I second cousin_it here. If your goal is to persuade (and especially if you care about persuading third parties), then your methods may be counterproductive even if they seem more effective to you.
Thirded. At times such methods give people an excuse to use even worse arguments and engage in more detrimental social-political gambits than they would otherwise have gotten away with. Observers are hesitant to intervene to penalise bullshit when to do so will affiliate them with a low status display. The dykes that maintain the sanity water level are damaged. Even when others wish to intervene on the side of reason in such cases it is extremely hard work. You have to be ten times more careful, unambiguous and polite than normal in order to achieve the same effect.
It’s more complicated than “courtesy = status”. It’s easiest for me to observe status online, and it seems to me that I’ve seen more high status people who flame occasionally than those who never do.
Thirded. At times such methods give people an excuse to use even worse arguments and engage in more detrimental social-political gambits than they would otherwise have gotten away with. Observers are hesitant to intervene to penalise bullshit when to do so will affiliate them with a low status display. The dykes that maintain the sanity water level are damaged. Even when others wish to intervene on the side of reason in such cases it is extremely hard work. You have to be ten times more careful, unambiguous and polite than normal in order to achieve the same effect.
It’s more complicated than “courtesy = status”. It’s easiest for me to observe status online, and it seems to me that I’ve seen more high status people who flame occasionally than those who never do.
I agree, and my observations match yours.