A conversation about online discourse.

 As I was reading the assigned novel, " Amusing Ourselves To Death", by Neil Postman, a specific section within I believe the third or fourth chapter was mentioning a debate between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas of 1858 known as the great debates.  A specific moment in the debate interested me when the crowd cheered for Douglas and he asked them to stay silent and hold of on any emotional reactions that would stop the debate.  the other factor that brought my interest is that the conversation itself lasted about 7 hours. Never have I heard of a political debate within recent memory that would last that long with either opponent being respectful or having a crowd cheering wildly. However, this does not mean debates have always been this way as there may have been instances of which such actions have occurred, so don't quote me as saying that's how it always was. 

    The point of the paragraph above is to transition into modern discourse which is mainly held through online forums and whatnot such as this blog page. As seen above discourse in the U.S. and European nations have changed very much within the last 100 plus years, but lets mainly focus on the U.S. for now. As I have been stuck in my house for the last six months or so I've mainly been listening to the news and talking with friends, but I've also been looking at social media apps such as reddit and sometimes instagram.  The common thing I saw between these sites was that the people either had no form of discussion or when they did acted as children. To further explain, when discussions took place on these sites a common thing I witnessed was the straw man argument. The straw man argument being when someone misinterprets or exaggerates a position and fights said position instead of having an actual debate. This is commonly seen in all of the political spectrum and is made worst by social media. The reason being that people are less likely to go to an area online where the opposition has made their community and have a debate causing the person to find a community with their own beliefs, and this eventually causes people to stay within their circle so when time comes up to debate the other side they just over exaggerate said opposition to then debate the straw man and accomplish nothing but raising their own ego. This accomplishes nothing and just causes even more miscommunication leading to greater conflict between people.  The other issue I've seen online when the straw man argument is being used or when there is a real argument is when people attack a persons background specifically being race, gender, or religion, and at times its been as petty as going to private school or just having a certain look.  I recently witnessed this when I was on reddit and looking at r/publicfreakouts; the specific video on hand was a stream of a youtuber known as Steven Crowder interviewing a man painting on a building an image of an unknown person and it resulting in the man screaming at Crowder and Crowder trying to call the owner about the man who was maybe vandalizing ( I don't know if he was I'm just saying what I saw ) and saying call the cops. The reason I'm mentioning this is because the video itself was being viewed by someone who was then put on the subreddit. What I mainly focused on was the comments, and never had I seen such heavy use a straw man before. At first they started to say why the disliked Crowder usually including some inappropriate language to go along with it and others just said nothing but an insult even over exaggerating some of his views. The strange thing I saw as going lower through the comments I found a comment that began to rag on Crowder for being home schooled and then making fun of home schooled kids essentially making them and making them into a straw man by sticking them into a category. This wasn't even the first case in another subreddit I found that many people had been put into a specific category with a black man being told by someone that he was white because of his beliefs. Now with this being said I understand I don't have the links at my disposal so everyone should take this with a grain of salt if they wish. All I wish to address with this is that discourse online looks like two kids insulting each other, even when I see two different people with contrasting points debating they usually insult themselves on the off chance.  Although this may be true there are on the off chance some debates of which both people are respectful to each other and sometimes come to a consensus. 

    With all this being said, social media discourse is extremely useless and usually leaves everyone even more frustrated, something different can be said when it comes to one on one discourse. The reason being that online people can say whatever they want because they are protected by that shield that is the internet and will most likely not be in contact with that person ever again.  However, a different thing can be said when it comes to public discourse in person. An example of this would yet again involve Crowder, specifically Crowder's change my mind segment. Now believe what you want about the man himself, but what I'm specifically trying to talk about is the debates. In the debates everyone is usually calm with some exceptions being made for both sides seeing as how humans aren't perfect and can sometimes break. Usually during these conversations people are usually calm and collected with little name hurling being tossed around. The reason being that if they do yell or constantly insult the other person that then people will see the person as rude and strange. It may also be the fact that people are just less confident in person when people have seen their face or it could be something else; I'm not really sure. 

    All this being said this is just a conversation I wanted to bring up so take of it what you want. As a last note what are your points of views on modern discourse? What would you add to this post? Do you agree or disagree?