The thing about blogging, if that’s what I’m doing, is that I have to do it in the middle of the day. I can’t save it for later. And that’s a lot of why I haven’t done it that much, I don’t always hang onto things that I want to talk about in this medium. But I’ve got a bit of time and something on my mind so let’s talk.
If you’ve followed me on social media for a while, and if your timeline isn’t too cluttered, you’ve probably seen me doing a thread on an argument before. Not an argument thread, but a thread about an argument which is taking place somewhere else. It’s typically me breaking down how I think things went, devices I think worked, when people overextended, etc. A kind of post-game report.
If you don’t really know me, you might assume that what I’m doing is gloating, and there’s a little bit of that. But these aren’t like popular threads and I don’t do them with the expectation that other people are going to be interested. That’s why you will very rarely see me do that other popular move: arguing by quote tweeting. If I quote tweet it’s generally because someone has said something particularly absurd to where I’m not even taking it seriously. Much more often, you’ll see the other person quote tweet and then I’ll follow them with a regular reply. I don’t need an audience, though I don’t reject one; my arguing style is not sneaky, so there’s nothing to hide.
The real reason I do these breakdowns is because I think through talking/tweeting and arguing is one of my favorite things to think about. I think I’ve talked about this before on Journal of Cogency (there’ll be a link here if I did), but just so you don’t have to click away, when I’m talking about arguing I am not talking about debating. You can do that online, too. Debating, to me, is when you are contesting viewpoints themselves. You’re having a discourse about a topic. Arguing is just confrontation. It’s people trying to assert their will over one another. What interests me especially about online argument is that you typically have nothing at your disposal but rhetoric, performance, and semiotics. It’s just what you say and how you say it.
That does not mean arguing is about having the most factual, most clever, or most coherent argument, or anything like that. An online argument is basically about determining who gets to say that they got their way. Now, obviously, there’s a lot wrong with this kind of pursuit. Both sides can easily claim that they won, and both sides generally will. And at the end of the day, what does it matter? Why would you bother getting into this kind of argument?
But that’s exactly what’s interesting to me about it. Why do people do it? Why invest any part of your self-esteem into just bickering online, not even getting at any point, but just to say “na-na-na-na boo-boo”. And that’s what it is. It’s not “fuck you, I won”. It’s not “get off my rock”. It is always, no matter who wins, “na-na-na-na boo-boo”. So why put yourself through this?
What I want to talk about here is a style of online arguing that I’ve developed which I’m gonna call Deep Waters. Is that pretentious, sure. But I need something to call it so that I can talk about it. I don’t go around saying “I’m gonna Deep Waters this guy”, but you’ll see why I call it that as I explain it. Essentially, Deep Waters is a test of the other person’s self-respect.
Here I will put another little gloat, as a way of explaining why I do this. People who are just gutter trolls piss me off. When people step in to try and ruin the day of someone who is doing something good, and when called on it just resort to acting liike juvenile little shits. So when I decide to do this it is always because I’m trying to run someone like that off and they decide that they’re going to try to just stick to me until I mute them or block them, and then they get to claim that they accomplished something. The reason to use Deep Waters now is to prove a point: you don’t believe in anything and all you are is a nuisance; not trouble, not a reason for anyone to care, just a nuisance.
At this point, I will simply start to insult the other person. Not heavy heavy insults. As an aside, I don’t regard myself as a good insulter, I never have. And that is actually a lot of the point here. I try to say things that will sting, and I am pretty sure they do, but more than anything, what I try to do with my insults is get at the root of why they are posting. Each thing they say, I want to pick it apart and say something that will make them reveal that all they want to do is waste people’s time. Now, the way I write is brief for long contexts but long for brief contexts, if that makes sense. So when I’m doing this, I tend to write a lot, but it’s not necessary. I’m not trying to hit them point by point. What I’m trying to do is to knock them off balance so that they no longer feel comfortable claiming their previous more “serious” position.
For instance, let’s say someone is concern-trolling about a war crime. I can then call them an idiot for pretending to care about it while not truly doing so. If I can make that reference specific enough to their argument, to where the other person would look stupid for continuing to claim their point, they have two options: 1) keep up the claim and definitely look stupid (they don’t believe they look smart because they know that they’re just trolling, so they are swallowing stupidity to keep the claim up), or 2) abandon the claim and go onto something else.
If the person has self-respect and they actually believe in their points, we’re not going to do this dance too many times. They will get fed up and realize there’s no reason to talk to me anymore and they will leave. This doesn’t mean that they’re more serious thinkers than other people, just that they value their own time. I don’t do this to people who I plan to respect so if I’m even engaging in this, we’re past the point where being civil is an issue. If I’m actually insulting you repeatedly, we’re here.
If the person doesn’t have self-respect, they will eventually get down to the point where they are just replying for the sake of replying. Their posts will get lazier. They’re using gifs more, emojis more. They’re trying to roll their eyes. And what I do is simply keep applying pressure. I don’t go overboard. I’m not trying to slam dunk. But I am putting enough effort into these posts so that they can never feel like they’ve exhausted me.
This is Deep Waters. At this point, you’ve amply demonstrated not only to me but to yourself that you don’t value your own time. All you care about is hopefully being able to post last, hopefully annoying me enough that I block you, hopefully doing something that takes me out of the interaction so that you can be like “that idiot, he left, hahaha”. At this point, I’ve achieved what I wanted to achieve, and now I can get out. But I don’t have to. I can keep going for as long as I feel like.
The thing about this is that they are so clearly on my hook. They feel that they are the one who is in control of the interaction. But to me, if you want to say you’re in control of the interaction, you should show that you are free of it. What they demonstrate is a desire to have the last laugh, which means that they are connected to me. If I choose to laugh, they have to laugh again to get what they want. What I demonstrate is that you are an annoyance who should stop talking.
What I’ll do at this point is say “So you want to post last, huh?” or something of that order. And that will be my major insult. Calling them stupid and transparent for just wanting to do that. And this is the point where I can just take off. What I will usually do is say this a few times, because often, by the first or second time they kind of take the hint and stop embarrassing themselves. But the beauty of this is that I can stop posting whenever. Because if I abruptly stop posting and they post again, why would I have to keep going? I predicted what they were gonna do. They did it. They didn’t “outlast” me, I called when it was going to be over.
See, what these types don’t seem to understand is that this is the internet. There is no “endurance”. If we were in a real physical fight, you could let me punch you for an hour and I might get tired and not be able to continue, and then you could claim to have truly outlasted me. But simply posting last is not an accomplishment unless you can construct it as one. And by telling the other person that all they want is to post last, taunting them with that in fact, I’m making it impossible for them to construct the last post as an accomplishment. It was, in fact, basically my accomplishment. If I hadn’t posted, they wouldn’t have made the post.
My goal is to communicate very clearly with this other person. What I want to communicate is that they have wasted their time. They have achieved nothing. They haven’t upset anyone. They have, in fact, been toyed with. And I want to make it very apparent to them that this is what has taken place. Once that’s done, I can stop. And that’s what happens.
My post-game reports or whatever are for my own benefit. I do them when I think I came out on the wrong end, I do them when I think I did well. It’s not a method of trying to get one over on the person again. When I’m on social media, I just say what’s on my mind; I’m only doing this as a blog because I’m trying to post more on the blog and this seemed like a good-enough topic. If I happen to see an argument that I think is good, I’ll do a report about that; not linking or anything, not using names, just talking about the mechanics of it as I see them. This is one of my interests. Not just arguing but the use of symbols and language in general. This specific use is one which I think is very under-studied but which has always been important; even back in the day, there were arenas where the only expected weapons were rhetoric and performance, but which didn’t always rise to the level of debate about ideas.
I’m not posting this because I think it will cover me in glory. I don’t think people find this kind of stuff appealing and I’m not asking them to. I’m posting about this for three reasons. The first reason is high-minded: it’s just my interest. I have plans to do some kind of commentary on Schopenhauer’s book on eristics, I know I’ve done a shallow dive into the topic on JSTOR and through Google but not found much, but I will certainly look again. I need to get a better copy of a Gerry Spence book which had some great insights in the beginning but is a bit meandering; the version I have is a bit corrupted and stopped being readable. I’m highly interested in semiotics and persuasion. This is what I like.
The second reason is practical: like I said, I want to post more on the blog, I just had two of these arguments, so I thought I would use it for the topic.
The third reason is petty: so that people won’t be able to claim that me spending time doing this is them “getting to me” or whatever. I have been doing this for years. I will probably do it for years more; I don’t expect that I’m going to stop being annoyed with shitheel trolls online. I know what I’m doing, I do it because I want to, and I can stop doing it whenever I like. The plan won’t deviate because it’s not a trick. It relies on the fact that I know more than you. And if I don’t know more than you, you’re never going to find yourself in this position. People with some knowledge and a bit of common sense don’t act so odiously that I need to insult them like this, and those same people tend to have enough self-respect not to allow themselves to be insulted like this even if I wanted to.