You Will Never Win an Argument On the Internet—Here's Why

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You win arguments online the way you win at global thermonuclear war – by not playing.

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Let’s argue about that!

Jokes aside I found the article amusing. Because they’re aguing about discussing on the web, not the internet. The way you discuss on the iternet is by moving away from the HTTP protocol and by embracing the SMTP one.

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I’d post “touche”, but replies have to be at least 20 characters long.

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Can productive conversations about controversial topics happen in public spaces without devolving into unhelpful arguments? Is this a facet of public vs private? 1:1 versus many:many?

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My default answer is no. The only “public” way is if you let people be a spectator to the discussion but without the ability to interject. If you let multiple people all contribute at the same time everything becomes a mess very quickly. But that is not even a problem with online vs offline. That’s just human nature. In my experience 1:1 is the best setup, 3 people are already pushing the boundaries.

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You Will Never Win an Argument On the Internet

I already have. Once on the subject of elections, even. Of course getting good results is difficult, it’d be fair to say that much, but there’s no need to speak in absolutes like this.

Watching the daily devolution of online debates tells me a darker truth: the very act of arguing on the Internet is making us collectively dumber.

I resent when articles like this conveniently dodge or downplay the specifics of where, exactly, they’re witnessing these debates. Sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Bluesky, etc. are really badly designed for hashing things out, and we can’t identify a more positive alternative if folks are too quick to assume that the specific sites they visit are representative of the entire internet. Feels like watching someone build sandcastles right on the shore, where the tide keeps erasing whatever they create, and then hearing that person conclude “Well, I’ve realized that nothing created by humans can stand the test of time.” Have you considered trying anything other than sandcastles?

Remember the last time you changed your mind because of a Twitter argument?

And there it is. Get off Twitter.

In my experience, yes, since I’m operating on a pretty broad notion of “public” that would include “can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection and no particular site blocks.” This forum thread, for instance, is public. So are the comment sections on public blogposts, and I’ve had productive conversations on controversial topics in places like that before.

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