Online participation: naysayers and yesmen

The naysayer is a familiar genus, albeit one with a wide range of sub-species. They are often associated with a particular forum that they have pretty much made their home, a place without which their lives would cease to have meaning: somewhere that they can strut their stuff and confirm their identity.

Were we to look deeper into their existence we’d probably find that they are also active on other forums, and that their online behavior is mirrored in their private lives. They are often associated with a particular cause, which largely defines their being. Equally, they may become obsessed with a particular individual, seizing every opportunity to contradict them.

Self-styled skeptics, they like to think they apply critical thinking, unaware that this doesn’t simply mean criticizing everybody else. Critical thinking is not about negative projections or taking the opposite position to the rest of the world, nor is it about nitpicking; it is about remaining neutral and independent about one’s own views and opinions, as well as others’. Critical thinking is not a belief system: it can help assess the validity of beliefs, but is not one itself, it is more like a procedure.

Naysayers can always be relied on to say NO, and precisely that is what takes away any possible validity to their arguments. They are not generally classified as trolls unless they resort to insults, and many are careful to avoid personally offending others for fear of being lumbered with this sobriquet. That said, their modus operandi is identical to the troll’s. They are so predictable that anything of value they might have to offer is lost by the way they go about things.

It’s hard to know whether this negative approach, contradicting everything everybody else says, is sustainable in the long run. Having a different viewpoint, disagreeing, even vehemently, can be healthy. But disagreeing with everybody and every thing, as a point of principle, is quite simply stupid, a game that just wastes everybody’s time. When disagreement is not backed up by arguments, it is simply a weapon, and a blunt one at that, that leaves no room for debate.

Seemingly at the other extreme are the Yesmen. Criticizing everything, as opposed to applying critical thought is just as bad as following what certain people are saying as though their comments were some kind of religious dogma. For the Yesmen, it’s often not even necessary to read what their heroes have written.

In some ways, the isolating nature of the internet can lead us into discussions in which our role has been pre-assigned even before we start talking, whereby our experiences lead us to adopt a posture without question; positions that in a real conversation we would see as ridiculous and check ourselves, can end up being clung to in online discussions as though they were written in stone.

If you find yourself sounding like either a naysayer or a yesman with increasing frequency, then rethink your critical capacities. Rethink things, try to understand what the other person is saying, apply objective criticism, even try defending their arguments, putting yourself in their place. At the same time, if these ideas have become absolutes, and you find yourself associated with the same cause again and again, then make a change; apply some critical thinking to your self. In either case, it’s no longer about your position; you’ve gone wrong somewhere along the way.

(En español, aquí)