RE: Something I'd really like people to understand... disagreement is good. Don't so quickly consider it trolling.
@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.