Facebook: Field of Fights
Today, we are going to look at the comment thread from a Facebook post by Chris Blacker, a candidate running for the Corvallis School Board against incumbent Sami. This was posted to the “Corvallis Conversations” private Facebook group, which some of you may not be able to view, so I have provided the necessary screenshots. I chose this post because I will be voting in the upcoming election, and when I saw this post, I was actually kind of shocked people were upset about it. The original post wasn’t necessarily meant to spark argument, rather to be a statement. The Republican Party endorsed him without his consent, and he was seeking to separate himself from them. Considering the tension between the political parties in the United States, even a post like this, where the person says they are, “…not here to serve any party,” can spark an argument. Unfortunately, this is common on Facebook, where comment-warriors always manage to find something to disagree with. I cannot tell you how many Boomers I have seen in the comments or random marketing posts going back and forth over essentially nothing. Below is the argument we will be looking at, as well as using Campbell’s, “The Rhetorical Act,” to look at some aspects of the presentation of each argument.
The antagonizer, Chad, begins by appealing to proximity, or referring directly to his audience member, Chris, to draw his attention (Campbell, p.45). In a way, this type of language also worked to chastise his opponent like a child. Naturally, some people took his side while others took the other. However, a problem with his first comment are the obvious typos in the second sentence, and the unsupported claim of, “in this town, this pose just lost you the election!” How? He goes on to insult his opponent’s decision, calling him, “dumb,” and ends his comment with, “Damn,” and no punctuation. This is my first impression of him, and the unprofessionalism doesn’t make me trust his opinion. He then explains his feelings surrounding Chris’s post to Christopher. Wow, how many ‘C’ names can be in one comment thread? Christopher asked him the same thing I thought, how does this alienate him? Again, Chad begins with a typo and a phrase I am not totally sure the meaning of: “tribal crap!” Perhaps he is relating to party loyalty? The way he got this point across was definitely 1) unclear and 2) could be offensive. He goes on to lay out his points about how you don’t have to agree with everything a party does, citing that it won’t “accomplish anything.” Christopher and I both agree with this part of his argument, which he begins with to find common ground with the commenter (his audience), and then goes into what he disagrees with about it (Campbell, p.42). He pointed out what was wrong with Chad’s argument, using his own words against him as evidence. That, yes, the parties are really divided, and that is exactly why Chris needed to separate himself from them, especially in these times. Chad ultimately didn’t respond to Chris (the original poster) or Christopher again. I suspect he didn’t have much left to say to Chris, but to me, it seems as if he lost the “argument” with Christopher, who used his own conceptions of political parties to show him how his reasoning has holes. He also ending on a friendly note, “Keep fighting the good fight,” which worked to deescalate as well as present himself as level-headed when Chad’s reply was a bit aggressive.
I think Christopher showed us some effective ways we can argue more constructively online: ask questions in good faith, be open to agreeing with your opponent, identify common motivations between you, show you understood and listened to what they said, and finally, leave the conversation gracefully as to not diminish what you said. All of these will work to help facilitate conversation rather than comebacks.
Also, the recent rise of AI has been fascinating to watch with the majority of Facebook users being Boomers. Often they will get tricked, and comment on the photo or video as if it were real. Sometimes, people will get into fights about whether or not the post in question is real. It is hard to make an argument when there are two different realities, and one has to convince the other to first see reality before debating about the ethics of AI. There have been an increasing number of articles about it, including from the New York Times (which I didn’t include a link because you need a subscription, ugh, capitalism!), but here is another opinion from a free news source: Futurism
Works Cited
Campbell, K. K., Huxman, S. S., & Burkholder, T. A. (2014). The rhetorical act: Thinking, speaking,
and writing critically (5th ed.). Cengage Learning.
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