12 step process
Step 1: Write a 3-line paragraph summing up why you think something is wrong
Step 2: Realize that part of your statement might be incorrect or biased, and search the topic
Step 3: Find out that you’re technically correct and mostly correct, but there’s nuance that will end up in an argument.
Step 4: Add 6 more sentences to the paragraph.
Step 5: Realize that there are multiple complete thoughts in the paragraph, split it into 3 separate paragraphs. Add some detail you were avoiding for brevity.
Step 6: Reread what you just wrote and imagine what someone is likely to come-at you with and try to defuse it before it happens.
Step 7: Realize that one of the statements you used might be incorrectly used, search that idiom and change it for clarity.
Step 8: Preview
Step 9: Post
Step 10: walk away
Step 11: check back in 5 minutes later, reread it and realize you have an awful error and something is vague. edit it and mark the edit with an *
Step 12: wait for comments, walk away
step 13: come back a hour later, 2 upvotes and one downvote, reread it, compare it to previous posts, reread your previous posts. decide you don’t care for the tone and honestly don’t even really care for the subject.
step 12: delete
Sometimes I just delete it, sometimes I go ahead and post it and hope nobody responds.
You could open a second account and agree with whatever you wrote.
Or disagree with myself. That would be more interesting. Abusive sock puppeting.
deletes his own comment without posting it after realizing he was wrong after defending what he now no longer believes in, for seven paragraphs
Sometimes multiple times in a row.
Sometimes on the same post.I am never spending 20 minutes on any comment ever.
Good. Keep it that way. As someone who has done that (way more than I care to admit), it’s honestly not worth it 99.99999999% of the time.
Happens on this platform too
I’ve written paragraphs and paragraphs about how calling someone stupid is not ad hominem. I’ve gone 20 comments into a thread trying to explain how analogies work. I’m currently in several arguments about the fact that water is, indeed, wet.
“wet - covered or saturated with water or another liquid.”
I gotta go with the people you’re arguing with on this one. Something has to be able to be dry to be able to be wet. Certain liquids can make other things wet, but cannot be wet themselves.
Wet can also mean consisting of liquid. You wouldn’t bat an eye if I said not to touch the wall because the paint is still wet. The inclusion of a clause about something being “able to be dry” is an arbitrary inclusion specifically meant to exclude water itself, not based on how we use the word, but based on a facile desire to force the definition to fit the way you think it should.
I’m gonna do the thing this meme is talking about and just say you’re right.
Yep. Me sometimes. Like you know the answer. It’s simple and logical. The other person is obviously wrong and defending their position badly… But then you realise it’s stupid to try and waste your time on a subject you don’t even care about, to a person who cannot be educated.
But they have 3 upvotes and I’m at -2. Clearly everyone in this subreddit is wrong and I need to make them see that. (And then hate myself for it later on)
Someone gave some advice on a forum or a blog or something a long time ago that really stuck with me and completely altered my outlook about social media and interacting with people via the internet in general:
Before you hit “send”, ask yourself whether this is for your benefit, or that of those who will see it.
I basically stopped using socials after that, because I seldom thought of anything that followed this rule, and my feed was so full of garbage from people who also didn’t, but saw fit to post it anyway. The internet has given society an ego masturbation problem.
Hello ADHDers! It really is a health management skill to catch yourself and pull away. The worst is when you do care about the topic and you know you’re mismanaging your time, it doesn’t actually matter, but you can’t not “finish it so at least it’s out there”
Yup. I do this 100%. But mostly it’s because sometimes I get so hot on the subject, it feels good to get it out there and then I worry I was too brash about it. A trick I use is to leave the comment written on my phone in the background. Maybe I’ll send it, but more often than not I clear it out when I clean up my background apps and go, “Well, that was decided for me.”
I’ve wasted SO MANY hours arguing with stupid people on reddit…
I do this, and I have a “graveyard log” file where I paste my discarded posts and replies.
Yep.
Flippant, mildly humorous comment, one sentence: (2,345 👍) (123💬)
Well thought out, reliably sourced reply of one to two small paragraphs: (3👍) (0 💬)
Lemmy is actually better on this. I get a lot of upvotes for well thought-out long posts and comments here as well as humorous one-liners. I’ve been pleasantly surprised that people actually take the time to read out my longer posts. On reddit it’d probably just get lost and be another 1 thumber that never got read.
The key is also to make your story interesting. Something that pulls your reader in. Be personal and amicable. Realize you’re talking to real people and speak to those people in your writing. I’m more of a creative writing buff. I managed to eek out 98th percentile for creative writing in my SATs. I love writing. Its my favorite thing to do. I want to be an author. I fucking hate my ADHD. I’ve started a hundred books at least and either bore myself or tell myself its a stupid plot, even though I have friends and family begging for me to finish something.
My early books were written in small notebooks. The old ones that sorta looked like they had cowprint covers with a title on them. They’d get passed around the school for weeks. I’d get them back and people would keep asking me to continue. I never did. Fuck me, I hate ADHD sometimes. But your words are alive. They can heal, hurt, cause laughter and tears, and, above all, words can influence anything. Words are power and, as long as you are careful of that power, you can write any damn length you want.
Honestly, my fear now is AI. I like AI, but I don’t want to write a book and have people claim its AI or AI assisted. I’m regretting not writing one earlier now.
tl;dr: Is k. Writ stuf.
Sorry your comment was too long I got bored halfway through
This
About 60% of posts and comments on reddit are made by bots anyway, so except for really niche communities replying doesn‘t add anything to the conversation. I abandoned reddit a few years ago because of this, bulletin boards and small community sites are way more civilized and have no annoying astroturfing campaigns and israel/industrial complex shills.
yeah, no one changes their mind because of words on a screen. if you can’t reach out and slap the shit out of them your point will never get across.
I have to remind myself engaging is mostly useless.
I’ve lived through the times when online discussion was considered “just weird internet stuff, not to be taken seriously” and then people grew up and everyone used the internet and it was the frontier of communication and was “shaping all facets of society” and now we’re back at “just weird internet stuff, not to be taken seriously.”
Your engagement is valuable for current or future shareholders of the company owning the platform. It is of paramount importance that you engage as much as possible. Although not enough, we would recommend for example, sleeping 7 hours instead of 8 to make time for engagement such liking/disliking and commenting.
When I read bs here I’m always switching between this and “if no one calls this out, people might assume it’s true”.
Yeah but then the run the risk of arguing with a bot or a troll or a human being uninterested in having a productive discussion.
Yeah, getting out of the discussion at the right point is a skill I did not master yet.
Duty calls. Someone is being wrong on the Internet! 🦸
I usually only do thar when people spread problematic stuff.
To be clear, I ain’t mocking you, I know the feels. Was just referencing
the BibleXKCD
