Or: Get Off My Lawn & Start Making Sense – My Guide For Fruitful Internet Discussion
Start with the assumption that you, dear reader, are nothing but a mere lost soul in a great ocean of successful people and that the only light at the end of any tunnel is the crack under the door from your basement where you live to your parents’ house. Feeling trodden down yet? No, OK, I didn’t mean it quite that way. Lots of people are talking about things nobody cares about, not even their friends. For instance how this twitter search actually comes up with results – not only that, results keep being discharged by the collective rectum of the internet.
The point I’m trying to get across is that you are nothing. Nobody cares about you. The internet is full of drivel as it is, and nobody wants to talk to you unless they:
- Want to feel better about themselves by smearing you
- Want to have sex with you
- Feel they have an overwhelming duty that they must carry out by talking to you
Wanting to avoid 1, and probably 2 (or just not being the object of number 2) there’s still number 3. There’s always a plan B… or C.
You may ask yourself, how come I don’t have such frequent debates with (most) people around me in the same way I do with the internet personalities that surround me? Could they all be internet superheroes? Of course not – the answer is simple: You can’t punch people on the internet.
I suppose protection from physical harm is what leads to these cans of worms be readily available for quick opening. So considering the alternatives, it’s a no-brainer. All gain for no risk and no cost, other than your reputation, sanity and oh look – a slippery slope. It’s the get rich quick scheme of attention (negative and otherwise), which leads me to my first lesson, maybe inspired by Colbert’s tips for a healthy marriage:
1. A smart poster knows how to post with at least some tact
But you know that one guy who religiously defends something, who stubbornly shoves it down your throat and feeds it to you on every damn occasion they get. Sometimes more gracefully than other times.
I, too, know a few people like that. First, an immigrant co-worker who (somewhat ironically) hates Arabs and finds annoying ways to say it sometimes and brings in a wide array of manners to express his right-wing views. Second, my cousin who is a staunch communist and would never miss an opportunity to tell us over family dinner how the government caused the recession on purpose, that phone manufacturers insert flaws into their devices on purpose. They’ll get… very emotional when anything opposes their extreme views. They don’t have that “poster tact” and won’t hesitate to get into a very heated discussion with you to defend their ideas.
Those exist in all walks of life, on the ‘nets as well. So, here, have another tip:
2. A smart poster knows to pick their battles
And what about when you have to? A sense of duty exists in us all, and I wouldn’t bother denying it personally (neither should you). We all have a soft spot in us when somebody mentions that one thing that ticks us off:
3. A smart poster has a second account/handle/username they can use to be everything I said they shouldn’t be without any risk
I guess the internet is a place full of cruel ironies.