A very accurate cartoon featured at Buzzfeed this morning:
This reminds me of a cartoon that I used to have up as my profile picture on facebook:
I hope everyone has a lovely weekend.
David Swindle is the associate editor of PJ Media. He writes and edits articles and blog posts on politics, news, culture, and entertainment. He edits the PJ Lifestyle section and blogs about political culture at PJ Tatler. Contact him at DaveSwindlePJM @ Gmail.com.
He has worked full-time as a writer, editor, blogger, and New Media troublemaker since 2009. He graduated with a degree in English (creative writing emphasis) and political science from Ball State University in 2006. Previously he's also worked as a freelance writer for The Indianapolis Star and the film critic for WTHR.com. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their Siberian Husky puppy Maura.
I hope everyone has a lovely weekend.
Internet arguing does leave me with an unsatisfying feeling and it lacks the intimacy of spit spray when going toe to toe. With six brothers it’s impossible to stay neutral.
Personally, I comment not to convince the person I’m responding to that they’re wrong. That almost never works… if it does, then I am gratified, but I can’t remember any time that it did.
However, having been online since before “The Internet,” in fact, since the days of 300-baud modems, when 1200 baud was considered really fast, I know that the people who just read and don’t comment are more numerous than those that do comment… even on busy RuPaul threads (where I am pretty sure at least some of the Ronulans are sock puppets… but that’s another issue).
My point in commenting is to bring another point of view, and frequently facts that the person I’m replying to didn’t mention, to the attention of those people mentioned above that read but don’t comment.
In short, I post for the lurkers.
Maybe it’s spring training. The arguments people make here will help them convince their neighbors in their local localities, and will make them better civic leaders in the long run. The participation in commenting is the nursery-ground of republican constitutional democracy, and in the long run is making a more engaged citizenry, one better able to express arguments than the shallow political commercials of the time do now.
The shallowness of democratic politics has been with us since Ancient Athens. It’s just more obvious on commenting pages, and thus becomes all the more obsolete. In a process of Darwinian selection, commenting improves the civic breed. As proof, remember that they used to teach rhetoric in schools–as a way to improve the mind as well as the commonweal. That is all commenting is–the modern, self-taught art of rhetoric revived. The United States as a whole will be better off for it.
If any of us actually manage to get off-line, that is….Oh well. No theory is perfect.
I could accept that, if I actually saw any sort of improvement in the debating skills of people I encounter more than once online.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen much evidence of that.
In the mass, not the individual.
As an addendum to my first, there are three things that I would like to see made a standard part of primary and secondary education, for they are essential to a citizen being able to assume his place in society and play his role in citizen self-governance of the Republic:
1. Basic principles of logic and rhetoric.
2. An education in entrepreneurship sufficient so that the individual could establish and run a small business on his/her own with little further research needed. (as a kid I remember investing education, but not entrpreneurship education).
3. Basic understanding of how power can be abused, especially by governments.
Who was it (here on Tatler, IIRC) a month or two ago, who posted a column about realizing that the other person (who one is arguing with) is only 14 years old?
Heh … so true, so many times.
That was mine about 6 months ago: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2011/07/08/arguing-blind-online-is-this-stupid-person-im-arguing-with-really-a-kid/
Thank You! (-:
Just read this link and comments. Woe—interesting exchange there in the comments. I’m fairly new to the op-ed blogs, until I got a pc 2 yrs ago, I didn’t understand how vulnerable a writer makes themselves just for expressing a thought here.
‘A Physicist’ provided some unique examples. I imagine he is well suited to words that end in (ist). Journalist isn’t one of them.
BTW! The next time there is a right-wing campaign against scientists and such, Please let me know! (It’s no big deal watching the feces sharing left–cursing, berating, urinating, charging, assaulting, storming, stoning, fornicating, vandalizing or generally being a nuisance, but if those on the right are going to pray down a building, I want to be there…)
Hilarious. I especially love the second one. We are so important in our own minds:)
The Internet is the 21st century Agora. People in Periclean Athens probably stood around arguing with each other and saying the same kinds of stuff we say online. Most of it was crap, some of it was important. That’s democracy – citizens actually discussing things with each other. This is better than voting based only on what the media and the politicians tell us. It is better than relying on “gatekeepers” to frame everything. It is what people who care about politics should be doing.
They had time to stand around arguing because they had slaves to gather food. This is a little different.
I dunno. Today, we have taxpayers, and we have Occupiers, Welfare Recipients, Bailout Recipients, etc. The first are slaves to the rest of the entitled classes.
The wonderful creation that is Al Gore’s internet Has brought me some peace. The cartoons exemplify my yearning to be heard even if only by a few. Rush says that we all have the right to speak but we do not have the right to force people to listen. As per the cartoon I have life everlasting. Thank you Jesus.
I can quit. That is what seperates us from slaves. We all know that Atlas may shrug suddenly and without warning. We who have paid attention will be sought as generals. Just kidding.
Still you work far less than them so you have time to relax and chat about”important” things
If I see a worthwhile site which features factual or typographical slips, I occasionally send a correction by e-mail to the author; and, over the years, many authors have taken the time to correct posts and send notes of thanks.
I seldom bother with correcting fallacious reasoning because people who reason poorly tend to take criticism poorly.
Here’s a very recent example: a little earlier I noticed a small slip at Crack Emcee’s excellent site, The Macho Response; I posted a comment, and the fool-flaying, cultist-condemning, Crack Emcee swiftly and graciously made a correction.
Personally, I’ve done that several times right here at PJM, and always gotten a good response.
Along the way, I’ve picked up email addresses for several of the authors, and even made a friend or two.
Gathering in community groups to discuss topics of the day used to be done in public. Some societies not only would vent angrily over tea or coffee, but would do so virtually every day at the same time.
Testing the righteousness of one’s position against formidable arguments opposing them, for those willing to examine and readjust their own positions, can lead those willing to be lead, to a better answer or conclusion.
The process is messy, but training for the Olympics, chess mastery, or any competition…is littered with ankle sprains and pulled muscles, but build better gambits and break previous records.
It is the absence of competition that stifles improvement.
How can we convince undecideds that Marxist overthrow is in the works…if our mass information outlets are completely seized by propagandists? If anything motivates me to come as often as I can to be part of the resistance, it is that.
The other issues that interest me, I will engage in from time to time. But, it is standing up and being counted for my countrymen against the overthrow of the free market that moves me to come, to say that the propaganda machine is filled with co-conspirators and that we should awaken from our slumber.
If that causes me to argue with someone, in defense of all I hold dear, I apologize to anyone who thinks that is unworthy. I do not.
Once upon a time only the elites had spare time to argue in the village square. This is better. I ain’t nuthin’ but a auto mechanic and here I be!
Ditto! Just becasue you’re an auto mechanic or stationary engineer doesn’t mean you are not informed. The internet allows everyone in on the discussion.
Including both intelligent and informed or stuupid and ignorant 14 year olds. Hopefully, the stupid and ignorant learn somehing from the exchanges. Remember, the stupid and ignorant 14 year old will someday be 18 and able to vote. Do we want him(her) to still be stupid and ignorant?
Now you’re getting into the debate about teachers unions;) I love the internet. Despite Al Gore and the POTUS there are actually winners and losers here regardless going to private schools in Hawaii.
I dunno, I had some great discussions with our plumber; fortunately, he’s libertarian so I didn’t have to pretend to agree (so he wouldn’t screw up my toilet).
– a couple years ago one PJM contributor set forth the 12 types of Comments?
Uh oh…I hope it grades on a curve!
ConservativeWanderer @ 2 said:
“Personally, I comment not to convince the person I’m responding to that they’re wrong. That almost never works… if it does, then I am gratified, but I can’t remember any time that it did. … However, having been online since before “The Internet,” ….”
Like ConservativeWanderer, I’ve been posting stuff online since 1986 when it was still called “The ARPANet”. In the beginning, I foolishly thought that I could convince the person I was responding to that they were wrong.
I’m long past that.
Now I post stuff mainly to see if I am in error, i.e. I’m trying to actually learn something. I find that my ideas become clearer if I write them down in a form that can be criticized by others. Doing this forces me to do my own fact checking and often times I find out that I was believing in some urban myth or simply wrong. On the few occasions when I do post something that is correct, I hope that some lurker did derive some benefit from it.
How will you become an internet hero if you actually check facts? I do like the PJ media format, but it is not an intense debate format. You might learn that someone derived some benefit if there was a mechanism to alert for relevant posts. I suppose that some lurker at PJ might see this.
LOL
‘Cause it’s fun!
John Myers @ 11 said:
“I do like the PJ media format, but it is not an intense debate format.”
The intense debate format means you’re arguing with trolls, moonbats and idiots. The only satisfaction (which is tiny) is when they admit defeat by going ad hominem. I don’t learn anything new or interesting when they tell me that doubt in AGW is morally equivalent to Holocaust Denial or 9/11 was a trick perpetrated by Israelis agents or Obama is the 4th best President in history.
I think this post is stupid! The poster is obviusly wrong and part of a cabal who wants to hide the truth! It is only smart people like me who see the truth and are burdened with spreading it, lest ignorant fools listen to the idiot who made this post! And furthermore…
…er, OK, maybe you have a point.
Nice job insulting your audience, Dave. Both cartoons are cheap shots. Feel like a big man now?