7 Steps To Win (internet) Debates.

Applied Wisdom

Picture yourself browsing the Web.
You are in a smooth mood, and even your e-mail spam folder looks friendlier than usual.
You read here and there, then a blog post catches your attention. Interested in the topic, the content is not enough and you move to the comments, and leave a piece of your mind for the whole world to read.

The next day, someone has replied the written equivalent to spraying your face with bear mace while flinging rotten eggs at your dog.  Your mood is now a smoking pile recursive bitterness. You know that the commenter might be baiting you, it might be the most blatant troll ever… but this time, you don't care.

You put on your boxing gloves, then discard them because, like, it's really not meant for touch typing… then you go on with The Debate.

But wait. Looking wise in a wise debate is easy (in my case, I achieve that by skillfully shutting my mouth), but looking like an idiot  in a debate turned into the Battle Of Verdun is even easier. So how will you proceed?

1) Know your surroundings
You're going to war. And as a good warrior, you do not want to walk into enemy territory only to get blitzed by a waiting, hungry batalion.
In other words: If you intend to affirm your atheist views on a born-again Christian forum, the only thing you will get out of the debate is a headache and potentially a broken keyboard.

2) Keep your cool

Remember that crazy cat lady from the Simpsons? Yup, that's what you look like when you lose your cool. In any kind of debate.
Avoid sarcasm, insults, walls of texts, nervous typos…  You are the Barry White of rhetoric, you want to smother your opponent between a mattress of silky logic and a pillow of sensual common sense. All night.

3) Stay on topic

This is a difficult one. Trolls are gifted creatures when it comes to lead you astray, on their own ground, and swallow you whole. If the debate is about the correct amount of milk in a banana milk-shake, they will try getting you on a guilt trip about banana farmers work condition. Do not fall for it, even if, yes, it's kind of dumb to eat radioactive fruits.

4) Do not use fallacies

Logical fallacies are the kinks and crooks of debating.
They look good, they smell good, they taste even better and politicians all over the world use them regularly.
That alone should be enough as a warning, unless you want to become rather fat, and old before your time.
As a reminder, here is a list of logical fallacies. When you have time, read it through, you'll be surprised by how many you may have used without even knowing it.

5) Remember the basics

Present your argument, support it with verifiable facts, expose the logic and conclude. Truth is: it's as simple as it sounds. 

Most internet arguments climb to the top, then take a leap of faith.
(source)

There will probably be some legwork involved and, if your opponent uses the despicable "5 years old who asks why after every answer" technique, you will need to go pretty far and might end up trying to demonstrate that, yes, the sky is indeed blue. Well, at least the light filtered through the stratosphere is blue, it's really all in the gaz. Wait… what do you mean by "sky"?


When you have come that far, maybe it's the right moment to...

6) Know when to let go

You've kept calm, focused, logical, polite, clear in your argumentation and still this little, pretentious heap of hubris is still denying the superiority of Sega graphics during the pre-Sony era?
You have spent most the afternoon trying to explain that no, inflatable dartboards are not durable knife throwing targets?
Most importantly, half the article's comment section is about people getting tired of you arguing?

It means that either you're wrong, and there is no shame is admitting it (Although, I'm sorry, but the sprite flickering from the Nintendo Entertainment System graphic chipset was just ridiculous), either you're just talking to a wall and you are that close to moving in with the cat lady.  

You now have have a choice: either walk toward a dignified retreat from a battle no one gives a damn about, or linger on until the nice young men in their clean white coats come to take you to the funny farm.

7) The ULTIMATE WIN

Just let it go man, don't post, don't reply, you don't care.
This is the internet, where all females are males and where all teenage girls are FBI agents. Go do something else, have a beer, dance naked in the snow... You don't need to be acknowleged there.

No, you don't.
No, seriously.
It's all in your brain, it's no real community.
Yeah? Go talk to Maslow about that, see what he'll tell you.

Ok, I see. Well I'm waiting for you in the comment section then.
It's ON!


More info, more cake and still no lemon at Without a Lemon's Facebook Page


7 Steps to Win (internet) Debates, Text and Picture by Danny Hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.