I would argue your point but I haven't had coffee yet.

I would join in the argument but I haven't had my orange juice yet. I'm fruitless. (NOT BELITTLING. JUST COULD NOT RESIST PUN.)

I started my Internet career in figure skating forums. The same situation applied.

People who spend their lives hanging around internet forums (not US or ANYONE ELSE WE KNOW, of course) are putting a lot of stake into this because they don't have much pull anywhere else. You gotta be important wherever they;ll let you, right?

If you can catch the American film Big Fan, starring Patton Oswalt, that's a great example in a non-internet form.

I think for a lot of people there's comfort in holding opinions or values that are shared by others. This leads many to presume that they, along with other like-minded people, constitute a group or side. We talked the other day about joiners, and I think this is at the root of that inclination.

Many people, considering themselves part of a side, assume that everybody thinks like this, and when discussing issues they care about, reduce their interlocutors to opponents and transform the conversation into an argument between their own side and its opposite.

In most cases, there are actually 360° of opinion on any given topic. There are never just two sides at play, and they're rarely in true opposition. But the joiners control the discourse, since there are so many of them, and most discussions become binary battles where people seek comfort not only by supporting the supposed opinions of their own side, but by imputing a diametrically opposite stance on their interlocutor-cum-opponent and battling tooth and nail against it.

It's true, it's totally lame, but most people aren't particularly flexible, and the proliferation of technology has forced the enlightened to mingle with the blinkered without knowing who's who.

People who spend their lives hanging around internet forums (not US or ANYONE ELSE WE KNOW, of course) are putting a lot of stake into this because they don't have much pull anywhere else. You gotta be important wherever they;ll let you, right?

I think this is a stereotype and not reliably true. I'm someone who spends a fair amouhnt of time debating shit online - a lot less than I used to, but still, it's an interesting pastime. But I also spend a lot of time debating shit in real life, and I direct a big department and serve a region of nonprofit chapters yadda yadda yadda. So I am in fact in charge of plenty of stuff and feel listened to - it's not like I need the online environment to boil over in. Some people honestly enjoy the experience, and might even think it makes some sort of a difference.

Yeah I guess the general point here isn't so much about the form (argument) or place (online), it can be summed up more generically as don't do stuff that causes emotional/psychological drainage without advantage. In fact I just remembered that I made a thread almost exactly like this a while ago: I have decided to retire from arguing online. Interestingly, it was an year ago almost to the date.

Two sub-thoughts that were attached to this thought/thread I made were (1) when I talk to people on the phone or face to face or even on twitter who I've argued with on forums it's a lot more chilled out, so there's something about typing whole passages that cranks up the intensity level and denatures/discounts the person on the other side (2) imagine if I took this decade of typing / reading stuff online and had spent it exercising instead, I'd be on some Mr Olympus angle lol.

So yeah, it's less about the actual activity I'm burned out on here and more about taking stock of the fact that time and mental and physical capacity should be spent, if not productively then at least in an edifying or at the very least a net-positive manner

don't do stuff that causes emotional/psychological drainage without advantage.

Hey, this is my life philosophy. Sanity inducing wisdom.