All my effort will be lost in time, like tears in rain...
Edit: it wasn't really an effort post just a retort that I thought hit the nail on the head. Sometimes I miss the early federation days, but only sometimes
That's my rule for arguing - if it's so far down a comment chain or too old for normal people to see it, there's no point in arguing because no one has ever changed their mind because someone yelled at them on the internet. We're all just random encounters in the posting RPG
I actually have, tbh. I didn't go from lib to tankie from a single argument but I've definitely had discussions where the other person hit me with evidence and good reasoning so I had no choice but to change my mind.
There are mitigating factors that can humanize us to each other- when we recognize a username, for example, or when the community itself is one that we trust and have a parasocial relationship with. But when going into a general news thread on, like, the .world instance and trying to argue with randos it will be impossible to ever change their mind, except maybe in extremely rare circumstances that aren't worth the effort.
