One of the best parts of Vox Day’s Social Justice Warriors Always Lie book was the explanation of utilizing rhetoric vs. dialectic arguments. This is a small point, but something that flies over a lot of heads, and actually is the difference between success and failure in internet marketing and getting your point across in general.
I used to spend a lot of time arguing back and forth on facebook walls or here or whatnot trying to “prove” my point. If you just present the correct evidence, people will reason what happened and come to a logical conclusion, right?
Wrong. Every time.
People will come to whatever conclusion fits their movie in their minds. The BayCon debacle was my first real experience with this on a level where thousands of people were both cheering for me and criticizing me at the same time. My haters made several posts about how I was “lying” and all pointed back to a single post on a science fiction fake news hate website that stated I was lying. Did they have direct, tangible evidence of anything? Absolutely not. I actually in response posted screen captures of the event organizers literally saying they were blackballing “over behavior from politics” on their social media because I thought the best course would be to prove it. It was irrefutable evidence that would hold up in court for sure.
Scroll through my comments page. I’ve got the same 4-5 people here, months after the fact, STILL calling me a liar despite that, and still evidencing the same hate website which offered no evidence.
It’s because dialectic or logical reasoning doesn’t matter to a large portion of the population. This is a group that’s called many people “literal Nazis!” for a couple of years now, trying to ramp up hate so far over the line, that they can’t ever admit they’re wrong, despite the notable logical evidence of lack of any concentration camps or people being rounded up and killed, because it would be so embarrassing to be wrong on that scale, they can’t. Once you’re branded the Nazi by them, no amount of evidence on anything you say will ever matter.
So don’t bother with it.
I have a policy that I don’t get into policy discussions on social media. It’s super effective.
Now that doesn’t mean there’s not a place for dialectic reasoning. In my capacity as a journalist I definitely do put in the legwork because it’s a different format and for a different audience — my readers who DO care about logical reasoning. My expose on Marvel Comics took a lot of research. My whistleblowing on science fiction publishing did as well. I coupled very powerful rhetoric in those pieces, of course, but I laid out the evidence not for the haters in an attempt to argue — even to this day they just call me names back and never cite the “real figures” they claim I falsified, but for my audience of more intelligent rational readers. I don’t really engage the hate comments other than to post more rhetoric.
My haters will come back and say “ha! this proves he’s wrong!” but it doesn’t at all. It just proves I know how to rally my side and trigger yours. That I base my rhetoric on truth makes it all the more powerful, as a matter of fact. That’s part of the reason SJWs really can’t meme — because memes have to have reality to them in order to be effective, make someone laugh and/or make someone outraged. If it weren’t true, they wouldn’t care so much.
Most of the time it’s very clear to see who’s actually reaching out for understanding and truth, and who’s arguing for the sake of arguing. Most of the former will be done in private to talk to you one on one. The act of social media questioning in public is typically for the sake of grandstanding and nothing else. I can’t even count the number of posts I see scrolling through feeds on social media where it’s arguing relentlessly back and forth, usually a SJW pushing and pushing with pseudo-dialectic from talking points despite very obvious evidence. No minds are ever changed. It just gets people angry at each other — and depending on who’s feed/wall you’re on, you’ll get a pile on effect of either your friends bashing them or their friends bashing you. It does no good. You’ll only lose friendships (if they’re real friendships) over the arguing element, and the person you’re arguing against is probably incapable of real logical reasoning anyway.
And if you really want to trigger, not arguing dialectic in those environments frustrates them even more. 🙂
In conclusion:
If you like the way I communicate highly emotional rhetoric, my characters in my fiction come across that much more inspiring because of it:Â Check out my book For Steam And Country today!Â
“Attempting to debate with a person who has abandoned reason is like giving medicine to the dead.” ― Thomas Paine
Rhetoric is an appeal to emotion.
Dialectic is an appeal to reason.
Need I say more?
Preach.
The testimony of the decision makers was direct, tangible evidence.
Anti-matter Universe Santa appears lost and confused.
You’ve no interest in the truth so fuck off.
Why so much hate Mike?
And Jon, don’t expect an apology from the Lord of the Chinese Web Bot Trolls. He’s real good about talking shit about people but not so good about apologizing like a man does when he’s proven to be wrong.
Rich; the same standard used to conclude that Mike is the “Lord of the Chinese Web Bot Trolls” would lead one to believe that our dear Host Jon is the “Lord of the Russian Web Bot Trolls”.
Neither statement is true, but let me guess which one you will continue to use?
Ryan,
Mike himself proved that 92% of the traffic to his website was from Web Bots in China several months ago by posting a screenshot of his traffic while trying to “prove” he had more followers than Larry Correia..
So yes, my statement is absolutely true. While you, once again, have nothing but lies.
Game. Set. Match.
Take a look at alexa now dumbass. Recently Jon’s showed the same amount from Russia.
That Glyer’s traffic has plummeted since his Chinese Bot Farm self-expose and that you are nothing but a lying troll yourself.
Pro tip: When you’ve buried yourself alive in lies, it’s time for you to stop digging.
That you are a liar.
More lies and insults, from Ryan.
You got nothing kid, because you are nothing.
Alexa is showing Jon at 92.3% from the United States.
Glyer’s site the day he posted the screenshot showed 92% from China.
My site, per my host, is running 90.1 from the U.S.A. and no visitors from CHina or Russia.
You were saying, Lyin’ Ryan?
Correction, went to the second page of the report:
U.S. 90.1%
Russia 0.002%
China 0.001%
The point being, you don’t know what Alexa is telling you. What does File770 say now?
That you are a liar.
Glyer’s an asshat but at least he is man enough to put his name behind his stupidity.
You’re an anonymous troll with a big mouth and nothing but lies.
Cool story bro.
You willfully ignored the facebook post by the decision maker that stated the direct opposite when I posted it a couple of days after your blog and never made a retraction — more importantly if you were a real journalist and not a hate monger, never bothered to ask me what happened. The entire point of what you did was to try to torch a fledgling indie artist over politics (just like Baycon blackballed over politics, ironically!) and it was beyond messed up. You sicked people on me via your comments who said and still say hateful things to this day and follow me around the internet to do so. They even went full racist which you did condemn and give me a line about for here but didn’t post it on your own site. Why? And never apologized or bothered with any of it. It’s not okay what you did in any regard and I’m going to take your showing up here as evidence you feel horrible about it.
So, I think we can all see, from Mr. Paolinelli’s example, that rhetoric without dialectic is nothing.
I agree completely regarding SJWs Always Lie. My college education, unfortunately, was rather shallow and slipshod. For instance, I was never once tasked with reading Aristotle, or Plato and Socrates for that matter (I was however forced to watch Thelma & Louise three effing times in my English Literature class and told to write a 6 page paper on how that movie illuminated my understanding of the toxic patriarchy. So, I had that going for me…)
SJWs Always Lie led me back to Aristotle. When Day quoted this thought:
“Before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.”
Well, I realized just what I had been missing, and how timeless his wisdom is. I’ve been trying to correct it ever since.
By the way, I just discovered you by listening to your interview on Geek Gab. I’ll be giving your writing a try very soon (once I finish the Galaxy’s Edge series, which is awesome so far)