A long time ago in a world without technology people argued face to face, and even sometimes in order to find out the truth. But as in all things technology means improvement. I have carefully researched literally thousands of social media debates and have refined them to offer you, dear reader, this authoritative list of most effective social media debate tactics. Your homework is to find the one or more of these that you find most to your liking and go out there and practice for a few hours today while you should be doing something useful for the human race.
1. Boast of credentials
People may have wandered into your debate feed through a friend of a friend. They may not have read your extensive bio that you posted. So be sure everyone knows the letters that appear after your name and where you went to school and who you know and what you know, which is more than they do. They must deal with you not based on how you argue the present point, but based on the intimidation of your credentials. Look at you! You got some degrees and awards for studying some things and they should know who they are dealing with!
2. Be insufferably smug, pedantic, condescending
Connected to one, it is important that people not only know who you are, but also who they are in comparison, which is nobody really. It may be true that anyone can argue well and intelligently press for good reasoning, but that is only because said nobody has forgotten who they are. You must remind them by saying things like, "have you even researched this?" or "I don't have time to educate everyone on every point," or "do you know doctor so and so?" and the like. Put them outside the ilk of those who should even be talking about the subject. Use phrases like, "actually, that is not what the research claims," or "let me help you on that..." or "anyone who knows anything knows..." Drop "obviously" and "clearly" and "scholarly consensus" a lot. No arguments are necessary when scholars like you think things are obvious and have already moved on from the discussion.
Show false concern. Say things like, "that argument is below you," or "I was hoping for better from you." Again, the point here is to set up the divide and not to close it through genial argument. You want to win and not persuade.
3. Take on your token opposition in the echo chamber of your thousand clone-minded followers
Since no doubt you have carefully winnowed your followers to mostly those who agree with you, be sure to pounce on the token opposition in such a way as to grand-stand for your many loyal followers. They will crush him or her under the weight of their likes and emoji's directed at your total ownage of him or her.
4. Don’t take on true opposition scholars
Show your chops as a thinker by never or rarely taking on opposition scholars. Your social media feed is not for that anyway. It may be true that you have never really seriously considered the opposition scholarship or never debated someone who could really beat you, but nobody is going to know that on social media. This is a place for appearances, and the person who looks impressive probably is.
5. Link long articles from scholars who might as well do your arguing for you
Now, as I said, sometimes these nobodies can get lucky and score with a question here and there. They are looking to you for your reasoning on some subject and you may not have thought about it in such a way as to be able to communicate persuasively to the masses, being elite and all, but you can always answer a hard question with a dizzying series of articles from various scholars from whom you have already stolen most of your ideas and arguments anyway. They won't read them, but you will have buried them under all the scholarship. Of course they can do the same thing to you, in which case you have not communicated with anyone and in fact have only shown each other that there is a place where a person can go find lots of articles on various subjects called "google," but they may not be as able or willing to put in the 30 seconds it takes to find an article and link it. Persistence is the key to victory.
6. Use a bevy of logical fallacies, but in a sophisticated way
People are not trained in logic, and the ones that have had a class or two have forgotten it. So few people can detect logical fallacies, so use them to your advantage. My favorites are the subtle ad hominem fallacies, the false analogies, the question begging. For example, you could say to a conservative who opposes gay marriage that he is "obviously hateful." Use well terms like "racist, misogynist, homophobe," etc. and combine this with appropriate emotionally gripping stories and outrage and you win without even having to argue a single point.
False analogies are your friends! Pepper in some Hitler analogies. The formula is always the same: Find some behavior that Hitler did that your opponent is doing, then suggest that if your opponent would do A of Hitler's behavior profile, then he or she will clearly also do B-Z.
"Hitler won the emotions of his audience. You are winning the emotions of your audience. What else like Hitler are you doing?" and the like. Just plug in the behavior you don't like about the oppositions political leaders or friends or their own behavior and find a way to connect it to Hitler as a way of suggesting that they will obviously eventually kill lots of people. It is important to appeal to Hitler because no one else can be considered evil in the secular universe.
7. Break people by the sheer power and depth of your verbosity
If the rest fails, then bore people to the point of wanting to kill themselves and always get in the last word. Draw the thing out as long as possible. It helps if you are a full time student or have lots of time on your hands, so perhaps pursue another degree to free up time in the middle of the day for your "research," which no doubt must include taking your ideas out to the plebeians on social media for their enrichment. Use long sentences, presumably like this one, and replete with a stultifying and superfluous vocabulary, subdivided by various commas, as though you were an eighteenth century British philosopher, so that, in the end, your opponents must abdicate to your clearly, obviously, superior use of the language, which also implies your superior understanding of the ideological terrain. Verbosity and elegant use of language translate to beauty; and beauty translates to truth. Thus all you need to do to win arguments is write well. Just look at Nietzsche or Kierkegaard or Voltaire or Marx. They all wrote well, and that is why they are all correct. Imagine what they could have done with social media.
