> I’ve have literally never once in my life ever written a comment as long as yours
I get this sort of reply almost every time I write a "divisive" comment.
I write a lot, I admit; but it doesn't take me particularly long to do so, and would take me a lot longer if I tried to edit it down.
Maybe all the words aren't necessary, but IMHO all the points I made were: anything I left out would be brought up as an easy rebuttal, and I don't want to spend hours going back and forth on "gotchas" that I could just head off at the pass.
People don't get mad at this communication style when I use it in a non-debate (e.g. "fun thing I learned") context. Why does it suddenly rile people up so much when it's used for debate?
(Is it because people generally expect textual debate to work like verbal debate — where rhetorical "interrupts" about a person not being immediately perfectly clear and precise the first time they make a point, are considered "invalidations" of that argument, even if the person wasn't done making the point? And once people are allowed to have an arbitrarily-long "turn", they can fully clarify their initially-messy points, so the people who ride on rhetorical "interrupts" have no ammunition left other than "that was too long"?)
I think the reason you repeat encounter the same reaction is because the length of a response is usually indicative of the persons underlying emotions/intent/excitement/etc
As an analogy, WRITING IN ALL CAPS, imparts yelling to the reader. Likewise, length imparts on to the reader as well. Long length can feel intense and over-zealous when it’s unnecessary, just as short lengths can feel glib.
Anyways, just a data point amongst many - hope it’s beneficial
I get this sort of reply almost every time I write a "divisive" comment.
I write a lot, I admit; but it doesn't take me particularly long to do so, and would take me a lot longer if I tried to edit it down.
Maybe all the words aren't necessary, but IMHO all the points I made were: anything I left out would be brought up as an easy rebuttal, and I don't want to spend hours going back and forth on "gotchas" that I could just head off at the pass.
People don't get mad at this communication style when I use it in a non-debate (e.g. "fun thing I learned") context. Why does it suddenly rile people up so much when it's used for debate?
(Is it because people generally expect textual debate to work like verbal debate — where rhetorical "interrupts" about a person not being immediately perfectly clear and precise the first time they make a point, are considered "invalidations" of that argument, even if the person wasn't done making the point? And once people are allowed to have an arbitrarily-long "turn", they can fully clarify their initially-messy points, so the people who ride on rhetorical "interrupts" have no ammunition left other than "that was too long"?)