Why I Avoid Arguing on the Internet

I used to have an addiction to arguing on the internet, especially about politics. I wasted thousands of hours of my life on this, ruined friendships, and put myself into a constant state of negativity.

I could write an entire book, based on personal experience, on why arguing on the internet about politics is a terrible idea. (And that’s one of those projects I have on my list of “things I may do if I ever have enough time, but right now I have other priorities.”) But for now, I’ll just tell you about two incidents that were major factors in me realizing I had a problem and needed to stop.

When the 2005 London Metro bombings happened, I saw someone point to that as evidence that her “side” was correct. I wrote up an angry post saying, “How dare she exploit this tragedy to score cheap political points. Especially since this really shows that my side is correct, and here’s why…” Then I exploited the tragedy to score cheap political points. Yes, I was being a huge hypocrite, but I was an addict who didn’t realize it at the time.

Then I remembered that a friend of mine had been travelling through London at the time. I pictured her having been through this horrific experience, then seeing my post using her devastation as an excuse to insult those I disagree with. I felt ashamed. I deleted the post, and then reached out to my friend to see if she was okay.

It turned out I had the date wrong, and she hadn’t been in the country at the time. But this still shifted my perspective. In all the previous arguments and hurt feelings my addiction had caused, I had blamed the other people involved. Everything was their fault, because they were the ones who were wrong. This was where I started to realize that *I* was the one who was acting badly.

The other incident was a bit sillier, but still meaningful to me. I got into an argument with someone about the Monty Hall problem, which is a mathematical brain teaser with an extremely counterintuitive answer – so much so that people will often insist the answer can’t possibly be correct.*

I was arguing with someone over this, and laid out five different proofs of the correct answer. Then the guy I was arguing with responded with, “Oh, I understand it now, thanks.”

I was absolutely stunned by this. I had won an argument on the internet. That had never happened to me. I had never even heard of that happening to anyone. I was going to all my friends, saying, “Hey, look at this! I won an argument on the internet! This is the most amazing thing that has ever happened!”

Then one of my friends burst my bubble by saying that it was just an argument about math with a provably correct answer, so it didn’t really count.

But that got me thinking: If winning an argument on the internet was such a unique and astounding event, what was the point of the thousands of hours I had spent on those arguments? What had I accomplished? And what could I hope to accomplish in the future? If I were to weigh the pros and cons of arguing on the internet, there were plenty of cons, but I couldn’t come up with a single pro.

That was a decade and a half ago. There was a recent incident that brought all this to mind, but this post is already pretty long, so I’m going to break it up into two parts. See part two.