People love to be morally outraged at, well pretty much anything. Social media outlets such as Facebook, twitter, Tumblr are rife with Virtue Signalling over petty topics that make most people forehead palm slap.
I will Wow them with my 400 word opinion how we can save spider monkey’s from terrible abuse.
I have partaken in many keyboard warrior conversations over the years. So far everything I have achieved was wasting an inordinate number of hours I could have been productive at work. Significantly trimming down my Facebook friend list (granted I rarely post SJW/Politics on my page) and pissing off an entire group of snowflakes. Actually the last part was awesome. They screen printed the conversation and acted like victims and got bullied harder.
So here’s the list, I may add to as time goes on and i can think of more.
1: TL;DR
Seriously, no one cares about your 400 word opinion in a facebook comment. Chances are you copied it from another rant somewhere else. Most of these are filled with crap we already read from the media talking points. All you achieved was copying other people’s words.
2: Posting a Fricken Meme
In a more innocent age of social media, memes were 2 liner jokes. Now they’re poorly researched line items and an irrelevant picture to portray a biased political view. Chances are the meme you posted is someone else’s words. You are not smart, nor clever for posting it. Posting political memes as your main wall post is just asking for trouble. Posting it as a reply to a debate, lacks any sensibility and you’ll be ignored. Well the only appropriate time is when the other people have exhausted everything and you just want them all to shut up. make it yourself, make it snarky.
3: Posting a Link with no summary
This link I just found will surely win the argument!
Yes, seriously. How absolutely lazy can you be? Every single day I witness someone dive bombing a debate with 1-2 links to something just barely on topic. They say nothing, not even “I read this link and thought it really illustrated the plight of the Angora Rabbit”. They might be busy. They may have no ability to formulate their own words. They might be an advanced AI. Who knows. All I know is it’s annoying and wastes my time. They get dismissed with haste.
4: Arguing against facts with your “feels”.
The worst of the bunch and they’re everywhere. Facts are usually indisputable. They happened, they’re real and you cannot change them. They are the immutable golden edge against all argument. Until you have “feelings”, the frack facts. A lot of people don’t like how Thomas Edison electrocuted animals in park centers during the “Current Wars”. So they choose to “not believe it ever happened”. What? Sorry snowflake, it happened. It’s real. Edison wasn’t the role model you want him to be. Benjamin Franklin too. Total misogynist. He loved to bone woman of all ages. In dark rooms, wrapped in a bag if they were ugly. But he is a founding father and a great inventor and person. But people want to pick and chose facts they “believe in”. This gets you ignored faster than anything on my shortlist.
5: Creative name calling
It all started with Micro$oft. Like adding a dollar sign was insulting. Then comes the “Trumpkins, Dumbocrats, Libtards, Obummer” and a billion other “cute and creative” insults. Sorry, you lose. (if you read this far, you caught a few of my own snuck in above). Point is, I don’t care what side of the fence you’re on, you look dumb and your point, no matter how awesome loses value. Talk like a mature adult and stop copying monikers like it’s smart and witty. It’s really not.
6: Holy cow I got 6! Being nasty
I understand this one. You’re trying to express a failed opinion that’s been rebutted 100 times with facts. But you’re digging in because you’re wrong, but you don’t want to admit it and can’t accept defeat. So you start calling people “Stupid”, lashing out and giving personal attacks “Oh, you must have a small penis, that’s why you’re so smart”.
The psychology behind this one is actually quite interesting. It comes back to our tribal ways. Back then, disagreements were solved by stabbing each other with spears until someone died. In the digital age we’re all super confrontational online and extreme wimps offline. So a differing opinion triggers that tribe mind as a physical attack on you and your beliefs. You almost can’t help from getting angry nor can you turn off the threat detection. So the only way to retaliate is to fight with words and get mean.
7: Inability to articulate why you dislike/disagree with someone
I ran out of ideas at 3, then went on to Facebook for inspiration. People are great in that their capacity towards stupidity never lets me down. (See that, I snuck in an insult.) I just ran across this gem. The “You’re wrong!” Or the “Lies” or even the “Never go to that website it sucks”.
When asking one person just a few minutes ago, why they do not like the educational website “Udemy” their response was:
“Because Udemy is absolute garbage i prefer to code games with logic gates, than open that damn website.”
All it shows is you hate something. There’s no reason why, it’s just pure hate.
I could probably write an entire blog on this one point. Maybe another day when there’s time in the day.
In Closing
While everything I mentioned above is quite literally the “Staple” of social media debate, they don’t have to be. It’s not helpful to raising our intelligence, it just makes us hate each other further. I had great memories with some people, but then the election came and their demon side came out. Their chosen candidate was it, the one that would win and they wouldn’t hear anything about the bad. My wall was flooded with that crap.
Now Facebook is flooded by the fake news on Illegal Immigrant Children being separated from their family by ICE agents. I get it, you’re upset, stop flooding my wall.
Tell us how you really feel!