The Point of Online Debating

Excellent!

I do disagree though (uh-oh, are we now going to be debating whether debating is futile?) for a few reasons:

1.) Sometimes there are reasonable people who debate well and either take points well and change their minds, make points convincingly and change my mind, or both.

2.) Even if minds are not changed per se, the mental exercise of a good debate is enlivening and understanding of a given topic is often deepened.

3.) There has been a lot of research about the satisfaction of debating/arguing on the SAME side -- a way to bond. (As in, person A is a ridiculous hack and so is his friend B, but persons C and D have fun as they both argue against A and B.)

He might have added arguments down at the pub, or conversations at parties, or idle convesations in airport or railway station waiting rooms, harangues at the lunch counter.

Frankly, i'm betting he saw comments he didn't like in response to his article, and he has now wasted the time of the newspaper and its readership with an all too prolix demonstration of sour grapes.

in addition to what Set enumerated, add much of what passes for debate on TV. on the net at least, they can't talk simultaneously or shout (short of using caps or large font) i credit the McLaughlin Group show for popularising this type of verbal free-for-all...not one of Public TV's shining achievements.

Good point . . . yet another reason i don't watch the teevees . . .

I agree with soz (just call me D). Especially as to number 2. At least, that's what I get out of it. The exercising of putting my argument into words 1) helps me see the flaws in it before it's posted and 2) forces me to research and double check facts that my careless mind take for granted because I "read them somewhere". I think debating online, here on A2K anyway, has made me smarter.

So there you have it, it's all about me.

No, it's all about ME . . . goofy duck . . .

Set's right, FD....

He may be right about me being goofy, but it is DEFINITELY all about me. And I have the evidence to prove it. My evidence is that you can't prove it's not all about me.

It it's not all about me, why you are denying that it's all about me. Your very denial is proof that it is all about me. Poopity head . . .

If it wasn't all about me, you wouldn't have used the words "you" and "your" in your last post. Just concede defeat now.

It's Set all the way..

Now would you guys just shut up and pass the lice.

As to yourself, I have this to say about you:

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. I wager you couldn't empty a boot of excrement were the instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you. Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs. You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus.

And what meaning do you expect your delusional self-important satements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have to us who think and reason? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake? You are a waste of flesh.

You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed , drooling meatslapper. You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off, pillock. You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john. You clouted boggish foot-licking twit. You dankish clack-dish plonker. You gormless crook-pated tosser. You churlish boil-brained clotpole ponce. You cockered bum-bailey poofter. You gob-kissing gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted clapper-clawed flirt-gill.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away. I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on.

This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective.

True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you.

You're an idiot. A moron of the highest order. You're so stupid it's a wonder and a pity you can remember to breath. Intelligent ideas bounce off your head as if it were coated with teflon. Creative thoughts take alternate transportation in order to avoid even being in the same state as you. If you had an original thought it would die of loneliness before the hour was out. On an intelligence scale of 1 to 10 (10 corresponding to the highest attainable IQ) you're rating is so far into negative numbers that one would need to travel into another quantum reality in order to even catch a distant glimpse of it.

Your personality is that of a rabid Chihuahua intent on destroying its own tail. Your powers of observation are akin to those of the bird which keeps slamming into the picture window trying to get that other bird it keeps seeing. You are walking, talking proof that you don't have to be sentient to survive, and that Barnum was thinking of you when he uttered his immortal phrase regarding the birth of a sucker. You are, at varying times, tedious, boring, and even occaissionally earth shatteringly hilarious in your idiocy, routinely childish, moronic, pathetic, wretched, disgusting and pitiful.

You are wholly without any redeeming social grace or value. If God ever decides to give the planet an enema you'd better run like the wind because anywhere you stand is a suitable place for The Insertion. There is no animal so disgusting, so vile that it deserves comparison to you, for even the lowest, dirtiest, most parasitic member of the animal kingdom fills an ecological niche. You fill no niche. To call you a parasite would be injurious and defamatory to the thousands of honest parasitic species. You are worse than vermin, for vermin do not pretend to be what it is not. You are truly human garbage. You are a fraudulent, lying, predatory charlatan. You are of less worth than a burnt-out light bulb. You will forever live in shame.

You have nothing to say, and Godwin's Law does not apply when writing about you. You are the anti-Midas, for all that you touch becomes valueless and unusable. Mothers gather their children close when you appear. You are an aberration, a corruption, a boil that needs to be lanced. You are a poison in need of being vomited. You are a tooth so rotten it infects the whole body. You are sperm that should have been captured in a condom and flushed down a toilet.

I don't like you. I don't like anybody who has as little respect for others as you do. Go away, you swine. You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon. You are a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. Meaningful to no one, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I wretch at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell? Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot. You are a waste of flesh.On a good day you're a halfwit. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away. I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, study, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you.

You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful, cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable, belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain-damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self-righteous, byzantine, conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb, evasive, double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative, paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic, diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive, mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive, abusive, and socially-retarded.

Shut up and go away lest you achieve the physical retribution your behavior merits.

Thank you for your kind attention to and expected cooperation in this matter.

(Source, sorta :wink: )

That's the best Setanta impersonation I've ever witnessed.

Oh, my.

Duck, you ignorant slut . . .

<swoon>

That should be "the bird THAT keeps slamming," because what follows is a restrictive rather than a non-restrictive clause.

That is, to the best of my recollection, the absolute funniest thing I have ever read, timber. Dear god, I thought I was dying from lack of oxygen I laughed so hard. The only reason I didn't respond sooner is that I was busy forwarding that on to one of my friends and saving a copy for myself that I can break out someday when someone has made me angry enough to use this WMD. Thank you for sharing that.
God, I'm still chuckling and wiping the tears from my face.

Grammar Nazi