#dont get me wrong i used to get into internet slapfights all the time. i just choose not to anymore because it's miserable to do so!

[elysiuminfra]

i do this frequently and i feel like more people should engage with this. most of the time when i see an insightful or enraging post, i try to picture the human being behind it as they're typing that message. if it's particularly enraging, it's a good source of amusement to imagine someone drafting it for several minutes, and kind of lessens the blow and knee-jerk urge to respond. sometimes, though, it makes the post all the more baffling, imagining how someone else could put these words together. but i also think it would save a lot of people from wasting their time on useless arguments if they just pictured the human behind the keyboard. people forget, all the time, that they're speaking poorly to another human being with an internal life completely divorced from theirs. you could never get away with saying this to someone's face. the internet allows for facelessness, and very few consequences for being a massive asshole. some people speak to others in such a manner that - if offline, you'd get your shit bashed in.

sometimes i observe arguments, and think about just how much time is taken out of someone's day to dedicate to it. how much time is wasted arguing pointlessly because someone completely misinterpreted what someone said. most arguments i observe just do not need to happen, and occur because of poor reading comprehension, or someone's personal need to put other people down and "win" an argument. most of the time though when people are reading important posts in bad faith it is because of personal bigotry and their need to dehumanize the person on the other side. which is why i fully dedicate myself to blocking people that i don't want to argue with, because i really don't want to sink time into something i just don't care about, when i could be doing anything else.