The definitive guide to being one of those smug (or perhaps ***LOUD***) bastards that annoy you so much online …
Disclaimer: A few of the examples in this piece are from memory of particularly ‘interesting social media posts that have struck me over the past month or so. They won’t be exact and I can’t remember who it was anyway so there’s no attempt to have a particular go at anyone!
It’s frustrating isn’t it? You’ve got an idea, a thought, a suggestion perhaps, maybe even an opinion. And you’ve thought it through (actually, that might be your first mistake but let’s leave that for now). You venture into an online discussion and what happens? You get shot down by … yes, by what exactly? Swearing? Threats? Witty (but irrelevant) one-liners? *****AGGRESSIVE LANGUAGE USING CAPITALS AND RANDOM PUNCTUATION – DON’T(!!) ***INSULT*** MY INTELLIGENCE BY …*****? It really doesn’t seem as if they’ve any more knowledge than you on the topic (maybe even not as much) and the flaws in their reasoning are pretty visible but, somehow, they still seem to get the better of you. How does that happen? Are they just more forceful? Wittier perhaps? Better at expressing themselves? More experienced? Is their true genius hidden behind their apparent muddled logic? It’s probably simpler than that: more likely they’re just fundamentally different to you.
So, does that mean, to get anywhere, you have to become like them? Do you really want to? Perhaps not: by and large these people don’t lead rewarding real lives (it’s basically why they’re like this online). But, just in this context, there are some easy pointers to follow that will mostly see you right. You almost have to be a different person on- and off-line. (With any luck you can still keep some friends in real life.) It starts with mental attitude then a small number of simple steps and you can win any argument on social media. But before that, a little bit of context …
The irony is that a social media argument really should work the way an ideal face-to-face conversation would. Someone listens while the other speaks, digests what’s been said, then responds. At that point, the roles reverse and it continues from there. Of course, in practice, it never works like that in real life but you’d think that the enforced half-duplex nature of text-based exchange really would enforce that structure on its participants. Why doesn’t it?
Turing's Radiator 