Online discussions
After many an online argument (none of which resulting in anything concretely useful), I have decided the following must be true: Online discussions are like Magic the Gathering: someone flips a card from their google deck and a goblin eats your unicorn.
How often does one run into an internet abuser that simply "googles" every point of each argument and craftily cuts and pastes the information into the current argument (or paraphrases and mangles the meaning of the point they are trying to steal)? Each argument should begin with a set of rules: the first of which should be, "no Google"; the second of which should be, "no branching out by arguing the lesser parts of an analogy"; and the third of which should be, "if you run into deep water, please back off and head for shore".
The essence of any good argument is that one must use only the knowledge in one's current possession. If two friends are sitting around a bar, discussing any point at all, neither of them can get up, run to the library, come back with a quote, and then expound upon the virtues or vices of said quote. Arguments are meant to be stewed over for days and returned to again and again with precious few new points or opinions, allowing each involved to gain or give ground as the discussion grows (or regresses, whichever the case may be).
Help me to establish this new etiquette by disqualifying any points made by obvious, on the spot, internet searching. We will all be better for this.
That does get annoying. I can never tell if my fb friends are smart or just good googlers. I try to argue from the heart not the net. Of course there are times where I am forced to google to respond to someone else's googled answer. Its sort of like a circle. You can never get off.
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