You know how Men’s Rights Activists regularly resort to insults and invective when they “debate” with feminists online?
It turns out that they’re not just being assholes. No, they’re actually using a super-sophisticated, scientifically tested debating technique to totally PWN feminist slut bitches and mangina poodle-boy pussy-beggars alike.
By acting like assholes.
Men’s Rights Redditor anonlymouse reveals the secrets to debating like an MRA in a recent posting.
“I’ve been doing this for roughly a decade, and have experimented with a variety of tactics and approaches,” he writes. When he posts polite comments, he says, he gets ignored. When he insults his opponents, they’re more likely to respond.
[I]f I attack them head on, insulting them for posting something that’s so retarded, they listen. …
What’s necessary to debate with feminists is to strike a nerve right off the bat. Say a single sentence that they consider incredulous – or that’s explicitly offensive to them. They get upset, and commit to arguing with you. This is the bait. If you can’t get them emotionally invested, you can’t talk to them.
Yes, it’s hard to ignore someone who gets in your face and says something truly appalling. Similarly, if you literally throw your own poop at someone, they’re likely to respond to that as well, as monkeys have been demonstrating for ages.
If you present a well researched argument in a neutral tone, particularly with a source, they will pretend they didn’t notice it, hope nobody else does and move on to the next thing. They know they don’t have good arguments, so they won’t engage if you open with one yourself.
Or maybe they don’t feel like having a pointless pseudo-debate with an asshole who isn’t arguing in good faith?
Nah, couldn’t be that.
This doesn’t mean you don’t have sources backing up your argument, what it means is you don’t reveal that you have any until they’re really incensed.
Muahahahaha!
Wait for them to demand you provide a source for your claims (you can draw out this demand by gradually making your claims more specific – rather like escalating your bet each round in poker). Once they’ve demanded a source, and you provide it, they’ll actually read through the whole paper looking for a flaw in it that they can attack.
Anonlymouse apparently thinks that actually reading studies is a sign of submission.
A few things will happen here. One, they’ll realise it’s solid, they can’t contradict it and just go silent. They’ll make excuses later about how you’re just stubborn, but they actually did read it and internalised it.
Or maybe they move on because they’re tired of arguing with a dickhead who’s going to dismiss everything they say anyway.
They usually won’t make the same claim in the future, but if they do you can call them out on ignoring what you provided previously, which being a personal attack will get them involved again.
Yeah, well, YOUR MOM is a wage gap.
Two, they’ll find some niggling detail and argue that. This is OK, at this point you switch to the rational debating mode – they’re invested and arguing with you so they won’t walk away so easily – and keep explaining why their objection isn’t valid – or provide another source to back you up.
Yeah, god forbid that you actually take in anything they say instead of reacting with an instictive “nuh uh” regardless of what they actually argue.
Three, they’ll acknowledge that it has some validity and that they’ll have to give it more thought. You’ll never get a complete admission that they were wrong and you were right, but that isn’t so important. You’re influencing their position and they’re going to gradually shift.
Or maybe they’re so tired of debating they’ll say anything to end the conversation.
You can’t escalate from rational to direct attacks; that makes it look like you’re losing. But you can de-escalate from direct attacks to rational – nobody’s going to suggest that you feel you’re losing because you suddenly switched from being incensed to calm, and it makes some of their common accusations just seem ridiculous (which you can calmly point out to them).
Wow. You’ve discovered gaslighting.
Congratulations, you’re well on your way to thinking and acting like an abuser!
In the comments, the always charming DavidByron2 notes that he’s been gaslighting feminists for two decades. He especially likes the “don’t give them sources” strategy.
Make them do some work for it and they’ll have a better emotional relationship with it. If you spoon feed them it’s like a magic trick. They don’t believe the source because it came from you. The best is if you make them Google it for themselves. The more they do the more they accept it, the more you do, the more they reject it.
Huh. I always thought that when these guys didn’t give their sources it was because they were talking out of their ass. I had no idea it was all part of a devious masterdebating plan.
“Debating” MRAs can be an infuriating experience. Apparently, with some MRAs, this isn’t an accident. They set out to be as infuriating as possible — and quite often succeed.
H/T — r/againstmensrights
He’s spent ten years being a stupid, bigoted troll on the internet.
Yet, he thinks he winning something.
I think what is most annoying about MRAs is that there is often so much incorrect in their “assertions” that if you were to address it all you’d be there all day trying to deconstruct this world they’ve made for themselves (it really does seem like a completely inverse reality, sometimes…). And for what? For them to dismiss it all and try and steer the convo elsewhere by way of personal attacks or strawmen? Been there, done that. No thanks. It’s kind of funny that they consider this “winning” though.
Uh huh. Nothing about engaging the other side’s arguments or responding to their points. You know, the stuff that goes on in actual debates. No, it’s “pinch a log in the comment section, get the feminists all riled up, then declare victory!”
Everything is about getting attention from women for them. They can’t tell the difference between argument, debate, discussion, flirting, conversation, and asking directions to Starbucks, because it’s all about domination/zero-sum transactions/boundary violations/alpha preening. So long as they think they’ve “scored” off some woman or beta feminist, they think they’ve won.
MRAs love to think they’re making the rules and defining the playing field, but in reality they’re showing up on a football field with a bunch of tiddlywinks and word salad.
This has occurred when?
Yawn. Now we know why the doods can’t get attention from women; they’re boring as all hell and suffer from arrested development. They’re still five year olds that think negative attention is better than no attention.
I recall a source in countering dishonest tactics which suggested that when someone moved the goalposts, do not argue. Simply quote their ORIGINAL statement and argue against that, stating explicitly that they are moving the goalposts, and refusing to engage in the new argument until they acknowledge your response to their original.
This is useful
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-propaganda.html
Staying on topic when being trolled usually hastens the meltdown and the flounce.
One of the best trollings I ever fought off was some random dudebro talking MRA assfax, and then a second MRA showed up and we all ignored him. We chased the first MRA away and then, whenever the second made a post, reminisced amongst ourselves about first dudebro (remember when name forgotton said I was ugly? That was masterful trolling. I miss name forgotton.) until second MRA had a complete meltdown. Good times.
Sometimes people quit Internet debates because they have to go to work or bed or have something else to do. Just because some people don’t have all day to argue with trolls, doesn’t mean the troll’s have actually won.
Another shitty technique I’ve noticed lately is for troll’s to accuse others of being the troll. They think this preemptive attack will make you defensive. It just makes me laugh.
Sadly for him, he has no sources to withhold for this rectal speech.
For some reason my auto correct is capitalizing internet and putting unwelcome apostrophes in trolls. I swear I’m not the idiot.
Ironically, screaming that women just want attention, in the comments section, is a way to get attention.
WWTH: Apparently it’s inconceivable to them that other people have “a life” they might want to get back to. I guess they picture everyone else sitting at computers in their bathrobes all day/everyday.
Sometimes it’s deliberate – what in skeptical circles is called the Gish Gallop (after notorious creationist bullshitter Duane Gish). Basically, you rapid-fire arguments about a whole bunch of different topics at once, hoping that your opponent does not have the time or the expertise to pick all your bullshit off. It works better in live debates, though. It can also backfire, creating what I wish would be called a “Jonestampede” – the “technique” by Alex Jones where you rattle off buzzwords in a random sequence when asked a question, and succeed only in looking tremendously deluded.
Good name for it ‘Jonestampede.’ My vision is of a top just spinning rapidly.
Jonestampede…heh! I heard that dude on shortwave once, he actually ropes it in for more mainstream audiences…He gets REALLY ranty on the shortwave.
I stopped debating MRA’s when I stated that women had been pretty much treated as property for a lot of the past 2000 years of European history to one of them. The MRA I was talking to said this was flatly untrue. I realized that if the guy could not even agree on the same historical facts that he was too deluded to have a debate with. Thus a waste of time.
I’m pretty sure they are all a waste of time to debate, because they have their own FACTS.
If you want your own version of Reality, please vacate mine, thank you.
I wonder what these buttwipes would consider a good source? Based on their claims, I wouldn’t bet one many of them passing peer review.. or being very reliable as indicators of things in the so called real world. Most times I seen people quote or source stupid shit has been based on solid enough science, but the links etc. provided are to media’s woefully bad misinterpretations. So usually, reading the actual study just shows that the source they used got it wrong in the first place. Very few people in general bother to trace down and read the actual study. Especially when media’s retelling tends to be so much.. “juicier”.
Catfish,
For MRAs a good scientific source tends to be a rambling, incoherent and misogynistic YouTube video.
When MRAs and PUAs debate online with feminists it’s because they so desperately crave female attention of any kind and get off on adolescent taunting and dishonest mind games. Thus, the proper name for this activity is ‘masturdebating’.
This is interesting. I actually recognize this behavior in one recent on-line conversation with someone I would describe as sworn gender dichotomist (tis is currently quite topical discussion in Latvia due to loudly debated children books that teach about gender as a social construct). He started with calling me a believer who just ignores facts and scientific proof. But when I didn`t respond to that and just moved to rebutting his nonsense on prehistoric societies in his evo-psych rant, he quickly switched to neuroscience and provided a link to some quite shitty popular article, that seemed like unprofessional compilation from several studies, no references etc. Little did he know that I have been very interested in neuroscience lately. I don`t have biology background, so unfortunately only popular articles for me, but still the following conversation proved that my insight is much better informed.
Well, but I don`t think that for him it was a conscious strategy, looked more like trying to escape that corner I was pushing him in.
So these guys think that saying something deliberately calculated to enrage your opponent is a way of getting the upper hand when they respond angrily to it?
Just curious, are these the same guys that flipped their shit over Jess Valenti’s “male tears” t-shirt?
That’s what I thought. If they do it (where it = anything), it’s a winning strategy, or Game. If women do it, it’s Miss And Ree!!!
weirwoodtreehugger: Don’t feel bad about capitalized “Internet.” When referring to the series of tubes, it’s actually a proper noun (and any other meanings of the word have basically sloughed off in that particular version’s wake, anyway). That being said, I doubt many grammarians would rap your knuckles for “internet.” As for “trolls” v. “troll’s” … I guess you win some, you lose some.
MRA’s don’t trust peer review, because feminists have hijacked scientific journals.
They totally have complete faith in everything YouTube says (except sarkesian’s corner, and the kitties’ half), on the other hand.
I laughed out loud at this part:
Dude. When you call your debate partner out for ignoring your previous sources and/or arguments, that is not a personal attack. That is engaging with the quality of their argument. That’s, you know, actually what you’re supposed to do in debates.
Although, this does explain a lot about how quickly MRA debaters are to take things personally.
Seriously, it seems like upwards of 90% of the time, the first person to call “ad hominem” in an internet argument has not even remotely been personally insulted. They’re probably actually doing a fair bit of namecalling themselves. For instance:
“Uh… that argument you just posted literally makes no sense.”
“NICE AD HOMINEM. WHY DON’T U HIT ME WITH A REAL REBUTTAL U FEMINAZI. OH THAT’S RIGHT YOU DON’T HAVE ONE BURRRRN”
“…”
I am having a boring day at work so I’m just willing a chew-toy troll to appear Iin these comments in a puff of shit so that I can observe some good old fashioned carnage.
Note to reddit MRAs: Gripping about women and then linking to a Daily Mail article isn’t that good of an “argument”. Also, your copy pasta ways makes me doubt that you’ve read any of your alleged non-Daily Mail sources. Shock the world (or at least me) and discuss actual books that you’ve read on these topics you pretend to care about.