Derek Powazek 🐐This says more about me than mastodon, but at this point in my life, when I'm tempted to reply to someone to disagree, I just unfollow them instead. It's better for my mental health.
Annalee Newitz 🍜@fraying just Same. Constructive engagement and disagreement are fine, but scolding, I'm-rightism, hot takes...no thanks
@annaleen Yeah. I wasn't even talking about replies to me - I was talking about my own desire to disagree with someone publicly. It's like I've lost the taste for it. It just feels like too much work.
PatienceltdOnce upon a time, when the Internet was only an egg, I took debating seriously and enjoyed it. I had collected extensive reference files and bookmarks for specific topics, and could also argue from authority and experience in most of them.
This enjoyment mostly persisted through the BBS, Usenet, IRC, G+, and Reddit eras. However, the bigger the potential audience, the more obvious it became that the discussions were becoming pig-wrestling exercises at best. Too much polarization, too many trolls and shit-posters.
COVID-19 finally killed the last traces of any desire to be publicly correct. After a public health post with lots of credible references (in a small, tightly policed and curated Reddit-clone forum) got brigaded by loud deniers, I was done.
/1
Allowing bad faith discourse to dominate is terrible for everyone. There's plenty of evidence of deliberate efforts to exhaust and demoralize the reality-based community... And in my case, they've won. But the Internet isn't the world, and there are other, arguably more effective means of carrying on the fight.
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