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A while ago, a group I was in decided to have a meetup on the subject of "Disagreeing Productively", and I volunteered to give a talk, saying that it would be based on what I learned relevant to having conversations on the Internet. One of the other people organizing this meetup immediately said, "Well, that's easy - never have an argument on the Internet."
It was a funny line and a funny anecdote, so the first index card in the stack of index cards I wrote my notes on just said doing better than "never have an argument on the Internet" as a rule, and I opened the talk by sharing the anecdote, reading out what I wrote on the card, and saying, "This is my goal for this talk."
I don't remember everything I said at that meetup - I was too busy talking, and too nervous to remember to record myself, and it wasn't scripted. Those index cards were cues for extemporizing, not slides to keep me on script. But I still have the stack of index cards and what I said was stuff I knew, so at the very least, I can go down that stack again and extemporize on the same subject, and even add some things I learned in the time since I did the talk. That's this post.
(Words in bold text - technically, strong emphasis text - appear at the beginning of each of the cut-tag sections below, if you're wondering how I'm dividing this up.)
( Context )
( Public vs. private disagreement )
( Some comments on actual arguments )
...that's all I got for now. I mean, maybe a link to How to be a fan of problematic things, because I've spent a lot of time in fandom spaces and I think that's a good bit of advice for fans, but that's about it. Comments section is down there if you want to comment - I'd love to have corrections and additions and "thank you, that was a good post"s.
