You don’t debate for the sake of the person you’re debating with, you debate for the sake of everyone reading/watching it who hasn’t formed an opinion yet
People’s lizard brains will tend to favor the person on the right. Because their arguments are simple, spoken with confidence and often louder. Our primitive instincts interpret that as ‘correct’ because it comes off as strong. The person on the left looks weak and full of excuses.
People aren’t biologically capable of handling modern propaganda well.
Confident bullshit wins over long-winded but factually correct explanations.
Incidentally, same reason chatgpt became so popular - it’s optimized for sounding confident over being correct.
Not the reason. It is an attribute it has, but the reason it’s popular is it’s ability to quickly summarize data rather than having to dig through many sources.
And it does that often wrong but always confident.
That number is always going to be far less than you imagine it to be. There’s very few fence-sitters anymore. And the chances that there a significant enough number of them is in the far corner of the internet where your augment with a douchebag RWNJ happens to be is incredibly small.
No, best to just call them names, shame them, and move on.
That’s just confirmation bias. There are a lot more lurkers than there are commenters or posters.
Both!
A whopping zero people
You’ve formed an opinion on every topic ever? I’m impressed
Probably one of those people who already know everything, and go “by their gut”.
Incidentally, these people have never asked a question.
By the time I reach a comment section about it yeah. There’s no point debating politics because the other person will always see you as the fox news guy.
Don’t wrestle with a pig, etc.
never play chess with a pigeon
Never eat shrimp with a donkey
Well, now I have to reschedule my Thursday.
The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.
So now people are just creating bullshit laws about bullshit!?
this is a law in the scientific sense, where its function is to describe a phenomenon that occurs in nature (or in society), not as in an authority is decreeing it so
… No it’s not
(wow that was easy)
you’ve heard of newton’s laws, and boyle’s law, and godwin’s law, but have you heard of cole’s law?
it’s sliced cabbage
When I say I don’t want any more Reddit users coming here because all they bring is centrist and conservative brains rotted past being useable, this is the kind of thing I’m talking about.
It’s never great to generalize, I’m here from reddit and I know for a fact I’m not unique so there’s gotta be plenty more people like me that are on the left and here :)
When I say Lemmy is a flagellating hotbed of toxic pricks this is what I’m talking about.
Internet arguments cannot be won
The only reason I argue on the internet (when I can be bothered) is so that people reading the thread will that an opposing opinion exists, not because I hope to convince the person I’m arguing with.
I appreciate it. I’ve scoured an uncountable amount of debates over years and its helped me become aware of new ideas.
I doubt I’d have woken up without them
Invaluable. Unchecked ignorance is contagious.
Yeah.
That also means that when the other person starts resorting to personal attacks you can point it out and let that discussion go, as they’re not going to be convincing anybody who is reading and thinking once have, by making it personal and insulting others, implicitly admitted that they don’t have rational arguments backing up their strongly held opinion.
I do it in order to understand my own viewpoint more clearly. It is a lot easier to figure out what you believe when faced with things you do not believe.
I think about this comment regularly. Genuinely drastically altered my perspective on arguing with internet strangers.
I used to think otherwise but you’re probably right.
You probably can’t get them to admit you’ve won, but you can convince observers and sometimes them, later, after they’ve had time to internalize.
Just accept that most people don’t have the ego to admit they’re wrong, or arguing against strawmen.
And, if I may be so bold:
Sometimes the person who needs to admit they’re wrong is you.
(Not me tho)
I have won exactly one internet argument. I will remember it forever.
Not with that attitude
They definitely can be won and I won’t be convinced otherwise! What makes you think they can’t be won man??? Cite your sources! I heard from my brothers dog walker that her sisters father in laws cousin wins them all the time. OWNED!!!
It depends on effort and money. Internet propagand made Americans vote for Trump and convince people can claim their own pronouns.
“If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
(Don’t look up who said that.)
Fucking truth.
They just keep smugly acting like they’re right and completely refuse to acknowledge anything presented to the contrary. Then act like they won.
They did win. It’s tautological. They won because they think they won. If they loose they shift the goal posts so they win. You have to bring your arguments to them and they decide if they are valid. And when they get into a corner and can’t possibly win they win the only way possible: by making sure that when they lose, you lose more.
Fascism is where it leads. If a fascist doesn’t like what you are saying, they’ll just shoot you and walk away knowing they have won. That’s the natural extension of this dynamic.
They think we’re doing what they’re doing.
They think that’s all there is.
Somebody was saying something similar about Russian propaganda.
The citizens know it’s propaganda, but they just assume that Western media is also propaganda, and they prefer their own brand of it.
This is why I call them a moron and move on. Anything more is a waste of time.
… and why forum rules demanding “civility” are an open invitation to cautious bullshit-peddlers.
Chad “I made it the fuck up”
Had this kind of shit happen, had 20 links backing up my debunk, he didn’t have one… he claimed it was some conspiracy
I said “Okay, either it’s a grand conspiracy that all 20 of these competing news sites are working together, or Trump really did save those orphans from a church fire set by communists. Which is it?”
That’s so nice of trump to do that
Everything you say is illegible without an Oxford comma. /s
That’s exactly how I feel when I read a comment on Lemmy about someone justifying the wrath of Israel upon Palestine hospitals.
Same, except justifying Hamas killing Israeli civilians.
That would be double standard.
How did you get my sisters voice spot on?
Chess with pigeons.
