How to lose an argument (dissection of some fun with YouTube comments)

I never post here enough, so here's something a little different. Last week, I had an interaction in a YouTube video comment section that was unremarkable, but it left me thinking, "I should throw that on my blog as an example of how to lose an argument." Well, I didn't do that right away, but it's been less than a week and I can still find the stupid thing, so let's go for it.

First, some context. For the past few years, I've been involved and invested in the unofficial EDH or "Commander" format of Magic: the Gathering. I'd played it off and on since about 2009, but shifted a lot of my focus to it around 2017. Partway into last year, my local game store started a weekly Commander League and I brought a new deck to almost every meetup, for a total of 41 appearances in 2019. I'd been planning to beat that in 2020, but some kind of pandemic got in the way. However, I've still been playing a lot of Commander and spending a lot of time on Commander-related stuff. Earlier this month, Wizards of the Coast sold a controversial product aimed at selling mostly mediocre cards, themed around a television show (The Walking Dead), to Commander players for an exorbitant price. Although EDH is technically supposed to be an unofficial format, regulated by a "Rules Committee" that doesn't answer to Wizards of the Coast, there's a lot of money in the format. Wizards of the Coast made an exceedingly lousy product marketed blatantly to EDH players, propelled by fear of missing out. The response from the community has been, almost universally, that this product is bad. People hate it. And a lot of them went to the Rules Committee seeking intervention. This was a doomed endeavor: the Rules Committee is rather toothless and had never taken a stand against Wizards of the Coast before, nor could they really be expected to.

All of this led to a cascade of developments an internet drama, which I took some interest in. There's a popular YouTube channel called "The Command Zone" and it seems that the viewers of this channel solicited commentary on these current events. I don't know a lot about this channel and it's not one I follow closely, but I've watched some of their content before, with mixed reactions. I knew though, that since one of the people involved is on the "Commander Advisory Group" affiliated with the Rules Committee, that the commentary in the video would be about as toothless as what the Rules Committee put out. Also, the most popular content by these guys is sponsored by Wizards of the Coast. And on top of all that, pretty much everything about this channel, for as long as I've been aware of them, has been sponsored by Ultra Pro, which itself is massively entrenched with Wizards of the Coast. This isn't a criticism of "The Command Zone." I'm just being realistic. I knew right away that these guys couldn't very well throw away their business connections for the sake of taking a stand against WotC's latest cash-grab. It would be silly to even ask them to do that. YouTube people with nothing to lose called this bullshit out for what it was. Professionals who rely on their relationship with the company that made the bad product didn't dare. Not terribly shocking. But I watched the video anyway.

You can see the video for yourself here, if you want to. It's long. They like to make long videos. Anyway, I don't think that they said much of interest one way or another, and there weren't really any surprises. One thing that I did find pathetic was the deflection of blame away from WotC and toward random strangers on the internet. These guys brushed off the issues that the community had complained about and insisted that the real problem was how rude some unspecified people in the community might have been in correspondence with the Rules Committee and with WotC. I bring this up not because it's interesting or surprising, but because it's what I found myself, indirectly, arguing with an idiot about. In order to change the subject away from the myriad issues with what WotC had done, the front-man for The Command Zone made the ludicrous comparison to ordering a cheeseburger at a restaurant and specifying that you don't want tomatoes on it, but the restaurant giving you tomatoes anyway. Unspecified criticism from presumably powerless individuals was then likened to "killing the chef" over tomatoes. This metaphor was pretty stupid and was rightfully called out in the comment section by numerous people before I even watched the video. So, well done there.

We're almost done with context, I promise. Someone in the comment section tried to turn the metaphor back on the creators of the video with this line...

"My friend's son is deathly allergic to tomatoes. So that burger analogy is perfect - just because it doesn't affect you that badly, doesn't mean it's not that important for others."

And that's where my interlocutor comes in with this statement.

Cool. It's still insane to go out and beat the cook to death

And yes, even if your kid has a severe allergy, it's not OK to beat a cook to death for a dangerous mistake. But no one did that. If we're holding true to an analogy here, what would have actually happened would have been more like if you saw the tomatoes, complained about the tomatoes, and then the restaurant ignored you and you ate the tomatoes anyway. I mean, that's not perfect, but it's an improvement. When bad analogies are used in a disingenuous manner, it gets my attention. So I chimed in.

Holy shit, did a WotC employee get beaten to death over this?

 

Just a nice, gentle prod at first to rein things in. Because if you're smart, you'll catch my drift: no one was actually beaten to death. That's not on the table. Stop comparing non-issues to life-or-death issues. It's bad and everyone knows it's bad. You've been called out on it. A savvy individual might be able to walk the statement back and redirect the conversation away from the notion that comparing alleged mean words on the internet with beating someone to death is inherently a pretty messed up thing to do. I didn't point it out explicitly here. Not yet. Because I was being nice. Alternatively, I was giving my interlocutor enough rope to hang himself or herself with. Anyway, this person was oblivious to my calculated use of tact and jumped right to.

 

Google "analogies"

 

At this point, I was mostly annoyed at the combination of the omission of terminal punctuation being combined with the nonstandard use of a company name as a verb. I got the point that this was supposed to be an imperative sentence. "I am instructing you to use the Google search engine on the word 'analogies' and to examine the search results." But I quickly brushed that off. My interlocutor was throwing out bait anyway. There wasn't an genuine impression that I didn't understand what an analogy was. The idea was that I'd get all huffy over being told to just Google it, that I'd been a dummy and failed to understand that something was an analogy.

 

When someone shows up to a discussion and immediately throws you a freebie, as I did, that says something about the person you're dealing with. If you pay attention, you can ascertain that it is a freebie and consider what this means and how to respond. But if you're intent on losing an argument, you could respond by trying an indirect insult in order to bait an aggressive response.

 

Since I was not, up to this point, sufficiently insulted, I kept on being charitable. I gave my interlocutor another chance to clarify things, to frame the issues in some desired context.

Exactly what thing is it you're saying is analogous to beating someone to death?

 

I don't find it appealing to go right for steel traps in discourse. What I've presented so far is an easily escapable trap. For instance, my interlocutor could have fallen back on the stereotype of internet drama to involve death threats. A lot of prominent YouTubers have complained about death threats. Now, no claims of death threats were even made in the video, nor did I see any in the surrounding context, but invoking the concept of the threat of death at least adds some element dire enough to potentially justify murder-themed analogies. That's one path out of my lazy trap. There are others. My interlocutor didn't immediately make the worst possible blunder, which would have been to try resorting to insults as bait again. But the response I got was still pretty bad, perhaps even worse than I'd been expecting.

 

Lawsuiting WotC. Demanding the RC of commander to ban those cards. The analogy is that it's an exagerated reaction to a wrong doing.

 

At this point, I learned that I was in an argument with the sort of person who uses "lawsuit" as a verb. Now, the good news for me here is that I have absolutely no compunctions toward the popular notion that "punching down" is bad. I'll punch as far down as I damn well please, and that's my business. However, I do have standards. The original line in the video might have been dissembling. But the person who regurgitated it here didn't appear to have the capacity for proper dissembling. So I felt obligated to be as fair as possible, even to err on the side of generosity a little bit. But it was also time to stop being all Socratic about this and to draw the line, to make it clear just what was being challenged. That way, when my interlocutor lost an argument, it would be over something I'd actually bothered to define.

Well I totally disagree with that. Saying words at people isn't analogous to killing them, and I'm comfortable calling such a comparison disingenuous.

I have no idea what lawsuit you're talking about, but lawsuits are also not really analogous to premeditated murder.

 

I've done two things at once with this response, because I think that's not too overwhelming for most people. I've made the point that the word "analogy" isn't some kind of linguistic catchall to make any statement right. Framing something as an analogy when the details are not analogous is, at best, confusing or, at worst, dishonest. While doing that, I've also seized control of the argument by challenging the fiction of a lawsuit. Not only was there no lawsuit involved with this issue, but no one else had even made the claim that there was. Instead of just calling out my interlocutor as a liar, I forced the issue to be about one thing and one thing only.

To this person's credit, splitting one argument (which you're losing) into multiple arguments can indeed be a way to avoid losing an argument. It was the first intelligent move I'd seen my interlocutor make, but it's also a tactic I'm well acquainted with. So I shut it down right away. Sometimes people who are losing arguments take a second bite at the tactic of forking the issue. In this case, at least my interlocutor had the sense to shift to another approach: reframing the argument to contend that I was obligated to defend a claim I'd never actually made.

yeah, the point of the analogy wasn't that saying words was as bad as killing. It is that there's such as thing as overreacting. Not that I care much, but to argue against that point you have to explain why it wasn't in fact an overreaction. Not explain why it's not like murder...

While putting your opponent in the position of defending a contention you've chosen yourself is a classic rhetorical trick, it was executed poorly here. My interlocutor has asserted that I have to explain why "it" wasn't an overreaction. What was "it"? In our case, some hypothetical alleged online criticism, exact nature unspecified. I'm keeping track. It's not my fault that someone else isn't. But I'd say that the way to lose an argument here is to try to befuddle someone without realizing that you haven't been paying attention yourself.

 

My next reply was rather blithe and I won't say that it was my best point in the exchange. I got hung up on this issue of overreaction being unspecified. Without paying much attention or trying to remain charitable, I quipped...

 

Comparing something someone said to murder isn't the same as pointing out that overreaction exists.

 

I could try to retroactively pretend that I was forcing the issue of this hypothetical "overreaction" being a vague fiction in the first place. After all, going from "someone somewhere overreacting" to "beat someone to death" is pretty absurd. But really, I was genuinely making a hasty response, rather than this being any sort of clever approach. And a smart person could have used that against me here. I realized this after a few minutes had passed. I thought maybe I'd opened myself up to a solid counterpoint. Maybe something about how if the overreaction hadn't been so severe and disproportionate, that it wouldn't have been brought up in such a manner to begin with, so its egregious nature ought to be taken for granted? I don't know. There is something of a weakness in the way I approached that comment.

 

There could have been clever ways to turn the tables on me at this point. But my interlocutor didn't seem to notice, instead making two crucial errors.

 

at this point you are just stating things that are wrong and giving no justification. So think whatever you want, I'm out of this conversation

 

The first blunder here is to trot out the "you're not justifying your claims" tactic against someone who isn't making any statement that would apply to. There are rhetorical tactics that can backfire when used on a clever person or one familiar with your tactics, but the tactic of asserting that your opponent needs receipts fails automatically and spectacularly against even a fool if there simply aren't any pertinent contentions for this tactic to stick to. So that's a surefire way to lose an argument.

 

The second blunder, not made directly with this comment but found in the followup, is declaring your exit without actually exiting. Never say, "I'm out of this conversation" if you're going to stay in the conversation. It's always bad for you.

 

I may not balk at punching down, but I'm also not one to beat a dead horse. I could basically say that I'd won at this point and I'd be right. But I had been accused of stating wrong things by my now-declared-absent interlocutor, and stating wrong things is something I take seriously, so I was compelled to ask...

 

What wrong thing did I say?

 

I didn't really expect an answer, and I didn't really get one. But there was a followup from the other person. I think that we were both typing at the same time, so to be fair, I assume that the next part wasn't in response to my question anyway, but in response to other things prior to my question. That's fine.

 

"Comparing something someone said to murder isn't the same as pointing out that overreaction exists" Comparing overreactions to murder is actually a very common trope.  

 

"My mom is gonna kill me for this. You will never find my body"

What does that expression means to you? It basically means that the person's mother is gonna overreact to whatever the person did. Almost never will it actually mean that a mother will kill their child

 

Seriously, if I have to explain this, then I see no point in continuing this conversation

 

It seems that my interlocutor gave the matter some more thought and came up with a tactic that might have been put to better use earlier in the argument. Still, credit is awarded for coming up with it eventually. There is a tenuous connection between the starting point and this other example of a phrase like "my mom is gonna kill me."

 

I was a bit annoyed by this tactic, not because it was difficult to see through or because it was brought out retroactively. Those I could forgive. What bugged me was that a normal and commonplace sort of hyperbole (the one about how "my mom is gonna kill me") was being used to dismiss a totally different instance of hyperbole. It's one thing to compare the prospect of someone allegedly flaming someone else online to beating someone to death in real life. But dismissing any criticism of that comparison by conflating it with "my mom is gonna kill me"? That pisses me off. So now I'm pissed off. And one way to lose an argument is to piss me off. So, having now been rankled, I did what I had to do: I used reason.

 

I agree that someone saying, "My mom is gonna kill me for this" is pretty common and well-understood. Saying something more like, "My mom beat the cook to death" is not. The former is an exaggeration of an expected future response from someone. Mom is going to be mad and the average listener would assume that a fatal outcome isn't sincerely anticipated here. But if the average listener heard, "And then my mom beat the cook to death" the conclusion would probably be the assumption that Mom is a murderer, and not that it was an exaggerated way of saying, "Mom sent the cook a harshly worded email."

 

I saw my reasoning as being unassailable. So I sat back and relished my victory. OK, not really. But I kinda anticipated that the next response would be to change the subject or try to bait me with an insult again. It's not like anyone would seriously dispute my conclusion that "My mom beat the cook to death" would be taken in a very different light from "My mom is gonna kill me." I mean, it's obvious that those two contexts aren't comparable and, oh, nevermind...

 

yeah, no. No one would assume that "and then my mom beat the cook to death" means anything different from "she harshly critiqued him/yelled/ etc." I don't know what kinds of groups you are hanging around, but they seem to be too literal.

 

Ask around and you will see that most people understand the meaning. Specially when listening to commentators, who runitely create new variations of old used expressions.

 

Even if you don't think it's a common use of the expression, it still is clear that's what the commentators meant. Thus, not interpreting their message as intended is using a strawman againt them

 

I guess another way to lose an argument is to hand your opponent victory by spouting blatant falsehoods and pretending that no one will notice.

 

Probably the main thing that inspired me to throw this exchange on my blog was my amusement on seeing that someone would concoct a new colloquial expression midway through an argument, then try to assert that anyone who isn't familiar with this totally legitimate colloquialism has just lived a cloistered life or something. It's a fascinatingly stupid technique, and I can only assume that it was meant to be a distraction, something so absurd I had to respond to it, which would shift the argument.

 

But the way to really, thoroughly lose an argument in this case is to forget what it was about in the first place. My interlocutor had started out stating that beating someone to death would be a disproportionate (insane) response to the hypothetical disregard of a dietary restriction. Because I took issue that that scenario being used as an analogy, the argument moved enough that he or she forgot where we'd started and had, in an attempt to throw me off, tried to pretend that "beating someone to death" just meant criticizing harshly, that it was hyperbole and I was taking it too literally. So I pointed that out.

 

I don't actually believe that "to beat someone to death" is a common colloquial expression meaning "to criticize harshly" and that I've just somehow missed out on that my entire life because of "groups I hang around with." I don't buy that for one second and I don't think that you seriously expect me to. But hypothetically, if that were the case, then what's the issue in your initial scenario? If the cook wasn't literally beaten to death, but was merely berated for making a dangerous error, then what's the problem? You said that it would be insane. Why? What's insane about that? 

 

I'd think that this was where it became a no-win scenario for this poor fool. Once I pointed out that the hastily concocted fiction of "beat to death" being a slang term for "harshly criticize" clashed with the original implications of it being "insane to go out and beat the cook to death" there was no longer any way to turn this around.

Of course, my interlocutor had to drag it on a little longer before giving up. So here came one last desperate Hail Mary of bullshit.

Boy, you keep saying things without providing the least bit of evidence. Do I really have to search for a few mainstream examples of people using "gutting someone" or "destroying" or "killing someone" to be the equivalent of harsh criticism?
"Jordan Peterson DESTROYS this student"
"Trump gets MURDERED on interview"

Anyway, the cook comparison went completely over your head so I guess I have to explain.
The whole point of the commentators is that the response to the Secret Lair by the community is exaggerated and destructive.
They don't state that the Secret Lair was right but that the response is too much.

To illustrate how there can be such a thing as Person A does wrong but Person B over punishes person A, they make the comparison to the murdered chef. Which is a pretty intuitive comparison to me, btw.

But apparently where you get confused is by replying "but we are not killing anyone" because apparently you don't get that the problem with the murdered chef scenario is that "murder is an absolutely over the top punishment for this crime" and not just "murder is wrong"

You might as well be replying "but Wotc is not a chef and I wouldn't take out my tomatoes"
It's a reply that just misses the point

 

Yikes. I already thought that the argument was unsalvageable, but this was like "Losing the Argument Madlibs."

• Insulting me hasn't baited me so far, but better go all Foghorn Leghorn and call me "Boy" just to maintain that air of condescension. ✓
• I'd pointed out that "beat to death" really isn't slang for any kind of verbal criticism. The "my mom is gonna kill me" comparison got quashed, but throw out more examples of things that aren't the phrase "beat to death" anyway. If one example isn't relevant, maybe three will be! ✓
• Change the subject. ✓
• Double down on the contention that I'm just too obtuse to get it. ✓
• After having accused me of employing a strawman, make up a fake argument and then attribute it to me. ✓

Not that I don't like to argue (clearly I do), but I'm not necessarily going to just get dragged into a rematch by someone who just got so decisively outclassed. It was the other person who made an assertion (X would be insane). I'm going to hold the argument to that. If there'd be an explicit concession of that point, then fine. But we're not just going to move on to unrelated topics until then.

If there's some claim I made that requires supporting evidence, please let me know. I'm not seeing any such claims.

Now, don't change the subject. No one said anything about "gutting" "destroying" or Donald Trump. Your exact words were "It's still insane to go out and beat the cook to death."

And I didn't say, "but we are not killing anyone." I don't know who "we" are supposed to be in this scenario. Nor did I say, "but WotC is not a chef." Don't put words in my mouth.

To reiterate, if "beat to death" is purportedly just an expression referring to to verbal criticism, then what's the problem? You said that it would be insane. And literally beating a chef to death over such an incident would be insane, I'd agree. But since you're now contending that "beat to death" doesn't mean "beat to death", what's the issue?

I was ready for more absurdity, for tripling down, for more accusations and insults. But my admonition actually worked. The other person actually addressed what I was saying, or tried to.

the issue is that the reaction to the secret lair is an overreaction.

If we'd already been discussing some actual example of someone's reaction to the underlying issue, then this could have been a potential way to bring the argument back around to that. The problem is that our argument had demonstrably started with a generic "it's insane to beat someone to death." There was no reaction to point to. So this was kind of a doomed comeback. For a given reaction someone else provided to this Secret Lair issue, I'd either agree that it's insane or I'd disagree. But there had never been a "given reaction" for us to argue about. So I asked the only question I could ask.

Whose reaction are you talking about?

The next response cracked me up and definitely made this whole exchange worth it all on its own.

watch the video again and pay attention please. I'm done with being trolled

To reiterate: we had not actually been discussing the video. We'd been discussing a comment someone else made, based on a line said in the video. Neither of had, at any point, addressed the video in our argument. So it's way too late for that little change-of-subject. But the really satisfying part was this enterprising individual protesting that I'm the one doing the trolling when this person invented a fake slang term and then tried to pretend I was obtuse for never having heard of it. Glorious.

I didn't really need to respond to such delightful self-destruction. But just to be thorough and get some closure, I did respond to the singular grain of pertinence in all this.

Your comment, which I was responding to, wasn't in the video. So why would I rewatch the video?

That was the last word, but hey, it was more than enough. I guess I love "punching down."