Something I'd really like people to understand... disagreement is good. Don't so quickly consider it trolling.
I was going through my followers to build the image for my 1000 followers milestone post. I noticed one guy I like is no longer following me. He is older than I am but writes some interesting things. In the past I recall him saying he simply MUTEs people that annoy him. The other day I didn't agree with him on a point. We had a back and forth civil discussion, but he was not really seeing what I wrote and was fixated on other things. Eventually he stopped replying. I noticed he was no longer following me. I had that back of the mind question wondering if I had been muted as well.
This made me recall something I wish people would really take some time to think about.
Do you know how often I hear people claiming someone is trolling someone these days when they are not? Actually, most cases someone is claiming that trolling is occurring it really isn't.
Calling someone a troll has become the go to excuse for trying to save face when a person is debating with you and it may go a few rounds and they still do not agree with you. Guess what? You don't need to save face. Disagreement is normal and a good thing.
Did they start attacking your character, calling you a moron, or anything of that nature? If so then perhaps they were trolling you.
Yet consider this. Talking with someone you disagree with is a challenging thing for any of us to do. This is especially true if one or both of you are very passionate about the subject. Our society does not condition us very well with how to deal with this. We'll put forth a limited effort and just expect the other person's mind to be overwritten and that they will suddenly agree with us. It doesn't work that way unless you are a telepath that can mentally assault and program someones mind. In otherwords, if you think this is a science fiction movie it might work that way. In reality it doesn't.
You need to realize that while you may be getting frustrated at not being able to get them to understand. They are likely getting frustrated for exactly the same reason. When one of you then results to belittling, name calling, or other character attacking techniques you have essentially given up. In the field of critical thinking this is called an ad hominem attack.
Now people that actually do troll when the conversation ends or devolves to pointlessness after those attacks you'll often see them being self congratulatory. "Did you see? I told him." Really they didn't do anything but give up. They took the easy out. They learned nothing from the exchange, and all the other person likely learned about them is that they are unwilling to learn and think they've got all the answers. They are not interested in learning, but are more interested in mentally cloning their mind into others they speak with.
Disagreement is not trolling. Being frustrated because a disagreement is taking a lot of effort is not trolling either.
If you want to detect a troll. Here is an easy way to do it. Once you suspect you are being trolled. Agree with them. See what happens? If they suddenly change their mind and start attacking their original stance then you are being trolled. Their entire purpose is to get a rise out of you. So if you agree with them and they switch tactics then that is exactly what they are doing.
Yet these days I see people talk about people trolling other people when it is nothing of the sort. It is just people that disagree that are struggling to reach some compromise, or to reach a point where one of them decides it isn't going to go anywhere.
The BEST outcome from any disagreement is when BOTH parties learn from it.
It isn't really about winning and losing. That is part of the problem. It is more about SHARING.
So next time your back is to a wall and you feel like you are mentally not getting through to the person you disagree with. Stay civil. If you reach a point where you think you can no longer be civil and you can't go further then simply tell them you can't go further. Tell them you can't seem to find any other way that might explain what you are trying to say. It may be an impasse, but you can exit gracefully.
I realize this is easier said than done. I sometimes fail to do this as well. That is just what I try to do.
Yet if people are civil and giving me thoughtful responses I'll engage with such people for a long time. They may think I am trolling them. I am not. I am trying to learn from them, and I hope they are learning from me.
If people keep repeating the same thing and it is clear they actually are not paying attention to what I am saying and they just want to bludgeon me with their words then at some point I'll exit the conversation. This happens occasionally.
Disagreement is not about forcing another person to agree with you. It is about speaking, being heard, and in return listening, and considering what you hear. I have something that is hopefully not news to you. You don't even come close to knowing everything. You are wrong about a lot of things. Guess what? So am I.
It is very hard for some folk to accept that there are different viewpoints and that they cannot force the other to change to their way of thinking. I find I often say that we will just have to accept that we have different standpoints. I can often respect a person more if they can accept that. The ones that cant make me sigh slightly. I still dont mute em or owt tho!
I like your perspective, steemit should never be about agreeing with the Status Quo, it's a marketplace of ideas, opinion and intellectual diversity. We all need to be challenged every once in a while and personally, I admire those that have the confidence to voice differences of opinion .. followed!
For me it's called freedom, I just about fell in a trap yesterday at:
https://steem.makerwannabe.com/index.php?username=codypanama&period=4
Just change user name, for all you want & Don't want to know.
I was Muted right off by 3 people, Why ? I'll never know, nor do I care to know.
1 person farther down the list did the same, well I looked him up and Muted Him, but regretted it instantly ! People do Not make my decisions for me ! I do it myself. Based on reasoning no emotions. If I want to do something, that's my choice. Attack in any way you want , I Am a free thinking individual. and its going to stay that way, I can't control what other people are thinking, nor do I want to. I'm far too busy working on why I think the way I do. If some distant nobody can adversely affect me, just imagine what people I let into my life can do ?
The people close to me know, don't bother, but some dude I'll never meet Is Insignificant
Just my 1 cent worth hehe
I found this article very interesting. As a new Steemer I was quite taken aback when I commented on someone's post and he came back with what I would say was quite defensive and offensive. One thing he did say was "If you can't say something positive, don't comment at all". I didn't think this was what Steemit was all about. Sharing ideas seems to me to be what makes this form of communicating interesting. So much so I actually chose my name "Sharing and Caring". Hope you will become a follower and don't be afraid, I won't be offended if you disagree. Steem On
I'll give you a follow. The last two posts you wrote were interesting. The main reason I am picky about who I follow is as I add more and more followers when I click HOME and look at my feed I end up with so many things I often miss some really good posts. This is already a problem. I have more for that to be truly effective, but I try to look and see if the person I am following is digging down and writing some thought provoking and/or creative pieces. I liked the BLAME GAME one quite a bit.
I don't think I post excessively, so that won't be a problem, but I have no idea whether you'd like my content at all so I have no reason to ask you to "follow" me, however, please take a look if you got time.
Thanks - appreciate your giving me a read. Hope I'll keep your interest.
I'll look at your posts and if I find them interesting to me at the moment I'll follow. If not, that doesn't mean I won't become a follower later.
As to your experience. Consider we have a lot of new people, this is a new way of doing things, and not all of them will be used to it yet.
If it was a person who has been here for awhile also consider even though I describe it a certain way that doesn't mean there are not exceptions. We have people that can be jerks that are on this platform. They just seem to be much smaller in number than other places. Their attitude can also hurt their results here as well.
I however, do not know the actual exchange so I can't comment in detail. That is fine though, all I can say is hang in there.
Thank You. Appreciate your input.
Yep , this community sugar coats stuff a little too much for my liking. I hope it changes soon. No one wants to be part of a circlejerk. Discussion and debate is the only way to settle things rationally.
Amen.
We get more of what we reward and less of what we punish. If we as a community flag people we disagree with, then we're going to stifle debate. If we save the flags for personal attacks, then we build ourselves a great little arena. I know which one I'd prefer.
@tarazkp did a good post on the topic, I guess you read it but just in case
https://steemit.com/philosophy/@tarazkp/how-serious-are-you
I can understand anyone that is emotional about his political views. So am I. But that should only fuel the passion for constructive arguing, it should not make you try to shut up anyone who begs to differ.
A nice thing Taraz only briefly touched on: in a discussion both sides are most likely wrong. Even we "redpilled" people need to get our information from somewhere and its most of the time not our own eyes and ears. We get told what to think by alternative media outlets, it is not intrinsically better than established media. Sure you could argue alternatives provide more facts and msm only paddles emotions. But especially lately many alternative outlets devolve into a broken record repeating emotional parols like White Genocide, Rapefugees, etc. .... .
Ergo you cant really come from a high horse when discussing with someone that watches msm.
I don't try to come from a high horse at all. I just share information and poke at things where I can.
My main thing here is that if a person indicates they are done. Let them go. If you don't seem to have accomplished anything, you may not have appeared to, but later on it could actually matter to that person.
It is very rare that you'll change a mind right when you are talking to them. Especially if it is something important to them. They need time to go and process and think. The same is true for whatever they shared with you. You also need time to think and process.
So people that get frustrated because they don't think they are getting through to the person shouldn't worry about that. It is impossible to tell if you got through and it'll just take awhile to soak in or not.
I read a lot of @tarazkp's works. I'll check to see if that is one I miss or not.
Yet I was not really talking about seriousness in this article, more the idea that you can't really tell if what you said mattered or not. The person you spoke to may not even know yet.
Taraz talks about general discussion culture as well. He does not spend too much time on the humor part.
"if they are not willing to take the position that they may be wrong, in my opinion, they are not serious at all." is a quote from his article that seems pretty fitting to your topic ;)
Yeah... I replied and resteemed. I hadn't seen that article so thanks for pointing it out.
We must have been drinking the same kool aid today or something.
I'll talk to someone that is in the position that they can't be wrong. I've many times seen these people regurgitating MY IDEAS they wouldn't listen to as their own days, weeks, or months later. It has happened to me many times.
It was usually in big corporate work environments. I often had management when I was a peon steal my ideas and pass them off as their own too. My coworkers would point it out. "Hey, Deva isn't that what you were talking about the other day and now he's treating it like it is his idea."
I've had some VERY stubborn people that disagreed with me strongly within a year or so of some discussion with me that they appeared to in no way believe me, I'd hear them speaking with someone else having a discussion and be pushing the idea I tried to get them to understand.
I just inwardly smile.
I am sure I have also understood things people were talking to me about much later and not even remembered where it came from. So I don't care that people remember me talking to them about things.
I just like to learn new things, and I also like to share ideas with people.
I think that is the down side of critical thinking. You wont accept an idea unless you consider it your own. This is true for myself as well. Most of the times when "I agree!", I do so because I already had similar thoughts on my own.
If I get presented with a completely new idea or an idea that does not fit into my narrative, I think the best you could get out of me would be "interesting, I will look more into it"
I don't do this because I think it is a great way to debate, it is not. I am just trying to observe my own tendencies so I am aware of them.
Yeah sometimes ideas take awhile to make sense. Our minds are pretty rigid things, so making big changes takes a bit.
Totally! That not only shows that you're out of arguments, but it shows that you lack emotional restrain as you could simply go silent but decided to attack.
Very Good that you achieved 1000 followers. It is not Possible to satisfy everybody neither that everybody like you every time but you have respect your followers because yours followers are the first to upvoted and comment your post and encouraged you to write more for them.
Discussions are for learning, debates are for scoring points and convincing an audience, trollers are there to be ignored.
I like people playing devil's advocate, though.
@dwinblood, I think trolling has been misunderstood since it exploded as a popular internet meme. Many people forget to correlate it to the act of trolling in water. That individual is looking to catch people with hooks, and suddenly they find themselves in a no-win conversation. I like how you gave the idea of suddenly agreeing with an individual to see if they flip their argument. I would expand to say if they start nit-picking your agreement in some way.
I think the conversations we have had were civil, and I know we did not agree about everything. The best part was that you did not take it as a personal offense when we did not agree. You understood that my view of a situation might not align with yours, and that did not mean that I was in any way attacking you. Disagreement challenges you to defend your viewpoint. I see it as refining. There have been plenty of times where someone asked something from a different angle, and I had to think about it before deciding how to respond. That is great in my opinion! I would dislike to surround myself with only people who share my opinions. Plus, that makes me think of Lemmings.
The problem is, you can't just "suddenly agree" with someone by force of will. You can only pretend to agree with them. This is dishonest and can actually lead to trouble later on.
The truth of the matter is when we speak with people we disagree with we likely will not completely flip to full on agreement with the other person. That actually shouldn't be the goal. It does happen but I think it is very rare, in fact it is almost freakish. Instead, both sides should hopefully leave with new perspectives, ideas, and ways of thinking that they didn't have prior to the exchange. That is a no losers type of discussion to me. Both sides came out of that as winners.
I also am not a fan of the world being pushed into the winners and losers false dichotomy. That is something I write about every so often. :)
I was using the internet before the term troll existed. We called them Flamers back then. We called a lot of their interactions as flame wars. Somewhere along the way they became called trolls instead. Same activity, different label.
Hey @dwinblood, I totally agree with you about disagreement. Some of my best content ideas have come from either disagreements that I've had or people explaining things that I didn't understand! When you censor people, you also limit what you learn and how you grow as a person. Thanks for sharing your ideas!