Online discussions

[andrewducker]

Chatting to Julie last night about my post yesterday (where she moved part of it to email, and then to face to face discussion) - she said she finds it hard to deal with my online postings because they come across as statements of fact, rather than my opinion.

To which my rather flabbergasted response was that _of course_ they were statements of opinion - what else _could_ they be?  I take everything I read as a statement of opinion.  If it's on my journal it's my opinion, my latest working hypothesis, my guess at what's most likely, or the latest conundrum that's going through my head.

I don't post anything on my journal that I'm not happy to have argued with - and it delights me when peope tell me I'm wrong and then back it up with something that makes me think about it.  I won't hesitate to point out problems in other people's arguments, and I'm glad there are people out there that won't hesitate to point out holes in mine.

And if it helps, next time you're reading, take a bunch of these and sprinkle them over everything I say.

Comments

[andrewducker]

I know I come across differently in person - because I have a large grin on my face and am clearly interested in the other person's point of view. It just doesn't come across that way online.

Still trying to work out how to make it do so more.

[kashandara.livejournal.com]

Surely that's the problem with 90% of online communications though. Until tech develops some sort of plug in that gives us direct access to the emotions being felt by the posted at the time of posting of course...

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

I think the "want to duck" thing comes from: if someone said that in person and unsmiling, they would be opinionated in a way that made me feel that any argument might lead to bad consequences. So, yeah, until knowing you well enough to know that the smile should be taken as default, I would choose not to argue, but rather to walk away. Unless I was in a fighting mood. So, what's the text mark to distinguish between psycho and wind-up merchant?

[andrewducker]

A smiley?

I think a lot of it comes from knowing the person you're arguing with. On a few occasions someone's come back at me with something that felt very argumentative, and I've gone and skimmed their journal to see if they were the kind of person I wanted to argue with.