Why you should not argue with people on the internet
I got involved in a bad social media fight 4 years ago. I had just come home after watching a beautiful movie and was checking my Facebook feed when a mutual friend had posted a rant about demonetisation. I actually liked the thought of banning the use of higher denomination notes and though it didn’t happen as the Rs2000 note was introduced, it surely shifted a lot of transactions online, which to some degree helped us during the pandemic lockdown. I’m completely okay with people having different beliefs, ideas, solutions but I feel that any complaints about an issue should lead towards a better alternative, else it’s indistinguishable from rant and is a lost opportunity. And so I remember replying to give a better solution to the apparent problem instead, and then got back to work. I was working on adding more features to LyfLime at the time.
Opened Facebook again a few hours later. This person had bashed me for my reply. Many others wrote abusive comments against me to show their support to the person. It was scary. I was looking for a good discussion, I had instead landed in a shady back alley, where everyone is trying to kill you. I surely wanted to defend myself and ‘fight back’. But I couldn’t figure out a way to explain to the hotheads that they can do better. So I passed my chance. The next day, more comments came in. The person had even written a post berating me in a new post. This completely ruined the state of my mind. Still, I figured not reacting was the best option, however unlikely it might seem given the adrenaline rush.
Poorly regulated places like Facebook and Twitter, especially for topics of politics/religion/anything subjective is a place where the loudest, most provocative voice wins.
People are more likely to agree with a simple statement seeming to make sense than a complex idea which might actually be more accurate, just because they can’t quite comprehend it on the first go. Also, simple statements are easy to repeat and share. So they get popular quickly, but that doesn’t make them correct. Most people are on autopilot when they scroll through Facebook and are ready to scroll down even before they began reading. So if you have a complex idea, nobody will listen to you, if someone has a simpler but not correct statement that conforms to their stereotypes, they get likes. Every like increases credibility for the wrong idea and gets more attention and it continues to spiral out.
It was worth it only to think of it as an example in the hindsight. For the brief amount of time I cared about this whole issue, it really disturbed my peace of mind. I couldn’t work on LyfLime, which was more important than proving a random person wrong. Because I don’t have all the time in the world.
This brings me to the main point of the post. Your time is finite. It is too short for stupid internet fights. Especially when it is about a subjective issue because people hold their beliefs about religion/politics too rigidly and when you refute them they show extreme cognitive dissonance. Most of the people showcase the lowest level of Paul Graham’s pyramid of disagreement.
If you care about football, then realise that you’ll get to watch only about 4 FIFA world cups with your favourite childhood player in it. Don’t waste time proving why he is best or others are not, and just enjoy the games.
Until we have better social media which facilitates better discussions with open-minded people, stay away from arguing with people who you don’t care about.