From almost my first moment connected to the internet I have been arguing with people online; first on Cix and Compuserve, then in the comments sections of blogs, now on Twitter. So many hours I could have spent appreciating fine art or cataloguing the unpasteurised cheeses of rural Norway have been poured away wrangling with fools and weasels. Everyone appreciates that online disputation has its own peculiar character. Most commentators have focused on the additional heat that anonymity and/or being out of range of a good smack in the chops allows. I want, instead, to focus on weasely forms of argument which, whilst not unique to online battles, seem unhappily prevalent. My aim is to help you recognise when debate has degraded to a state where even the minuscule prospect of constructive engagement has vanished and you should move on.
Enter the Weasel
Imagine you hear that the Big Endian Army has committed a terrible atrocity. You post a message deploring it. Immediately there will appear someone apparently anxious for your views on the wrongdoing of the Little Endian armed forces. Well, hello there Mr Weasel. How their intervention is formulated depends on their manners or mood. All of the following forms are commonplace and all carry the same implication (made explicit in the last form). In ascending order of unpleasantness:
(1) But what do you say about the Little Endian massacre?
(2) I notice you have not condemned the Little Endian massacre.
(3) How can you complain about the Big Endian massacre unless you also complain about the Little Endian massacre?
(4) Shut up Little Endian scum! You are no better than those savages that pulled the trigger during the Little Endian massacre.
If they can resist the unhinged personal attack, your new friend will be posing as a wandering umpire of the internet, drifting from debate to debate striving to nurture balance and fair play. The implication is that you are not, in truth, a humanitarian moved by an atrocity but rather a partisan laying claim to scruples you do not actually have. Of course, if you take the time to look at what your new friend has been saying elsewhere online it will soon be clear that there is a distinct pattern to their interventions. Criticism of the Big Endians seems to summon them like a dog whistle. The argument described above is the favoured weapon of the apologist. However it may be formulated, the intervention always resolves to their trying to get you to shut up. That proposition can be easily tested.
What if you try to refute the implication that you are partisan by pointing to a passionate denunciation of the Little Endian actions that you had posted just hours previously? That should, in theory, elicit an immediate apology from Senor Weasel. It will not do so. Instead what will happen is that the sincerity of your denunciation will be doubted and then out will flop the preposterous kernel of the weasel’s argument: “If you accept that the Little Endians committed an atrocity you cannot complain about the Big Endian atrocity”. To which one might reasonably respond “Why, in the name of Satan’s underpants, not?” Why can I not simply be opposed to atrocities? For the weasel now is the time to get personal.
You stink
For reasons that the weasel cannot fathom, you have failed to shut up. They have obviously been too subtle. What happens next depends on whether there is a mob handy. If there is, hundreds of weasely partisans turn up on your webpage or in your timeline and one after the other ask you why you have not condemned the Little Endian massacre. It is like a DDOS attack on your typing skills. The idea is that you should be overwhelmed, recognise that it is getting out of hand and, finally, SHUT UP.
If there is no mob, or if your multi-threaded repetitive argument skills are at ninja level, you will be told that you are Anti-Bigendic or Bigendaphobic or failing to check your privilege sufficiently often or carefully. Of course you don't want to be thought of as a Bigendaphobe. You are a hand-wringing humanitarian after all. So perhaps, the weasel hopes, you will head for the door rather than risk a public debate as to whether you are a bigot. What point denying the charge? Isn't that what Bigendaphobes always do (“I'm not Bigendaphobic but ...”)? Some of your best friends are Big Endians … but now you come to think of it, wouldn't saying so ring awfully hollow? However, even if you stay and fight, the weasel will be smirking because the debate must now take the form of you trying to demonstrate your lack of prejudice to the weasel’s satisfaction which, of course, is an impossible task. Long before that point is reached the lure of Nordic cheese should have drawn you away to more useful pursuits.
None of which is to say there is not a little weasel in all of us or that online debate is invariably pointless. Away from the echo chambers and drive-by weasel hits you can, if you are careful to keep company with people with perspectives different to your own, use the internet as a tool for helping you confound your prejudices, inform your opinions and, every so often, change your mind.