It’s already been mentioned that some people are putting on a show for an audience. There’s more to the social media metagame too. Many are simply trolls. Social media has gone a lot deeper than basic forum posting days.

Some commenters are setting up their own victory or confirmation bias. They post something incendiary which is an invitation for polar opposite replies so they can dump their prepared responses, which always sounds better than anyone who replies with a comment written off the cuff.

Sometimes they’re reposting a common variant of an (un)popular remark that more people than not will upvote/downvote or reply in agreeance/disagreeance with, thus proving a point to themselves (an audiences).

Of course there’s the ones who are flooding the zone with shit so they can shift the Overton Window.

I don’t know about you guys but the more I think about it the more social media seems like an actual asylum. There’s not an exchange of ideas like back in the older days of the internet. It’s more like the mentally unstable unhoused people who roam around cities arguing with themselves. Social media puts them all in a single room and let’s chaos ensue. All while the tech industry sells ads and subscriptions to view the pandemonium.

Why would I want to stop?

I just accept that I tried educating that person and if they refuse to learn that’s fine and I move on

Quite literally, you need to learn self-control, how to pick your fights, manage your emotions.

You really wanna let a bunch of random asshats on the internet live rent free in your head, dictate the emotional course of your day, your evening, your week?

This is where the ‘touch grass’ meme partially comes from.

Sometimes, you need to let go, walk away, pet a kitty, hug a dog, admire a tree… or more ideally, work on some hobby that you find fun and fulfilling, and is at least potentially ‘useful’ in some very broad kind of practical way.

Also, a lot of people are beyond wrong/misinformed; they’re actively committed to denying that they’re wrong, even after its been shown that they are wrong.

You can just block people who are unwilling to admit fault or learn.

Its doesn’t need to be your responsibility to personally deal with every dumb idiot asshole on the internet.

Depends on the scenario. Most often, I just mute the thread and try delete notification of that vary arguement because I know I am extremely reactive. If that person to me is really scummy, I tend to just blocked them and try move on the day. Life is too short to be hyperfocus on an arguement I doubt anybody would care in the long-term.

weed

I just deleted everything

I’m not exactly great at it myself… but my dad used to tell me a story from his job.

There was a guy that made some claims, another desperately trying to correct him and tell him he’s wrong. To no avail, afterwards, he turned to another person that had a doctorate in the very topic they were arguing about. And said “why didn’t you say anything!? You know he is wrong!”

To which the doctor replied “yeah, but it’s not my problem that he’s an idiot”

Like this.

An adage that i found helps: never argue with an idiot, because the best possible outcome is that you will win an argument against an idiot

To put it a slightly different way- think about what you’re doing and why. Will it achieve anything? Will anybody find it useful? Will it enrich your life? Or are you just chasing a cheap, hollow, short-lived dopamine hit?

Add to that the fact that nowadays there’s a reasonable chance that you’re interacting with a chatgpt prompt designed to farm engagement, and it should become relatively easy to have those “…what am i doing?” moments

step 1. understand that people are people

step 2. understand that other people have their own problems are often don’t have the time/energy to focus on the topic at hand

step 3. understand that you’re not going to help other people by hammering your argument into their head. instead the thing that helps more is to make a better quality of life for everyone, then they will have the time to actually listen to you and find a meaningful result.

It all depends on your motivation, but what I prefer to do is think about the reader. Imagine there’s some post and someone makes a comment and I know that the comment is wrong or misleading. So I might decide to reply. And my comment is there to help readers not be deceived by the previous comment.

Therefore, I don’t need to deal with any sub comments and I don’t need to keep following that thread. The most important thing was to have a rebuttal to the primary claim that was made and I already wrote that so my work is done. I find this to be an okay use of time, at least some of the time, because a lot of times the commenter that I’m replying to is someone that I just can’t reach. They might have some immovable position on a political issue or they could be religious or they could be argumentative or trolling. And I could go back and forth with them several times, but really nobody else would read our thread, so it would be a waste of time.

Of course that’s only one approach and it really depends on the types of comments and issues that you’re concerned with. But it’s one way to reduce stress and save you time.

But actually the big thing that helped me was sitting down and assessing why I wanted to correct this stuff. It never gave me any satisfaction, it never lead to anything I liked, and a good deal of it was likely venting trauma from being talked down to all my life. Once I put it together it just kind of stopped happening.

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For many people it’s the notification that is the biggest problem. That sound immediately sends the mind back to the anticipated argument and the physiological responses to conflict are already kicking in before you’ve even tilted the screen to read the notification.

If that describes you, here’s my advice:

• Type your comment, put your best rebuttal forward, click send. That’s your mic drop moment. Now never come back to it.
• Turn off notifications. If the thread has a link for turning them off, click that. If it doesn’t, turn off notifications for the entire app.
• That entire comment thread is now off limits, and it’s easier to police yourself now that the mind controlling powers of the notification have been dealt with.

While you’re at it, turn off notifications for a few more apps. Pretty much everyone needs to turn off a few more than they have and that shit disrupts your best thinking throughout the day. And if you still can’t exercise the discipline to say your piece and move on? That means you’re running out of excuses for telling yourself it isn’t an addiction, and you really should delete the account and the app.