Comment by ycombinete
7 years ago
It’s for this reason that, when I was still on Facebook, I would take arguments to private messages when they were either getting heated, or embarrassing for my counterpart. It would immediately change the tone of the interaction, as it was no longer a performance, it was a discussion.
The problem with Facebook and other shithole social media is that these networks promote Pavlov strategy which is actually really awful for any kind of discussion. Before the internet, using this strategy socially was called "gossip" and rightly recognized as damaging. It would be very interesting to see the effect of every post on Facebook having a big red banner above it that said, "THIS IS GOSSIP" (before the utility of that UI wore off like old school banner ads). People are incentivized to open with "exploitative" cheap shot comments in order to increase the largesse of their social signaling. This is why I flatly refuse to engage in certain kinds of "discussions" unless in a private group or chat or after limiting the audience of a post (and stating in the opening sentence that the audience is limited and therefore devaluing the post's capacity for exploitation by others). And we're back to the basic trust problem.