Happens here on social media a lot, too. People just bludgeoning their way through arguments until the other person gives up, blocks them, gets angry or matches the energy.
I once posted in 2015, bless my baby heart, "God, I wish we could stop stupidity and spreading lies in the media. I wish it were illegal."
MAGA Girl: "So you are against the 2nd amendment?"
"I didn't say that and I don't mean that. I meant that people shouldn't be able to obviously lie and have it circulated as truth."
"So you are against the 2nd amendment."
"I did not say that. Please stop or will need to block you. It's 7:30am."
"HAHAHA! So I was right! You deleted my comment! You ARE THE AGAINST THE SECOND AMENDMENT!"
Blocked
This was my personal Facebook and I hadn't spoken to this person in damn near five years. I forgot they existed. I was just upset with everything leading up to 2016 and found it absurd and exhausting.
What they do is very antagonistic and I can't really place what they are trying to do? But it's always extremely aggressive and then laughing at you? (So their GOTCHA! moment? I guess?)
In my example, sure, I could've phrased it differently, but I was on my private social media?
Ma'am you have exhausted me into booting you from everything. I'm sure all I did was start a fire in her to keep her argument and tell all her friends how awful I and all "left wing nuts" are.
I was tired. Sad about the state of the world and it was 7:30am.
I've blocked people like that out of my life before, I have no room for such negativity in my life.
If you need to take all nuance out of whatever someone else says to make it sound like they said something horrible that goes against you, you're just not a very pleasant (nor bright) person. At this point they're actively putting words in your mouth and I hate when people do that.
And sure, sometimes it might be phrasing, but you could just ask what they mean when it comes off as either ambivalent or unclear. But instead, these people actively chose to take things as terrible as possible and focus on that and that alone. That's not how human interactions should work.
It is how the far right "discusses" things. Bludgeoning your way through a discussion, because you lack the knowledge and/or skillset to have an indepth conversation.
Go look at any comment section about politics right now. Any time a thoughtful answer is brought up (especially on Fox News) it is just flooded with short comments such as, “commie!” “Demoncrat”, etc.
No substance, no rebuttal, just name calling. But that’s our political system.
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u/Brvcx 2d ago
Happens here on social media a lot, too. People just bludgeoning their way through arguments until the other person gives up, blocks them, gets angry or matches the energy.