The curse of debate-bro culture
A critique of debate as a bloodsport
Have you ever listened to an argument — perhaps it was generously titled a ‘debate’ by the participants — wherein each and every manoeuvre attempted by either of the participants amounted to little more than the attempt to assert one’s ego, show off one’s supposed knowledge and dominate the other in a flashy display of rhetorical proficiency? These are the debates to which we can barely listen for more than ten seconds without rolling our eyes and beginning to tune the combatants out, because this is precisely what they are: fighters, in the ring, trying to barbarically destroy the other person for personal glory and the vindication of a childish sort of rivalry founded on the belief in the superiority of oneself. It is, in many ways, rather pathetic to witness.
As someone who runs a large debating community on the famous (or infamous) social media platform Discord, I know all too well how easily otherwise fruitful discussions can descend into pedantic, childish nonsense that serves no purpose other than to embiggen the actors in the eyes of the audience and themselves — if the infantile posturing that these people engage in achieves even that much. Often, this is seen as a necessary evil, a trade-off which server owners feel obliged to make because drama is what generates activity, and activity is essential in maintaining the longevity of any discord server. If your server is inactive, people won’t stay. Luckily, my own server manages to maintain an impressive level of activity despite having a very healthy culture when it comes to debates, discussions and the people who like to be involved in them. Nameless Debates manages to distance itself from all other debate servers on discord, the vast majority of which ultimately prioritize activity and controversy over healthy and productive dialogue. This neglect of the norms of productive discourse, this utter disregard for the ethic of the dialogue, is what I am referring to under the title ‘debate-bro culture’, although it is equally well described as the bloodsports conception of debate.
The most obvious example of debate-bro culture can be found in a special kind of discord debating community — anime/fiction debating. Perhaps partly because of the average age of those who tend to engage in debates about such topics, and partly because of the degree to which such discussions are detached from pragmatic considerations about reality, a lot of counterproductive behaviour tends to manifest itself within these interactions which typically results in a lower quality of discussion. In a big way, these kinds of communities tend to endorse clout chasing strong-arm tactics more than they support the authentic engagement with the other which goes by the name of ‘dialectic’. These are people who are willing to engage openly in any number of fallacious arguments if it means coming across to the audience as more rhetorically dominant, and consequently they are the same people who will behave in an incredibly dishonest manner if it means maintaining the façade that a meaningful objection has not been made to their position. Often, they cannot answer this objection, hence their impressive display of mental gymnastics to avoid biting the bullet and admitting that they might have been wrong, or might have misspoken, or what have you.
Anything goes — Reputation and Performativity:
Fiction debating is an excellent case study for the kinds of techniques and behaviours which flourish in an environment where no holds are barred, where anything goes and whoever can bamboozle the audience with the most finesse basically takes the crown. By examining fiction debating at length, we hope to identify the issues in their most unambiguous form and to clarify them in relation to that obvious example so that we can get some idea of what is happening in much more sophisticated ways elsewhere in life. In these debates, which have little to no anchoring in reality, what matters is not the truth of the matter, but rather who can portray themselves as the most capable and in control during the discussion, and this is licensed in part by the fact that the topic of the conversation is already fictional. Consequently, to some degree there is no sin in distorting and contorting the canonical evidence in order to support your view, because ultimately the outcome of the debate only matters insofar as it serves to buttress your reputation within such a community: what harm is done if your ridiculous interpretation of fiction is entertained? There is no sin, in fact, because there is no real ‘truth’ with which to contend, only a canonical set of facts and the interpretation which we apply to them in order to yield our views. Yet these interpretations vary wildly based on the personalities of the people performing the analysis, and this is how we wind up with such vitriolic disputes about which character is the strongest in a fictional story.
An easy way to imagine the general content of these conversations is whose dad would beat up whose, except that the dads in question are the favourite anime characters of those who are participating in the debate. Individuals who engage within such communities tend to be positively ruthless in their efforts to dispatch their opponents and have practically no regard for substance, preferring superficial dominance of their interlocutor to genuine and productive discourse any day of the week. This is because the core motive and drive for the people who engage in these debates is to make themselves known, to garner reputation, and thereby to inflate and validate their ego. Debate is, in other words, a kind of glorified popularity contest to such people. Not only do they typically argue about why their favourite characters are the best, but they are also frequently engaged in related disputes about why everybody should agree with them that they’re the best debater alive — they debate, that is, how good they are at debating.
This self-image of theirs, through which they imagine themselves to be far better than they are, causes them to feel an inane desire to assert themselves and prove that they really are as great as they imagine with what they call ‘feats’. From individual feats (achievements or displays of power/proficiency/skill), such as debater A beating debater B, a fiction debater can engage in what is called ‘scaling’, where they infer that because A beat B, and B beat C, A is better than C. This results in an ever shifting ‘tier-list’ that ranks debaters above or below one another, a practice which originated in the fiction debating itself — participants would frequently be invited to construct an image showing how they thought each character in a particular universe stacked up against one another, and therefore which were the strongest, which were on a par with which, and which were the weakest.
This formalizes a notion we all share, namely that of a dominance hierarchy, and this particular context and environment somehow intensifies the competition to climb such a hierarchy because it is being made so explicit and raised up as a desirable goal for the majority of the highly thought of members of the community to think highly of you. Often, in order to get one of these highly ranked members to think highly of your degree of competence, you have to beat another person who is above your supposed level with a degree of brutality that leaves no question about who is better, and this results in a very problematic pattern in the debates which transpire within such spaces.
More specifically, what it causes is that individual members will attempt to set one another up for domination in the most cut-throat way possible, to try to trap the other into making statements that can then be torn apart (something they call getting premise locked), and to attempt at every opportunity to dominate him and to show that you are better, stronger and smarter in every way. In other words, it encourages a kind of brutalism, and ensures that those who are trying to climb the hierarchy will be as merciless as they need to be, because after all — if all that matters is climbing the pyramid, for you to go up is for someone else to go down, and there’s no point worrying about that. Just take them down any way that you can, and make sure that the audience knows you won: this is the imperative which rules in such spaces.
This means that there is a great deal of performativity, and of posing, in these kinds of communities, and to the degree that participants in fiction debates engage in philosophy at all, it is simply so that they can get a meaningless ‘amp’ for their bloodsports debating, which involves nothing more than collecting what could be thought of as rare yu-gi-oh cards, that are then deployed in the proverbial duel to convince the audience (and no doubt themselves) that they know what they’re talking about. In other words, it is the appearance of knowledge, the appearance of philosophical insight, which is the aim of such learning, because what matters in bloodsports debating is not what is true, but who can come across as more in control and who sounds more knowledgeable — there is little regard for the actual validity of the position, or of the arguments put forward to justify it. This is why participants in such spectacles will often employ their ‘philosophical knowledge’ in a way that actually makes little to no sense, and why they might identify a fallacy erroneously and then insist on that identification. It is the lack of due regard for the true nature of things — exemplified so perfectly in fiction debating — that causes these problematic behaviours, and many more besides them.
Sophistry and ‘IRL debating’:
A less obvious example of the same utter disregard for the truth in favour of mere reputation, and one which is actually a good deal more egregious, can be found among people who debate primarily about philosophical and political topics — something the fiction debaters call ‘IRL’ debating — yet who engage in the same performative, optics-oriented nonsense. The behaviour these individuals engage in fits the definition of sophistry to a tee, which is a term that originated with the Greeks — sophists were teachers of virtue in various subjects, and they asked for payment for their teachings. Plato famously opposed their proclivity to attempt to use rhetoric to make the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and to twist words this way and that until they yielded a favourable conclusion.
Plato perceived a sharp distinction and contrast between the linguistic operations of the sophists and those of philosophers, because of the divergent motivations and therefore the various ends to which the skills being developed were to be devoted. More specifically, the philosopher seeks always to cultivate and embody wisdom, as well as — in the platonic conception at least — the virtues of the Good, the Beautiful and the True. Sophists, on the other hand, are free to direct these skills with language towards more craven goals, such as the accumulation of personal prestige, power and fortune. Those who we call today ‘debate-bros’, especially those who engage regularly in the practice of bloodsports debating, are simply the modern iteration of the same sophists who were criticized by Plato and who have no doubt existed ever since, and very probably before then too. They are, no matter what time period they exist within, united in their lack of regard for ‘Truth’ and ‘Wisdom’ as such, preferring their benefits instead.
It is this same drive which animates and motivates sophists whether they inhabit an ‘IRL’ community or a fiction debating one — such individuals primarily care about reputation and its boons, and consequently tend to be incredibly performative and wilfully dishonest in their pursuit of said treasures. This is what I referred to earlier under the name of ‘clout chasing’; in a bloodsports debate, the goal is not to persuade your interlocutor, or even to persuade the audience, of one’s theoretical precepts, but rather the aim is simply to have the best optics and to score the most ‘points’ on the proverbial scorecard, which frequently involves making no concessions yourself (which supposedly count as a point against you) while trying to force your opponent to concede, through any means necessary. Of course, convincing certain feeble minded individuals, as if you were a Jedi waving your hand and saying “we are not the Jedi you are looking for”, is inevitable for any competent sophist — if competency is a quality a sophist can be rightly said to possess, that is. Nonetheless, the fact that fools fall in line when a bigger one makes his entrance is understandable; we should not infer from this, in any case, that there is anything truly persuasive about the arguments. It is but trickery.
It might be helpful, having now discussed the types of people who can be expected to engage in this kind of activity, to explore the characteristics this style of debating possesses, so that the reader may be able to verify his suspicions when he is in the midst of such a ‘discourse’. We now turn, therefore, to the notion of scoring points, and that of winning and losing, which are found not only in fiction and informal ‘IRL’ debating communities, but which are in fact central to many traditional conceptions and practices which might be called ‘formal debating’. In formal debating, there is often a nominated judge (or panel of judges) who evaluate the technical performance of each debater on grounds such as whether objections were addressed or left hanging, whether an argument had force given the relevant premises of the participant in question, and which debater showed their knowledge and proficiency on the topic most clearly. Little regard, however, is given to the truthfulness of the position, and indeed this question is to a large degree trivialized by the paradigm of debate which is being employed.
Point-scoring, winning and losing — the power of concession:
Let us address more directly this notion of point scoring: what constitutes, in this conception, scoring a point? On the one hand, you could put forward an argument which goes unaddressed or uncontended, while on the other you could convincingly refute the opponent’s argument, a phenomenon which is made all the more convincing when the opponent himself concedes on the point in question. It is this point, of concession as a point against an individual, that I wish to start with, because this seems to me not only to be obviously the wrong way to think about concession, but it also engenders a toxic environment for the debate right from the get-go. In order to explore this second point more thoroughly though, we will have to examine the concept of winning as a goal of debate, and losing as a measure of failure for the same; therefore, we will begin with the first point, namely that this conception of concession is misguided and leads to the opposite outcome to the one that is desired and for which it is employed. That outcome is, of course, to garner reputation by coming across as knowledgeable/in-control of the discussion. That is, the reason that one wants to ‘win’ is because winning is, as we explored before, the way to climb up the dominance hierarchy which matters so much to us.
It must be acknowledged first that too much concession on one’s initial position will inevitably result in a reduction in reputation rather than an increase in it, and therefore that the foregoing ideas have only a certain amount of applicability and utility for a clout-chaser if the position that they originally committed themselves to was deeply foolish. However, for the vast majority of cases, the position is not in fact indefensible, and it becomes a matter of refusing to concede any points which are central to your position, but being willing to concede on those which are not. This can be contrasted with the approach which refuses to concede insofar as is possible on any point whatsoever, because this would constitute a ‘point to the other team’, so to speak, on the scorecard which is being used to judge the outcome of the debate. Therefore for a bloodsports debater, the goal is ostensibly to force the opponent to concede on as many points as possible, while they themselves attempt to concede on as few points as possible.
Yet, in truth, this act of concession, far from the way it is construed in bloodsports communities, is actually a power move, because by conceding one is able to consolidate their focus on the core points — that is, the ones that really matter to the argument at hand. Seen in this light, concession is not only a sign of integrity, but it is a hallmark of productive discourse in which two people are able to come to a better understanding of one another’s positions, and where they may even be moved on their point of view. Conceding is the honest and noble thing to do when you have discovered that the idea to which you initially committed yourself was flawed in certain ways you had not foreseen, or in situations where you discover that the way you expressed yourself at first was inadequate to convey the meaning you had intended to communicate.
On the other hand, when conceding is seen as a negative, immediately we find ourselves ensnared in a quagmire where we do not know up from down, because even when one’s position is inherently flawed, one will not relinquish it or modify it in an honest acknowledgement of the objections. Consequently, we find that in debates where concession is unacceptable to the participants there is a much higher concentration of dishonest and honestly ridiculous tactics — every variety of mental gymnastics — in order that those involved might avoid, if only for the moment, the necessity of conceding and losing that ‘point’ which they cherish so dearly. Yet, the strange thing is that if they were not so desperately concerned with avoiding hypothetically losing points by way of the concession, it might become obvious that conceding is not only necessary, but it is intelligent. It is intelligent because by virtue of conceding, we show our audience that we are willing to admit we were wrong, which goes on to strengthen our credibility in the long run. They may make the superficial consideration that it was ill-advised of us to have committed ourselves to that particular formulation, but they will not be prejudiced against us or our view; to the contrary, they will regard it more reasonably.
This notion of the scorecard fits together neatly with the idea that the purpose of a debate is to win in the sense of rhetorical dominance over one’s interlocutor, which I see as setting up an incredibly toxic environment for the pursuit of any reasonable or productive discourse between proponents of different perspectives. It is incredibly hostile to such discourse precisely because it prioritizes winning, rather than a bridging of perspectives and a mutual comprehension of truth, let’s say. Not only this, but it also insists upon a winner and a loser, which inherently involves trying to ensure that the other is the one who ends up the loser. This I would contrast with a notion of debate as being focused around learning and growing, not only as individuals but as groups, which is an outcome that results in both participants being winners, rather than just one. Consequently it seems clear to me that, as I have always said, ‘the true goal of argument is not to triumph over your opponent, but rather to agree with him’.
To attempt to win (and thereby to attempt to cause the other to lose) is already to have forgotten the main purpose of argumentation, which is to articulate and thereby risk resolving those points on which we have disagreement; in other words, to attempt to persuade the other, and to allow ourselves to be persuaded also. When those who are participating in a debate bring notions of winning and losing to the fore, they corrupt the chances of a genuine dialogue between their respective viewpoints, because they will be willing to compromise on the productivity of the discourse if that is what is required to ensure that the audience knows they are winning. In contrast, a debate which arises between two individuals neither of whom project a frame of winning and losing has a much higher chance of facilitating authentic communication, because there is much less motivation to engage in performative nonsense in order to assert your dominance over the other. In short, trying to win sort of makes you less reasonable in dialogue.
Grandstanding, overtalking and ‘packing’:
Another common behaviour which helps to identify the curse of debate-bro culture manifested within the individual is the tendency to grandstand, i.e. to focus in on and emphasize, to great extent, some perceived mistake by the other. This is most obvious when someone continues to bring up a point which the other has already conceded, in order to try to gain maximum clout from that ‘W’, however it is also present in more subtle ways, such as when it appears as an obsessive focus on some small comment the other person made, some small mistake which, although it is not particularly pertinent to the overall argument, can be pounced on and used as an opportunity to tear the other person to shreds, so to speak. This might be thought of as pedantry, or splitting hairs, and if the one who is subjected to this behaviour fails to call it out in a sufficiently articulate manner, then it often has the effect which was intended, which is that the audience gets the idea that this really does mean something for the central argument, even if it has no relevance whatsoever. Therefore grandstanding is, in a manner of speaking, a kind of sleight of hand that is done with words, where the performance of acting as if the mistake is worth focusing on makes it seem bigger than it really is.
Where grandstanding involves blowing something out of proportion and acting like it is a bigger deal than it really is — making a mountain out of a molehill, as it were — overtalking involves blowing your volume way out of proportion to your opponent and interrupting them frequently so that they can barely finish a sentence, let alone lay out an argument. In order to overtalk someone effectively, you not only have to interrupt them almost at every conceivable opportunity, but you also have to ensure that you talk for as long as possible, taking up as much room in the conversation as you can get away with so that your opponent barely has room to breathe. Of course, such behaviour needs to be employed in moderation because in excess it will quickly get called out — what is critical for overtalking to succeed is that one maintains a superficial façade of civility, allowing the other to talk every now and then, so that the audience doesn’t get frustrated with how little give and take there is. A sophist cannot of course allow this lenience to get out of hand, and therefore it is important for effective overtalking that the sophist in question is able to identify genuine and valid opportunities to interrupt, which they can then transform into rhetorical dominance over the other.
Last but not least, we have the concept of ‘packing’. This is very likely not a term that many of my readers are familiar with, as it occurs primarily (perhaps exclusively) among the age-group that tends to inhabit fiction debating servers — 13–19 years old. Essentially what packing involves is persistent hot-micing and rapid-fire shit-talking where it becomes, quite literally, a battle of rhetorical dominance except that the prospect of persuasion has been completely replaced by that of a good performance. Curiously, it can be somewhat entertaining (when it’s not too toxic/obnoxious, that is) because you get to witness a unique level of focus and presence of mind, as each participant essentially takes the premise of a bloodsports debate to its ultimate and inevitable conclusion: taking in as little as possible of what the other person is saying and projecting as much as you can about how they’re beneath you. In some ways, the level of focus and single-mindedness that this task demands is impressive, yet one cannot help but feel as if all that effort and even potential talent is being totally wasted because of the goal for which it is being expended: trying to make yourself look as good as possible in comparison to your opponent, and to make them look as incompetent as you can.
All of these characteristics and more are the already-rotten fruit which grow on the parasitic creeper vine of debate-bro culture, and it should be clear by now why such an attitude towards dialectical engagement is counterproductive to say the least. And, as we observed earlier, many of these traits can be found within most formal conceptions of debate at high-schools and universities and so forth; the priority is winning, persuading your interlocutor or your audience is a secondary matter, and ‘truth’ is barely even on the agenda at all, except insofar as it is a means to the primary end, which is rhetorical domination. Might there be some other idea of debate to which we could turn, as a shining light in the profound darkness which now seems so pervasive and impenetrable?
A different way of debate — shining a light in the darkness:
Luckily, I have created a space in which the ethic of the dialogue rules supreme; it is the Discord server Nameless Debates II. Both myself and many other members of the community have invested an inordinate amount of time and energy into the space in order to ensure that the conversations which occur there are, more often than not, productive and constructive in nature. This means not only that we engage in conversations in an ethical manner ourselves, but also that this notion of an ethical way to engage in dialogue is enshrined as a core value of the space and is thereby impressed upon every member, new and old, who resides within the server’s confines. All of this becomes conglomerated into the culture of the space, which is sort of like the atmosphere of a party — you can tell pretty immediately whether you’re likely to have a good time or not just by taking in the aesthetic and general behaviour and thereby getting a sense of the vibe.
What, then, is this ‘ethic of the dialogue’ to which I am attributing the manifold successes of the ND community? It consists primarily of the twin virtues charity and sincerity, which are manifested through the five steps that I outline in my article on the matter. To summarize for those of you who do not have the patience to sit through another 20 minutes of reading, this approach to debate is a way of prioritizing successful communication between different perspectives and a mutual search for the Truth over the notions of ‘winning’, ‘losing’, and ‘point-scoring’. ND endorses a more philosophical conception of debate, which requires participants who wish to engage in the space to abandon their preconceptions of the other and deal directly with him and his real views.
A philosophical debate entails an attempt to understand the perspective of the other and to find some common ground from which to jointly reason about the difference of opinion in order to come to an understanding on the matter. In other words, it involves a dialectical process wherein debate only crops up with respect to specific points, which are then settled through concession or clarification, at which point the ‘debate’ frame vanishes and common ground is restored. Thus, the dialectic can go on. This, I think, is the most honourable way to engage in debate, and it certainly is the way which demands the most integrity from the participants. Due to the fact that the frame of debate is only instrumental and is therefore subordinated to the paradigm of a dialectic interchange between two different perspectives, it can be seen that the opportunity for authentic contact with the view of the other human being is altogether more likely in this context.
It is these moments of authentic contact which are the goal of the ethical mode of dialogue preferred by participants within ND, because it is in such moments that progress is made, that contradictions are identified and resolved, and that ideas are thereby developed. And, it should be noted, it is not just ideas which stand to benefit from the developmental process known as the dialectic, as a similar phenomenon manifests itself in relation to the philosophical and psychological maturity of the individual. In other words, we undergo important character development when we truly contend with the ideas of the other, as it forces us to question our own presuppositions and projections and to reconsider issues which we previously regarded as settled.
Nameless Debates constitutes a unique kind of online community, in that it attempts to rise above the melodramatic cult-of-personality-esque formation of cliques which plagues most online spaces intended for discourse and dialogue, and it succeeds — perhaps because in ND, who you are matters so much less than the quality of your ideas. This is why we remove the names of all participants from the recordings that we upload to the YouTube channel Nameless Debates Radio, opting instead to spotlight the topics which those individuals discussed during the conversation. We firmly believe that ideas stand and fall on their own merits, and consequently we strongly discourage the emphasis on ego which can be observed to occupy every other corner of the online debate sphere.
ND is an attempt to create a bastion of free thought and expression which serves as a marketplace of ideas rather than a battleground for their champions, and consequently our members are one and all individuals who were seeking this different way of debate like a moth seeks a light in the darkness — often without even knowing what they were looking for. Regardless, however, of if they knew beforehand, it is clear that once someone has spent a little bit of time within the space, its merits become obvious — some might say they shine like jewels under moonlight — and this is why the community is steadily growing, day after day, while so many other debate servers flounder and die, undergoing fracture after fracture because their culture cannot sustain itself. By preserving and maintaining a sacred space within which real conversations can happen, ND constitutes a counter-culture which is growing precisely because it is sorely needed in the domain of online discourse. Many people are deeply dissatisfied with the current status quo, and are seeking out a different way of debate just like us. Bloodsports debating might be a fun way for teenage boys to entertain themselves, but it strikes most sensible adults as a consummate waste of time. Perhaps, however, debate itself can be salvaged.
The popularity of a space like ND is a living testament to the dissatisfaction that exists within our collective consciousness about the current state of debate culture, and it is evidence that the need for a higher form of dialogue is one which is shared by us all. If this analysis of the problem seems to you to be correct, and if the solution proposed resonates with you, I encourage you to check out this promotional piece and use the link at the bottom to join the community so you can make up your own mind about it!
x
P.S. On the caricatures characteristic of the othering of the ‘opposition’: Time to Duel!
The analogy I mentioned before, of those who collect philosophical terminology and knowledge simply in order to pull it out during one of these duels and benefit from your rare and powerful ‘card’ is not mine, but was inspired by someone I met on ND who used the analogy. However, I have seized upon it, and have started developing yet another unique feature for ND — a series of custom Yu-Gi-Oh cards, 40 in total, which depict various underhanded manoeuvres and fallacies that debate-bros tend to employ in order to be successful in their art. These are available as stickers (large emojis) on ND for any member to use, although only about half of them have been developed and uploaded to the server thus far. If you like this idea and would like to see the results of my efforts (I am terrible at drawing), then that’s just another reason for you to follow the link above and come check out the space!
Thanks for reading my analysis of debate-bro culture, I hope you enjoyed my perspective and I look forward to reading yours down in the comments below :)
