There’s nothing quite like reading through a good pissing thread on an adult webmaster message board. I’ve never been the board warrior type myself, but lurking around on nasty, insult-laden drama threads has long been a guilty pleasure of mine.Whether it gestates from a personal issue, a business dispute, or (often the most amusing) a political discussion, such threads are an enjoyable reminder that we operate in a business sphere like no other. (Can you imagine Steve Jobs calling Bill Gates a “fucktard?” I can, actually, and I’d love to see it happen…but I digress.)
Perhaps my favorite element of these online conflicts is the curious form of reasoning which prevails in the strange universe of webmaster argumentation – call it “Board Logic.”
Now let me be clear – there’s nothing worse than some party-pooper showing up and introducing actual logic into a board discussion. I don’t support that kind of behavior in any way. First off, where’s the fun in that? For my money, it’s much more diverting to observe allegedly grown men resorting to adolescent name-calling and personal attacks than it is to read along as they structure a cogent argument in support of their position. That sort of thing belongs on PBS not GFY.
Now Board Logic, on the other hand – that makes for some fine reading! To hell with propositions, suppositions, and inferences both deductive and inductive – don’t bog me down in all that mumbo jumbo. In Board Logic, we’re not so concerned about the content or factual basis of an argument; all that really matters is who wins.
Under the rules that govern Board Logic, unlike that “classical” Greek trash they taught you in that fancy school of yours, the actual ideas expressed in an argument are entirely irrelevant. All that really matters is who agrees or disagrees with you, how much money you make, and whether or not you’ve ever been “owned” before.
If you really want to win an argument on the boards, forget about citing sources and having both sides stipulate to certain agreed upon facts in advance of the debate – that’s a huge waste of time. Nobody reading the thread is going to check your facts anyway, so why bother to include any? Make up what you need as you go along, maybe link to the occasional Yahoo News article, fine, but let’s not get carried away here and start doing “research.”
At the core of Board Logic is the Discipline of Discrediting. That may sound complex, but it’s really just a simple step-by-step process. If you can follow the directions on a shampoo bottle, you can master the Discipline of Discrediting. Here’s how it works:
Step 1: State your opponent’s position in a comically oversimplified form that has little to do with their actual argument, but contains some of the same words they used in their argument. If your opponent (John Doe) says “I think the Gulf War was a mistake”, whatever he might say in support of that, you repeat their argument back as “John Doe thinks Osama Bin Laden should be in charge of the US, that Bush is the reincarnation of Hitler, and that the Gulf War was a mistake.”
See – isn’t it easier to refute that Bush is Hitler reborn than it is to address thorny and nuanced issues of foreign policy? Of course it is.
Step 2: Personally insult your opponent, repeatedly, and the more outrageous and potentially actionable your comments are, the better. While it will score some Board Debate Points to say “John Doe is a feeble-minded retard,” it scores a lot more points to say “John Doe of ‘John Doe Cash’ is a child-molesting, join-shaving, criminally insane, feeble-minded scam artist of a retard.”
Step 3: If applicable, point out anything and everything your opponent has ever posted that could be interpreted as contradicting what they are saying now. Unlike with so-called “formal logic,” points made in other discussions which have nothing whatsoever to do with the current debate are absolutely fair game in Board Logic.
Step 4: If Step 3 isn’t applicable – maybe your opponent is a newbie who has never posted a contradictory position before, for example – then it’s time to bring in the technique of Guilt-By-Association, or as Frank Zappa termed it, “Cocksucker-By-Proxy.”
Use of the Cocksucker-By-Proxy is very popular in political debates on the boards; say you can’t refute the factual basis of a point posted by a conservative, equate them to a known conservative public figure that can be refuted and ridiculed with ease, like Pat Robertson. Be sure to make it more insulting than a simple claim of association though – say something like “If you could remove your lips from Rush Limbaugh’s anus long enough to get a look at the world around you….” as a lead-in, for example. For arguing with liberals, simply replace Rush with Michael Moore, Bill Maher, or Al Franken. Once you have depicted someone as Anne Coulter’s love slave or Hillary Clinton’s personal muff groomer, you needn’t address any pesky merit that might be present in their underpinning argument.
Step 5: Declare victory.
It should be noted that the above steps don’t necessarily have to be taken in the order listed in order to succeed – in fact, many practitioners of Board Logic lead with Step 5, and simply repeat Step 2 ad infinitum in support of their claim of victory. Judging by the response on the boards, this two-step process is quite often sufficient.
Board Logic runs much deeper than just the Discipline of Discrediting, of course. Board Logic would be nowhere without the tried and true “Appeal to Authority” (for example, “The owner of Widget Cash is very smart and he agrees with me, therefore I’m right.”) Experienced users of Board Logic typically employ more advanced techniques such as “Quasi-Scientific Inquiry,” and “(Sort-of) Statistical Analysis.”
In the end, though, it’s not about the argument, it’s about the outcome; just remember that simple rule, and your next board battle is already halfway won.
