Ah well - I came to realise the futile nature of debating on the Internet some time ago already. Some differences in opinion are fundamental and somehow people even seem to be arguing the notion of agreeing to disagree nowadays. And seriously, isn't anyone of you, like,
tired of rehashing the same arguments to the same people who respond in the same manner for months and months in a row?
I mostly stick to posting the odd news article and some light-hearted comments nowadays, or make an attempt to pull a derailed discussion back on-topic; as somehow practically any new discussion subject - whether it's about the EU voting results or accute marshmellow shortages in New Hampshire - eventually derails into yet another Middle Eastern related debate. It's not as if 90% of the topics weren't about that already anyway, or something.
The few times I'm actually goaded into a debate and people start pulling the same old dirty tricks again - pulling words out of context, twisting them into a completely different perspective, nitpicking semantics, resulting in people basically telling
me what I actually meant with my post, what stereotype fits my world view the best, and what kind of person I really am, up to and including the interesting debate on what colour socks I wear - I simply quit the debate altogether. Don't care if it's "childish" or "the easy way out", but I'm done playing that game.
I used to get incredibly riled up whenever someone managed to read deeply rooted US-hate into fairly harmless and light-hearted comments, and that did reflect on my posting style on occasion - now I simply just don't care anymore, or at least pretend not to care. I'm not posting here to butt heads, I'm here to have fun and try (emphasise 'try'
) to add something valuable to a discussion - whether it's taking place in Current Events or in General Conversation. [img]smile.gif[/img]
[ 06-18-2004, 03:49 PM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]