Great post, thank you! Re “arguments as soldiers,” are you familiar with Julia Galef’s “The Scout Mindset”? She opens with a similar metaphor and argues for using your thoughts as scouts, not soldiers (hence the title).
> As a sidenote, where I live in New York I also don’t have to show ID to vote, although you do have to show it when you register. And I’ve always found that a bit weird. There are arguments about people who don’t have IDs and how they might be disenfranchised - but surely this is an argument to make it easier to get an ID rather than an argument against IDs for voting?
Yes, well, that's exactly the problem, is historically state governments in America intentionally made it harder for people to get IDs explicitly to prevent them from voting. In particular this was used to enforce Apartheid, which is why Fascists want to bring it back under the veneer of it being normal and uncontroversial. Rather than trust the government to be responsible with this power Americans have pretty strongly built a consensus in favor of depriving the government of it entirely.
Americans, particularly on the left, just don't trust their government to make IDs easy to get, especially if they have something to gain from denying you one.
I don't doubt your first sentence is true. But your second refers to a system used in South Africa, not the USA. The third implies there is a strong consensus in the USA against voter ID, which in terms of current law and polling is pretty clearly not true.
Requiring ID to vote simply isn't necessary. There are systems that are more secure and don't offer bad actors methods of disenfranchisement, such as we use here in Australia. For that reason it shouldn't be considered normal and uncontroversial.
This is the first thing I've read from you, and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. I'm looking forward to looking into some of your previous writings.
Was literally just thinking about this after watching an online argument. The goal is never to change someone's mind or to make a compelling argument for anyone who is watching but to shame people off of the platform.
Some of the comic text is unnecessary, but personally I find the "Young man I would like to support your business" the key, and funniest bit, with the dude's face saying it. I'd lose the whole fourth panel before cutting that line.
The joke is not just "then he gets a big crowd," it's the suddenness of the switch, and the *tone* of the activated buyers. The hubbub of the third panel is important, and the sunglasses and trimmed beards look is the CK.
Here in Illinois they will ask you if you want to register to vote when you are at the SOS (DMV to you folks), but to get to that point you've had to do everything except give DNA to prove your identity. That said, you can also register online.
We do not require ID when you vote. I say "we" because I sometimes work as an election judge. You give your name and address, you sign a little affidavit saying you aren't committing voter fraud, and then the election judge (read: poll worker) compares the signed affidavit against the digital one stored in the system from when you registered to vote. It's pretty remarkable the extent to which even someone who just does a dumb scribble for their signature has basically the same scribble each time.
I always tell people that nothing will ever convince you that large-scale voter fraud would be incredibly difficult to pull off like working a single election day as a poll worker.
It's not a terrible comic, but he should have increased the price to $1/per cup.
That at the end was a rookie mistake by Haus. I learned my first day on Twitter that you don't fuck with Armand. He and I frequently disagree, but he's one of the good guys.
I don't vote anymore because I live in CA and now have things to do with my time, but I think I had to present ID the first time I registered, and then never again. I've moved a few times and I changed my registration through USPS (it was part of changing address) as I recall, but never had to prove identity. Never presented ID to vote.
I can't believe I just stumbled across this post. It puts a more clever framing on something I have been noticing, annoyed by, and considering philosophically for years now: is there any value on "the internet" to being correct.
I have been off Twitter for years now. But before I exited, I realized there were a ton of conversations, running jokes, etc. that, while not directly about public policy or anything real and serious, relied on an agreement of an underlying condition that is wrong.
For example, how many joke tweets, memes, etc have you seen where the necessarily accepted premise is that something (or everything) in the world is terrible, worse than it's ever been. Except, that is almost never actually the case.
I still am regularly sent memes and stuff with the same problem by my friends who, I think, either do know better or aren't looking at it that seriously. And, it's possible I'm just a terrible bore, but it kinda kills the joke that the whole thing is wrong.
BUT I know that pointing that out, and by doing so, making the the world a very very little bit "less wrong about something" is the "wrong" thing to do. That does mean you're a killjoy or a rube or uncool by lack of appropriate cynicism or whatever.
Now, it's possible I am just lame as hell and have no sense of humor. But I do love a ton of standup comedy and give no thought at all to whether a given setup or anecdote is true or not.
So it's something about the dynamic of having to ignore real, meaningful facts about the world to have a shared sense of joke or conversation that rubs me the wrong way.
And I think that fits adjacently to the arguments are soldiers idea. "If you're on my side, we all agree thing X is terrible, from that premise we can now joke with the in-group with jokes that take X being terrible as an inarguable baseline. Questioning that means you aren't in agreement, aren't in the in-group, and therefore are lame as hell"
Brilliant, brilliant essay, JJ, particularly your section on "There are two ways to argue on the internet." Thank you!
Also this: "It’s not fun to think about, but behind a lot of the insane discourse we see online is genuine mental illness - people who are not healthy and who are taking it out on the world."
This as well! On at least several occasions during a heated discussion on X/Twitter, it came out that the person with whom I've been wrangling was - even if not dealing with actual mental illness - going through their own serious health issues, or grappling with such issues (like cancer or chronic pain) suffered by a loved one, or recently lost someone in their life, or experienced some past trauma that bears on the current discussion. And that put our conversation in a whole new light. Sometimes we still couldn't get past that, yet sometimes we found common ground in the fragility of life and shared pain and it ended okay, or even well.
Am remembering this:
"The other day God told me to give flowers to the most rude, passive aggressive woman at my job. I did that on a random Tuesday & the look of shock on her face actually made me feel so sad. She lost her mom & this is one of her first holidays without her. She genuinely was so confused that anyone would get her flowers for no reason & she has been all smiles since that day."
"Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
"You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.”
This doesn't mean we have to abide abusive behavior from anyone, period. But it does suggest that, on occasion, trying kindness first - even if that goes against every instinct, and no matter how imperfect we may be at applying that - can *sometimes* make bad situations better. In online discussions and in many other areas of life.
Eh. Arguments can be soldiers but sometimes the war is about not getting cooked online. Calling your critics Nazis is probably just convenient for someone who doesn't like their critiques.
Great post, thank you! Re “arguments as soldiers,” are you familiar with Julia Galef’s “The Scout Mindset”? She opens with a similar metaphor and argues for using your thoughts as scouts, not soldiers (hence the title).
Yep, big fan of the book. Did a podcast with her a few years back:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-scout-mindset-ft-julia-galef/id1390384827?i=1000523003248
> As a sidenote, where I live in New York I also don’t have to show ID to vote, although you do have to show it when you register. And I’ve always found that a bit weird. There are arguments about people who don’t have IDs and how they might be disenfranchised - but surely this is an argument to make it easier to get an ID rather than an argument against IDs for voting?
Yes, well, that's exactly the problem, is historically state governments in America intentionally made it harder for people to get IDs explicitly to prevent them from voting. In particular this was used to enforce Apartheid, which is why Fascists want to bring it back under the veneer of it being normal and uncontroversial. Rather than trust the government to be responsible with this power Americans have pretty strongly built a consensus in favor of depriving the government of it entirely.
Americans, particularly on the left, just don't trust their government to make IDs easy to get, especially if they have something to gain from denying you one.
I don't doubt your first sentence is true. But your second refers to a system used in South Africa, not the USA. The third implies there is a strong consensus in the USA against voter ID, which in terms of current law and polling is pretty clearly not true.
Requiring ID to vote simply isn't necessary. There are systems that are more secure and don't offer bad actors methods of disenfranchisement, such as we use here in Australia. For that reason it shouldn't be considered normal and uncontroversial.
This is the first thing I've read from you, and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. I'm looking forward to looking into some of your previous writings.
Thanks for the kind words Cameron! Let me know if there's anything in particular you're interested in online, I may have written about it.
Was literally just thinking about this after watching an online argument. The goal is never to change someone's mind or to make a compelling argument for anyone who is watching but to shame people off of the platform.
Some of the comic text is unnecessary, but personally I find the "Young man I would like to support your business" the key, and funniest bit, with the dude's face saying it. I'd lose the whole fourth panel before cutting that line.
The joke is not just "then he gets a big crowd," it's the suddenness of the switch, and the *tone* of the activated buyers. The hubbub of the third panel is important, and the sunglasses and trimmed beards look is the CK.
Here in Illinois they will ask you if you want to register to vote when you are at the SOS (DMV to you folks), but to get to that point you've had to do everything except give DNA to prove your identity. That said, you can also register online.
We do not require ID when you vote. I say "we" because I sometimes work as an election judge. You give your name and address, you sign a little affidavit saying you aren't committing voter fraud, and then the election judge (read: poll worker) compares the signed affidavit against the digital one stored in the system from when you registered to vote. It's pretty remarkable the extent to which even someone who just does a dumb scribble for their signature has basically the same scribble each time.
I always tell people that nothing will ever convince you that large-scale voter fraud would be incredibly difficult to pull off like working a single election day as a poll worker.
Wow, subscribing for this.
Very astute analysis, subscribed!
It's not a terrible comic, but he should have increased the price to $1/per cup.
That at the end was a rookie mistake by Haus. I learned my first day on Twitter that you don't fuck with Armand. He and I frequently disagree, but he's one of the good guys.
I don't vote anymore because I live in CA and now have things to do with my time, but I think I had to present ID the first time I registered, and then never again. I've moved a few times and I changed my registration through USPS (it was part of changing address) as I recall, but never had to prove identity. Never presented ID to vote.
I can't believe I just stumbled across this post. It puts a more clever framing on something I have been noticing, annoyed by, and considering philosophically for years now: is there any value on "the internet" to being correct.
I have been off Twitter for years now. But before I exited, I realized there were a ton of conversations, running jokes, etc. that, while not directly about public policy or anything real and serious, relied on an agreement of an underlying condition that is wrong.
For example, how many joke tweets, memes, etc have you seen where the necessarily accepted premise is that something (or everything) in the world is terrible, worse than it's ever been. Except, that is almost never actually the case.
I still am regularly sent memes and stuff with the same problem by my friends who, I think, either do know better or aren't looking at it that seriously. And, it's possible I'm just a terrible bore, but it kinda kills the joke that the whole thing is wrong.
BUT I know that pointing that out, and by doing so, making the the world a very very little bit "less wrong about something" is the "wrong" thing to do. That does mean you're a killjoy or a rube or uncool by lack of appropriate cynicism or whatever.
Now, it's possible I am just lame as hell and have no sense of humor. But I do love a ton of standup comedy and give no thought at all to whether a given setup or anecdote is true or not.
So it's something about the dynamic of having to ignore real, meaningful facts about the world to have a shared sense of joke or conversation that rubs me the wrong way.
And I think that fits adjacently to the arguments are soldiers idea. "If you're on my side, we all agree thing X is terrible, from that premise we can now joke with the in-group with jokes that take X being terrible as an inarguable baseline. Questioning that means you aren't in agreement, aren't in the in-group, and therefore are lame as hell"
Brilliant, brilliant essay, JJ, particularly your section on "There are two ways to argue on the internet." Thank you!
Also this: "It’s not fun to think about, but behind a lot of the insane discourse we see online is genuine mental illness - people who are not healthy and who are taking it out on the world."
This as well! On at least several occasions during a heated discussion on X/Twitter, it came out that the person with whom I've been wrangling was - even if not dealing with actual mental illness - going through their own serious health issues, or grappling with such issues (like cancer or chronic pain) suffered by a loved one, or recently lost someone in their life, or experienced some past trauma that bears on the current discussion. And that put our conversation in a whole new light. Sometimes we still couldn't get past that, yet sometimes we found common ground in the fragility of life and shared pain and it ended okay, or even well.
Am remembering this:
"The other day God told me to give flowers to the most rude, passive aggressive woman at my job. I did that on a random Tuesday & the look of shock on her face actually made me feel so sad. She lost her mom & this is one of her first holidays without her. She genuinely was so confused that anyone would get her flowers for no reason & she has been all smiles since that day."
https://x.com/Bellamor_19/status/2004744389814338037
And this:
"Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
"You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.”
– Miller Williams
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/54773-have-compassion-for-everyone-you-meet-even-if-they-don-t
This doesn't mean we have to abide abusive behavior from anyone, period. But it does suggest that, on occasion, trying kindness first - even if that goes against every instinct, and no matter how imperfect we may be at applying that - can *sometimes* make bad situations better. In online discussions and in many other areas of life.
Eh. Arguments can be soldiers but sometimes the war is about not getting cooked online. Calling your critics Nazis is probably just convenient for someone who doesn't like their critiques.
Have to say, I think you should probably kill yourself for writing this article.