fallacies, because certain errors just pop over and over again in argument.

Straw man tends to evoke the image of soldiers bayonetting straw dummies, and it’s used for a reason. In the straw man logical fallacy, instead of arguing against your opponent’s actual position, you make up an entirely different, misrepresentative position, one that’s normally a lot easier to attack, and then argue against that instead. Politicians do it all the time by putting words in their opponent’s mouth or purposefully misinterpreting something they’ve said.

I’ve attempted to come up with some real world examples, but feel free to offer your own in comments, or correct me if I’ve made a mistake.

  • Just about any politician ever who has claimed that anyone opposed to Law X just wants to maintain the status quo. George W. Bush did that when he argued for No Child Left Behind, Obama did it for the Affordable Care Act. While some opposition comes from wanting to keep things as they are no doubt, there were plenty of people opposed to both because they thought they didn’t go far enough (hey, wouldn’t it be awesome to have single payer?) or that it went about things the wrong way (way to require mathematically impossible rates of success in testing!) and cogent arguments to that effect.
  • Arguing against feminism because we’re all just a bunch of man hating bra-burners who want to put a matriarchy in place is one that happens all the time. So often, in fact, the Straw Feminist is a trope. 
  • Just about anything to do with the Fox News fictional “War on Christmas.” (Example here.) I would argue that the entire concept of the “War on Christmas” is a straw man, since it’s a characterization of people wanting to destroy the holiday when basically the evil opposing forces (anyone who says “happy holidays” and atheists for the most part) most commonly want to make the holiday season inclusive for all faiths and/or feel that the government shouldn’t be promoting a particular flavor of religion.
  • A popular one currently is to characterize any discussion of regulations on guns as an attempt to ban all guns forever. I’ve gotten hit with that on both my post Sandy Hook massacre blog posts; note in neither do I say anything about banning guns entirely.

Logical fallacies are a powerful, useful tool. Two things you need to keep in mind however:

  1. Just because an argument contains a logical fallacy does not mean that the conclusion will necessarily be false. Sometimes someone with shitty logic still gets to a correct conclusion. Also, sometimes people will purposefully commit these fallacies as a rhetorical device, so be cautious of that as well. 
  2. Just because you know the logical fallacies does not mean you are immune to committing them yourself. I know I’ve fallen victim to their siren call in the past. So don’t let it get to your ego, okay?
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someone is wrong on the internet

You may not have noticed, but I cuss a lot

People who have read my blog for a while may have noticed that I use rather… salty language. In the past, I’ve been accused of having a mouth like a trucker. Can’t say it’s wrong. And think about this – I actually cuss way less than I did about five years ago. Having a little niece that I adore to bits has had the effect of making me more aware of what I say and how I say it, as has just being a writer.

But here’s something else you should know. When I cuss in writing, I mean it. The occasionally f-bomb might trip unthinkingly from my lips, but those four letters don’t just type themselves. I have in the past actually gone over my blog posts and carefully rearranged the bad words, sometimes adding, sometimes subtracting.

Because words have meaning. And curse words have a great emotional, emphatic load to them, which is why I use them.

My opinions are my own, and when I’m on my own time and my own dime, I will express them in the way I find most effective. On my blog, no one else gets to dictate the terms of this debate. And if someone determines the worthiness of an opinion based solely on their judgment that the language is sufficiently elevated, they have my pity. Pretty prose can be window dressing for an ugly idea, but no matter how much frosting and fondant you put on a cake made from manure, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still something that passed through the anus of a large mammal.

It drives me batty when I see people mix up your/you’re and they’re/there/their, for example. But if the worst criticism I can think of someone’s argument is that their grammar is terrible (presuming that their grammar is not so horrific that I can actually understand what they’re saying) then I have already lost. “Oh yeah? Well, you’re ugly!” stopped being a worthwhile debate tactic upon leaving grade school. It just means that you actually have nothing of worth to add but still want to wave your verbal fists in impotent, angry disagreement.

You don’t like my opinion? Fine. You don’t like my opinion because I scorched your delicate ears with my use of the f-bomb? I mean this in all sincerity: get the fuck over it.

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someone is wrong on the internet

A baseball bat is never an acceptable debate tactic

Check this one off on the list of internet firsts for me – I had a complete stranger state he’d like to “challenge me” with a baseball bat to my head because he didn’t like my opinion on Wayne LaPierre being a horrible person. (Well, actually, he didn’t like a straw man of my opinion about gun control, but that is a subject for a different time.)

Straw man or no, why does the initial reaction involve talking about perpetrating blunt force trauma on a complete stranger and not a I think you [optional: you moron] are totally wrong and this is why?

This should go without saying, but it’s not okay to engage in a public violent fantasy just because you disagree with someone. And immediately trying to excuse it by adding something to the effect of, “but I totally wouldn’t because I’m not actually a violent person” doesn’t make it any better. You still said it. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube or unring the bell, pick your metaphor. Someone taking about baseball bats in one sentences and being a totally nonviolent person hahaha in the next is really not something that inspires me to trust the latter of the two opposing statements; it’s smarter to assume the worst because otherwise you could potentially, I don’t know, get hit in the head with a baseball bat.

If you didn’t mean it, why the hell did you say it?

Frankly, at that point it just feels like a pathetic little fig leaf. Maybe it should be followed up with a “wow you’re humorless can’t you take a joke?” since that’s classic. I can almost see that as something you’d joke about with people you know. I’ve “threatened” to punch a friend or two of mine in the cock, for example, and it was all good because everyone involved knew it was a joke. Because we’re all friends.

I am under no illusions that this person would actually take a baseball bat to me. To begin with, they don’t know me, let alone know where I live. And frankly, talk is incredibly cheap, particularly on the internet where you can say shit like that and never have to look the other person in the eye. That said, it still upset me. It made me angry enough that my hands shook. “Joking” or “speaking metaphorically” about hurting someone else isn’t a way to engage them in reasoned discourse salted with facts or even hyperbolic posturing. Bullshit talk about violence feels incredibly personal because things like that happen to real people, and it reads as an attempt at intimidation. It adds nothing to discussion. It cuts discussion off with an opening position that is hostile and devoid of reason.

So no. It’s not okay. It’s never okay.

This is the most damning thing, I think. I haven’t done it recently, but I’m 99.9% certain in the past I have said things along that vein, most likely related to wishing I could punch a politician or two in the face. I’ve now come to the conclusion that if I have made even vaguely threatening statements before, that was wrong, and I deeply regret it.

Joking with your friends is not the same as showing your ass on the internet and talking about a complete stranger that may some day soon read your statement. Words have meaning. I’ve committed to not saying things I don’t mean.

And I’m going to grow the fuck up.

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freedom of speech rants someone is wrong on the internet

You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

So there was the thing over at Jim C Hines’ blog, where I made the mistake of reading comments and once again it made me wonder if we could claim that part of humanity is just something we found on the curb, like an unwanted couch. Jim canceled his Reddit Q&A because there was a really gross thread on Reddit where rapists were talking about the hows and whys of the awful things they’ve done; he gave an ultimatum that either that thread needed to go, or no Q&A from him.

Immediately, whining about freedom of speech ensued. This is not an uncommon reaction, I’ve noticed.  Christian apologists for Chick-fil-a have been applying this juvenile argument as well, to tell us we’re all being mean for not buying their delicious hate chicken and thus tacitly endorsing their anti-gay agenda. Apparently, freedom of speech has been redefined on the internet as, “I have a right to say anything horrible I want and you’re not allowed to protest or try to stop me.”

No. That’s not how it works. And there’s no cognitive dissonance necessary to believe in free speech as a right (via the Constitution) and not wanting to let trolls shit all over your comments section.

This would be because while we all like to say we’re part of the government of the United States, this being a representative democracy and all, none of us are actually the government, and none of us are making laws. The power of the state (and now of large corporations) can be a horrible, chilling thing, and it should be kept well away from speech, even really reprehensible speech. (Because of nothing else, one man’s reprehensible speech is another man’s important point.)

But as I said, I’m not the state, Jim C. Hines isn’t the state, and any website with a commenting policy that keeps a terminal asshole buildup from occurring is also not the state. We’re administrators of our own blogs/websites, and whining at us about freedom of speech is equivalent to whining at your mom because she won’t let you say fuck in the house, and about as effective.

Is it hypocritical, though, to say you believe in free speech and at the same time police jerks on your own space? (Or refuse to share space with shameful people?) No, I don’t think so. I have just as much a right to express my opinion as the next person – and actually more, when it’s my personal space. I’m not obligated to let my obnoxious Ron-Paul-loving neighbor put a campaign sign on my lawn. Likewise, I’m not obligated to let words that are abhorrent or abusive stand on a space that is mine to control. Want to say awful things? Get your own space.

But what about Jim demanding Reddit take the thread down as a condition for him doing the Q&A?

In the world of emergency medicine, unconsciousness implies consent. In the world of speech, silence likewise implies consent, and agreement. Appearing quietly in the same space as something you find abhorrent implies that you are all right with the existence of that abhorrent thing.

And I think that’s an important part that often gets left off on these rants about free speech.

Outside of the realm of law (which obvious does not apply here because hey – not the government!) words have meaning, and consequence. When you run across something despicable, you have a very limited set of choices – you can ignore it, say nothing, move on, or you can protest. If you say nothing, if you do nothing, your silence provides your tacit agreement.

That’s why it’s important, for example, that Anonymous showed up to stand between the Westboro Baptist Church and the attendees of the memorial in Aurora, CO, even if WBC didn’t show up. Why it’s important that Chick-fil-a is facing a boycott for their anti-gay policies. Why when you hear someone say something racist, or sexist, or homophobic it’s important that you argue, even if it means making Christmas dinner kind of uncomfortable.

Some of the most important speech you will ever make is to stand up and say “No, this is wrong, and I refuse to be part of it.”

Related: Civility and free speech at Talking Philosophy. This also addresses why it’s not contrary to believe in free speech and simultaneously demand a minimum level of civility in your blog. And unlike my opinion, contains no swear words.

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rants reference post someone is wrong on the internet

I Give a Homeopathic Fuck About Your Entitled Whining

Dear Sir and/or Madam:

Thank you very much for bringing to my attention the important issue of (circle one):
a) white people losing their privileged position/racial majority in this country
b) your deep feelings that gay people getting married somehow renders your marriage less special
c) your barely concealed rage that we no longer live in a fictionalized version of the 1950s
d) your horror that Christianity is no longer the accepted default religious position and those damn Muslims/Humanists/Atheists/Sikhs/etc insist on existing
e) the basic unfairness of a universe that refuses to allow you to scientifically support your religious/crackpot ideas
f) your deep philosophical point that I am fat/a chick/a chick that doesn’t wear make-up/obviously some kind of lesbo/a hippy pinko feminazi/etc therefore am incapable of being right
g) [write-in space here for issues not covered]

Your opinion is not actually important to me at all. In light of that, please allow me a moment to explain just how little I actually care.

Imagine, if you would, that in the deep recesses of the past my blackened, shriveled excuse for a heart was capable of giving a fuck about you. Not because I thought that you might actually have had a point, but rather because I could recognize your basic humanity and thus stir myself to the level of empathy necessary to give a single, lonely fuck about what you had to say.

This single, sad little fuck ran up against the crushing behemoth of your entitlement. I attempted to engage in reasonable conversation on the misapprehension that such a thing is actually possible in the comments sections of most websites. But then the jaw-dropping assertion that, say, pointing out that straight white men have it kind of easy is somehow racist hit my poor little fuck like a rocket sled crashing into a block of ice. That fuck I gave was easily shattered into at least one hundred pieces, one or two of which I was able to recover for later use.

I would have tried to recover more of my poor, pulverized fuck but you burnt my fingers with your incoherent inability to spell or use even the sophisticated grammar of a second grader and I retreated rather than suffer further.

And then that just kept happening. 

Over and over again, I attempted to give you what remained of that original fuck, and you continued to crush it under the weight of your certitude that life is spectacularly unfair to you because there are people who, shockingly, want the same opportunities you were born with.

Thanks to the internet and the free range of jaw-droppingly stupid opinion available for instant consumption, the fuck I once gave has now been divided and diluted to the point that you could search through every molecule that has ever existed in the universe and find no trace of it.

So at this point, the best I can manage for you is a homeopathic fuck at a dilution somewhere past 400C. Which, if you believed in magic, might actually have some kind of meaning. But given that I’m a woman of reason, it means I literally have no fucks to give you at all. In the entire universe, not one single fuck exists of mine that can be yours in regards to your entitled whining. Ever.

Have a nice day.

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feminism someone is wrong on the internet

Don’t Use This Argument Because OMG Children Are Starving in Africa

Raise your hand if this is a familiar source of tooth-grinding frustration: “Shame on you for being concerned/upset/worried about thing X, because thing Y is way worse.”

(This post started as a comment over at a post Jen wrote about comments Richard Dawkins made. But this annoys me enough, I want to just make it a post all its own. And also, I want to detach it from GettingHitOnInAnElevator-gate. Because really, it’s a more general complaint and what Richard Dawkins said is just one example.)

Now, I’ve run across this faux-argument mostly when I bring up an issue as a feminist, but I’m sure that it happens on other topics1. In one instance (among many), a couple of years ago I got in to the middle of a dogpile on the World of Warcraft forums because several of us female type humans had the audacity to say that we thought there was a particular thing in the game that was probably intended to be cute, but we found it sexist, creepy, and insulting. And immediately, that argument got pulled on us. We’re not allowed to complain that something in the game sexist and insulting because women in less socially liberal countries are under the thumb of some really horrible misogynists.

There are a multitude of reasons that this “argument” is a steaming pile of bullshit:

1) We are capable of being concerned with more than one thing at a time. And we can be concerned about an array of both large and small issues and speak out about them. Feminist women and our feminist male allies are – and this comes as a shock, I know – capable of multitasking.

2) You (directed at the general “you” that uses this ridiculous argument) do not have any way of knowing what I have and have not done toward the cause of women in less privileged countries. And further, it does not matter because you have no right to dictate to me what I can and can’t be concerned about.

3) You may think that thing X is less important than thing Y, but you must also acknowledge that I am directly affected by thing X, and that potentially gives me more power to do something about it. There is a limit to what one of us can do on our own about a giant issue in a far away place; we can donate money, we can volunteer, we can work to raise awareness. A “smaller” issue that affects you personally is something that you can act much more directly on. So you know what? I cannot personally end the practice of female genital mutilation. But I can personally try to change something that affects me directly – to use the WoW example, as a paying customer of the company that’s doing something offensive, I can make a stink about “Hey, I think this is BS.”

4) EVERYONE performs this sort of mutlitasking and issue triage. Everyone. Trying to tell someone they shouldn’t is frankly hypocritical.

5) Also, if you are that concerned about thing Y, why the hell are you wasting your valuable time and energy arguing with silly wrong-headed feminazis on the internet instead of combating thing Y?

6) Every time I hear this argument, this is what I hear: “The issue you have chosen to speak about is one that I dislike or makes me uncomfortable, and I don’t really have a good answer to it. Therefore I will try to shame you with my powers of sarcasm in to shutting up because OMG children are starving in Africa.”

Ultimately, it comes across as almost less insulting if your “argument” is just a baldly stated “go make me a sandwich,” because at least then it doesn’t sound like you’re pretending to be on our side.

Please, just let this argument go; it’s not going to convince anyone, and is frankly going to fan the flames of anger because it sounds so damn condescending. There are a lot of other ways to deal with something you think is turning in to a tempest in a teapot. Ignoring it could be one course of action, since for some reason basically telling people to shut the hell up on the internet doesn’t work unless you have the power to simultaneously kill everyone’s broadband and melt their smart phones. Maybe just saying “I don’t consider this an issue so I’m going to go do something else” would come out as more positive, and you can have a smug little thrill that you’re totally the only adult in the room as you go flouncing away.

Or hey, maybe trying to understand why people are freaking the hell out about something you consider to be a non-issue could be worth a shot. You never know.

1 – Hm, maybe along the lines of “You shouldn’t whine about ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance because there are countries where being an atheist will just get you executed!” And so on.