Arguing On The Internet
I figured out something out on my dog walk tonight with my companion. (That doesn't type out right, but it's me and my companion walking my dog. I am not the dog. The dog is the dog. Although he does tend to pull me around on his leash in the worst way.)
Anyway, my companion doesn't bother much with the Internet (my dog not at all, although he does watch TV and will run at the screen if there's a bad dog on it - and all dogs are bad because he knows stuff about his own kind that we humans are alarmingly oblivious to) even less with arguing on it (almost to the point where he doesn't argue at all on the Internet because he doesn't post on it, either) so sometimes my conversations with him about MY arguments on the Internet are a little one-sided, but he offered up tonight that he thought maybe people saw things in a more polarized way when they were arguing on the Internet.
Which led me to my brilliant theory, Dear Reader.
I think people don't argue about how they see things at all when they argue on the Internet. I think they argue with how OTHER people see things.
Cool, eh? It just came to me like that, too. One minute I was thinking people saw things in black & white when they argued on the Internet, but then I realized - no. They see the OTHER person as seeing things in black - and only black. So they argue white - and only white - to bring the person who argues black in to a grey area.
Then, someone else, who has had the benefit of reading both the black, and then the white, argument - will offer up the grey argument. But even he isn't arguing about whatever issue is supposedly being argued about. He's just responding to the argument as it has sprung up and away from the actual issue at hand and offering up what he thinks is reality.
But it's not. Because a grey argument really isn't an argument at all. It's just the middle ground. Like limbo or somesuch. Meanwhile, the black argument arguer, who sees things in black & white and therefore argues black, thinks the greyer is just as bad as the white argument arguer - while the white argument arguer is incredulous that the greyer can share any degree of commonality with the black argument arguer and isn't instead arguing the white argument with the white argument arguer.
Those people really bug my ass - the greyers. I mean, really. I think the white argument arguer can see that there is a grey area, dude, that's why he's posited a white argument on the Internet - to counter balance the black argument of the black argument arguer.
Geez Loufuckin'ise. Some people. Thanks. But maybe just fuck off the Internet, greyers.
