Arguing over the internet

Most fitting image ever

Everybody who's been around the internet for long enough knows that arguing over it has its own category of uselessness.

Most of the times, communication over the net seems to be flawed at its roots. Be it Facebook, Twitter, or old school, 1.0 message boards, a heated argument over the net is likely to lead to nothing but (evetual) frustration for those involved, and annoyment for those powerlessly assisting.

There are many reasons for this. I'll recall the two most cited ones (they do not necessarily apply to you, Dear Reader, I know there are exceptions).

Lack of metacommunication

That is to say, when reading and typing messages we lack the visual feedback of our interlocutor and we fail to send ours. We are interpreting what we read, and what we write is interpreted, in a flawed way: we can't perceive the tone of our interlocutors' voices, we can't see their body language, and they can't see ours. Therefore, we're filling in those blanks by guessing or approximating based on what we read and what we expect our interlocutors' feelings to be. But we seldom take care to verify wether our interpretation is correct. If we reason by assumptions without checking for their accuracy, we are bound to fail.

If I, for example, assume that your goals in a conversation are the same goals I have, I am attributing intentions to you that may very well not be your actual ones.

The power of anonymity

We've all heard of this: when behind a computer screen, it's easy to say things and show a side of yourself that you wouldn't otherwise expose. This goes for intimate confessions as well as extremist thinking. We may reply to certain things online in a very different way from what we'd say in a real life conversation. You often hear (or read!) that everybody's more courageous on the internet, and I am certainly not the exception here.

So, this is hard to admit for me, lifelong lover of written communication. But sometimes having a coffee together is just better. Or a Skype call, if you're far away.

Other times, when the answer to the pivotal "What's the point?" question doesn't make any sense, I find it perfectly legit to just avoid the discussion.