I resurrected this solely because I wanted to continue a conversation with @[email protected] because I thought they were making a pretty fair argument.

It seems to me that it wasn’t so much that they “snapped out of it” as that they were trying to argue in good faith from the start, and got sidetracked because of your antics.

The alt-right playbook is good stuff for dealing with alt-right people or those who employ similar tactics, but if you resort to that right off the bat without justification, then you’re the one who’s out of line.

Yeah. Since I’ve been trying not to do this, I’ve caught myself a few of times typing something super-sarcastic, deleted it, and written just a straight explanation of what I’m trying to say, and it always works better. If the person was bad-faith, then it becomes a little more clear who’s the bad party, instead of it just being a big snark fight. If they weren’t (which has also happened), it saves a whole bunch of grief and hostility on all sides. I was really surprised how well it worked. Maybe that sounds stupid but it was a big revelation to me.

You should use a carrot and stick approach. If someone is sticking to the facts, you stick with the facts, if they start doing weird psychological bullshit, then you deploy countermeasures to force them back to the facts.

This is where it gets to where I have to make a conscious effort. To me, the original message I was replying to was in no way sticking to the facts. It was “factual” in the sense of, no personal attacks or anything, but it was so far removed from a good-faith argument that I just couldn’t take it seriously as something someone actually believes. Like:

• Point: Ukraine is mad about the bullshit peace agreement! (Okay, sure, seems pretty reasonable.)
• Counterpoint: Let’s bring Kamala Harris into it! Harris would obviously have pressured them with the same bullshit peace agreement! Trump isn’t exceptionally dangerous for Ukraine and its aid! The absolutely shocking-to-the-world-at-the-time resistance and counteroffensive Ukraine has been able to do against a 20-times-larger opponent is proof that the West isn’t helping, and therefore Trump is the same as Harris! The real answer is that Ukraine should have nukes!

I’m exaggerating, but only a little.

I actually do think you’re right and I should have taken the snark out. But not because the original argument was something that really needed to be dealt with on the merits, although I did try to make a point to address the merits also instead of just jeering.