I don’t argue or “debate” online. Most online back-and-forth feels pointless and often intentionally inflammatory or in bad faith. I read all the replies I receive, but I rarely respond.
What do you mean you dont argue or “debate” online? Whats that supossed to mean? YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME?!"
Lurk first, then respond. You might find more context in the replies.
Remember EVERYONE has a voice, everyone contains very dumb people.
Every debate I tried to engage was poisoned by immature people trying to be cunning instead of bringing productive arguments.
That sounds like a constant pain.
Same as life: Respect yourself. Respect others. Respect property.
Debates go two ways. If you’re not willing to listen to the other person with at least some politeness, you’re not debating and it makes it hard to take you seriously.
I (try to) only interact with positivity.
If someone posts a thread along the lines of “Which album/movie/book/whatever do you hate, even though every one else loves it”, I’ll scroll on, despite my worst instincts wanting to dive in to see if people hate something I love. I know why people post like that; because engagement on negatvity is always higher. But I feel like every time I engage with content like that, it makes me a little more cynical. I’m done being cynical, the world around me has more than enough already.
If someone pops up in my replies being a dick, I’ll just mute, block or ignore them. Life’s too short to spend it trying to lower cortisol levels.
Basically, the internet is already negative enough, so I try not to add to it.
- Be positive
- Don’t let anything negative get to you
- It’s not my duty to convince anyone. If they hold a stupid position, don’t try to debate
- when making conversation, bail once they start treating it as an argument they need to win
- OPs mom is fair game
We should all explore more, not stay stuck in a bubble of 6 or so megacorp websites that take most of the worlds traffic.
The internet is distributed, with billions of websites that are all unique.
Even if it’s difficult to find new websites to look at, then choose a different internet medium such as dark net browsers such as tor and i2p to explore the more privacy respecting web, or on the lighter side, go for geminispace or gopher browsers like Lagrange to explore the un-corporatised early internet style web.
It’s hard to explore when you don’t know where to look.
I automatically assume anyone I type at is not a true representation of themselves.
Assume someday someone will find your account or identity.
Turn off JavaScript by default, and then allow JS through piecemeal using an extension like NoScript. You’d be surprised how much of the internet is still accessible and cleaned up without it, and when you do let JS through, you have a good idea of who’s collecting your data and even a good guess as to specifically why.
I’m almost the exact opposite. I like arguing online. I think it’s because of me being gigantic IRL that people don’t honestly argue with me. Online, I’m just pixels on a screen and people will call me out on my bullshit.
Different strokes for different folk.
My one rule is to post pictures of Furryosa if she claws me that day.
Same, but I’m not gigantic and I also love to “argue” IRL. It’s easier IRL too (as a non gigantic guy, ofc 😅), because people can feel your good vibes and friendly disposition and will more comfortably engage even through disagreements.
Name checks out and I’m also immediately curious to ask about it 😆
Believing in God and yapping/arguing are big parts of my life. 🤷😅
Don’t feed the trolls.
I like this better than not arguing or debating.
I think you can absolutely have a good argument or debate online, but you have to be doing so in good faith, as does the person you’re discussing a topic with.
Trolls of course are not. Learning to not feed them is sometimes difficult. But if you ignore/block them you’ll be just fine.
I use Voyager to access Lemmy, which, because it’s based on the long-dead Apollo for Reddit, has a feature where it tells you if an account is new. For example, I can see that your account is 4 days old.
It’s a really handy shortcut to ascertaining whether someone just holds a different viewpoint to me, or whether they’re just a troll account arguing in bad faith on yet another new account, because the previous one got banned. It really is a handy tool that helps provide a little friction between seeing a shitty take and responding to it. It gives me a chance to assess whether it’s worth it. And almost always, it’s not.
Obviously I’m not suggesting you’re a troll.
This is one of the best and most ignored rules.
Never post photos or other revealing information.
I was about to chime in “especially don’t post nudes”, but immediately realised that you don’t even need to do that anymore for someone to ruin your life. They only need your face, that’s it.
