What are your top 3 most-despised SOPT (Same Old Putrid Tactics)?

The Resident Answers forum is no more immune to pointless squabbling than any other message board on the Internet.

But wouldn’t it be great if it were? Immune? Or at least, self-regenerating? Wouldn’t it be great if we had a reputation as a place where topics are discussed productively, instead of with ever-escalating barrages of hatred and contempt between those posting?


To that end, it might be helpful to expose bad argumentation tactics to the healing light of day, instead of letting them continue to fester.

We’ll all define ‘bad’ tactics differently, of course. But perhaps we can agree that if a particular tactic leads to a round-robin of personal insults and a complete abandonment of the original topic, it can be called ‘bad.’

And if we can reach rough agreement on a list of the Same Old Putrid Tactics, we can self-regenerate our discussions by pointing out that one of the SOPT has been committed, and Nobody is Fooled By It Anymore. So eventually, people would be ashamed to resort to these tired old methods.


Here are my own top three:


1) YOU MADE ME DO IT: “You’re making me post this way because of the way YOU’RE posting.” This old favorite of wife-beaters everywhere (e.g. “she MADE me hit her! She was ASKING for it!”) deserves to be exposed for its glorification of failure to take responsibility for oneself.

No, friend….the other person is NOT forcing you to post personal insults. YOU are the one who is choosing to post personal insults. Man up and take responsibility for yourself! (or Woman up, if applicable.)



2) EVERYONE AGREES: “Everyone in this thread knows ___________________.” When the writer genuinely believes this, it’s almost certainly a case of False Consensus Effect (in which the sufferer projects their beliefs onto others)---since it is highly unlikely that everyone reading the thread really does agree with the writer’s position.

But more often, one suspects, the writer DOESN’T genuinely believe that everyone reading the thread agrees with his/her position. Instead, the writer is resorting to the common childhood tactic of trying to convince the opponent that No One Is On Your Side, Everybody Hates You.



3) THE PERVERTED TRANSITIVE: “Doing [action X] is [adjective or verb that is universally-agreed to mean something reprehensible]!!!!!!!1!!!” The perverted transitive concerns forcing tortured re-definitions of common words for the purpose of gaining points in a discussion.

A wonderful example can be found in a multi-hundreds-of-posts thread on this page, where it is repeatedly asserted that the use of bots to increase traffic stats was always ‘cheating,’ despite the fact that the use of bots to increase traffic was permitted under the SL TOS until recently. Here the equation becomes “I hate the use of bots to increase traffic; everyone hates cheating. Therefore the use of bots to increase traffic stats was always ‘cheating.’”

Ignored is the ACTUAL definition of cheating (in which rules or laws must be violated). Though the use of bots to increase traffic violated no rule or law or term of service for many years, it is claimed that it was ‘cheating’ throughout those years---simply because most people agree that Cheating is Bad. The impulse to connect a hated practice or situation with something widely considered Bad leads to disregard for the actual definition of the word being used to signify the Badness of the practice or situation.

What are your Top Three (or Five or Ten)?

Right off the top of my head:-

Lying in posts, whether about someone or something, but usually about someone.

I have to agree. And the frequent follow-up by the liar is the claim that if the one lied about protests the lie, such protests belong in an IM, Not in a Public Place such as this forum.

(always posted with a proper degree of self-righteousness about how the lied-about person is behaving inappropriately by publicly protesting having been publicly lied about, of course....)

:laughing smiley:

Well there is the old resort to spelling cop

Indeed, that definitely belongs on the list. The general tactic there is "I'm smarter than you [because I noticed your misspelling], therefore all your claims are wrong and all my claims are right."

I think the forum guidlines highlight the 3 worst things to do in the forums - flaming, trolling and spamming. It's when we get spammed by a flaming troll that we need to really worry!

What about a troll with flaming spam?

Posting polls without a pie option.

You know, I was with you right up until you decided to go after my thread. The people using "cheating" are using an incorrect phrase. The correct phrase is fraud. That fraud was permitted by LL until recently, is another argument entirely.

I've always liked the "In my 20 years experience working in........."*insert industry related to topic being discussed.

The assumption that I was 'going after your thread' is incorrect. I don't respect the use of nasty tactics in any thread---but I certainly don't hold the thread-originator responsible for what other people post.



EDIT: Though the above still stands---I was pointing out a place where a great example could be found, should people want to see the tactic in action---I can see how someone might take it as a claim that the thread itself is bad/wrong in some way. Even though I was making no such claim.

So to avoid misunderstanding, I removed the name of the thread from my OP.

Yeah. That can be a tricky one because experience CAN be germane to a discussion. I think where it becomes a Putrid Tactic is when the claim of experience is used to imply that those who hold other views are stupid or defective in some way.

I think everyone has taken that lesson to heart by now...so, no need to include it in the list. ^_^

I stand corrected. Into the list it goes!!!!

Complaining about complaining.

This thread qualifies.

ETA: Oh, and vacuous "libel" suit threats.

Only a Nazi would say something like that.

Normally I'm pretty immune to this stuff. Remember it's only a big deal if you fall for it. However, in the last few years I have developed a particular hatred of Argument By Analogy.

You see arguing by analogy is like driving a hovercraft to Belgium, no, wait, arguing by analogy is like an eagle eating jello, no hang on, arguing by analogy is like Hitler eating babies. Yes, that's it. So avoid wherever possible.

Misquoting and clipping small bits out of someone's post in order to take it out of context and/or misrepresent what was actually said.

Godwin!

I don't necessarily object to a thread that discusses logical fallacies and bad posting manners...but what is the desired end result? People who wrangle on a higher level?

/me resolves once again to Play Nice and decides to leave it at that.

I suppose it is the failure to engage brain before typing which I find irritating - but this is endemic on all internet fora, and I rarely get worked up about it nowadays. I've mellowed, I suppose.

I knew it!

If I'd decided to post more than three, #4 might have been:

4) IT'S BAD/WRONG/INAPPROPRIATE TO POST ABOUT THAT: "I'm sick of threads about _________." This one didn't make the Top Three cut because it's not so much a tactic for winning an argument, as it is a tactic for attempting character assassination. The tactic involves trying to convince other readers that the thread-maker has bad taste/bad judgment, since 'Everyone Agrees' [see #2] that This Topic Should NOT Be Discussed.

What the would-be character assassin doesn't stop to think about is the common-sense response: If you don't want to read about a topic, the obvious remedy is to skip it---not to grouse about how the topic should be off-limits.

The irony is that the would-be character assassin is actually assassinating his OWN character (as many will realize that what he's claiming makes no sense.)


In re the posting of lies: if you want to try to defend the posting of lies, feel free to try to formulate a convincing argument in such defense.

Why Wolves Are Like Playing Cards

oust out from double-crossed knock
who was to what awaits naked security
as no part for sufferance, Walt Whitman,
is to an old hand at boyhood rose's swindle

no threat, no matter to rain in custody
our gifts fall cold in places other than the pale -
upstairs, railroad ties snooze hand in hand
these memorials wanted enough earth to themselves

-- Jeff Harrison