Permanently Deleted
Debate broing isn't just debating or using debate language though, it's using debate language in bad faith to ignore that they've already had their points debunked but they keep ignoring that and continue to espouse bigotry under the guise of rational debate. At that point, they're not actually interested in real debate and are just trying to evangelize pseudoscience in a logical looking skin.
It's Jordan Peterson pretending to be a rational objectivist while he talks about Chaos Dragons.
You do make some good points, though.
If the term "debate bro" was actually only used in this context, I could vibe with it. But I've seen it used in situations where it isnt appropriate quiet frequently. I think the site's hostility to it can be quiet problematic for ND users. I know its made me afraid of being banned when I'm just discussing a topic quiet a few times.
I think that people in general and especially online tend to get tangled up between form and function, and in doing so they sort of efface the meaning of a term and it starts to take on the shape of a floating signifier as this process progresses. I'll explain this in a simple way at the end if it's difficult for anyone to grasp.
Originally the term debatebro was used as shorthand to describe a loose collection of traits and behaviours in a pejorative way. That's from the perspective of function.
The form that this takes is using key words like premise, logical conclusion, strawman, fallacy etc. and maybe even structuring arguments in the shape of individual propositions divided by bullet points or indented numbers.
So when people aren't looking at the function but simply the superficial form, they'll accuse people of being debatebros for saying something like "Your argument is not cogent" because that sounds like something a debatebro would say but it ignores the purpose of such a statement and what it's being used in service of. (Again, I always seem to go back to this same issue of liberalism; assessing things as static, atomised phenomena that exist independent of context or history and without relations to anything else.)
The problem therein is that people have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that superficially resembles debatebroism and they'll make unfounded accusations based on vibes alone.
To make the form/function thing a bit clearer, there's an interesting phenomenon in the terminally online anti-communist left debatebro spheres - there's a trend of saying that the content creator Hakim has a rantsona.
When you assess this from the perspectives of form vs function, it's pretty clear that there's a massive leap being made when people make that accusation.
A rantsona is the use of an avatar as a representative of a person's emotional responses and reactions. The rantsona concept is closely tied to reaction content, edgelordism, and quite literally just ranting about culture wars and similar things. They're also known for being contrarian and having hot takes.
When we look at the functional aspects of a rantsona and compare that to Hakim, who has a profile picture of a stylised Lenin, it doesn't stack up. He doesn't use the pfp as an avatar, he doesn't show emotional reactions to things via an avatar, and he doesn't do reaction content (making the important distinction between that and response content here) and he doesn't really do rants but instead is overwhelmingly a video essayist.
Basically what the rantsona accusation amounts to is "Hakim uses a pfp that is an image of a person, rantsonas use the image of a person, therefore Hakim is using a rantsona."
This, in effect, reduces the fairly complex concept of a rantsona down to one simple element - a profile picture - and in doing so it expands the definition or dilutes it to the point that it could be applied to virtually any situation. The same can be said of how the term debatebro gets misapplied.
ironically i found the whole rantsona thing far less understandable than the first half.
Oh hey this was me. Yeah I'm glad you made a thread about it. I've been meaning to do so myself but then just randomly brought it up in the middle of another argument because I was frusterated. I think its an important topic.
Id like to point out (especially now that I've slept a wave of PTSD off, something bad happened to me in meatspace recently and my patience is much thinner than usual) that I really do like your posts and I'm sorry things got heated there. I've been getting spammed by transphobic trolls (mysteriously after making that defed post with not super high engagement) and concern trolls (three of which dmd me), all of whom were obviously men, that's the context of the discussion for better or worse.
I like your posts too. Im sorry youre dealing with that. We are cool.
good post
People become hostile when you dare suggest that someone could have been “making annoying noises” as a form of stimming.
that's a competing accessibility need and needs to be handled differently. the "annoying noises" being active seems to put the onus on that person finding a different way or place to stim rather than presumably multiple people being distressed or triggered by the noise needing to leave or block our hearing entirely.
i agree, i hate the way debate bro is used. especially when someone starts the argument in the first place.
There is a difference in that you have to have engagement with core(s) of the argument.
There is bad faith engagement (which is fun sometimes), there is ignoring some points to continue arguing (i.e. a&&b&&c=>x vs a||b||c=>x logic), and there is an honest curiosity. I usually just disengage if i think "i can't reach these kids", which can apply to all of those situations. I dont think calling people names is useful
