next_to_normal | Thinking about arguing (Reply)

My sleep schedule is still pretty out of whack after almost two weeks off from work, so I haven't quite managed to fall asleep at a reasonable time or adjusted to getting up early again. This is not aided by the fact that I was up until 2am reading The Hunger Games last night. (In my defense, it's about a week overdue at the library, so really, it's in everyone's best interest for me to finish it as soon as possible.)

That is to say, this is perhaps not the best time to be attempting to construct logical meta, but what can I say, I didn't have a book to read on the bus this morning. :)

Anyway, I have been sort of vaguely keeping an eye on the recent discussion of the S8 comics, and although I have absolutely no intention of commenting on the content of those arguments, I did observe something interesting (to me, anyway, maybe not to you, lol) about the nature of the arguments.

What I have noticed, not just in the comics discussion, but also cropping up in comments at several other places, including

angearia's Buffy/Riley meta and a fairly recent post on

gabrielleabelle's journal, is the use of the phrase, "Some people in fandom say...." as a preface to and/or justification for their rebuttal. Arguing, in essence, that it is necessary to defend position X because there are some unspecified people in fandom saying contradictory thing Y. In particular, I've noticed the ways in which that leads to nearly every argument degenerating into the two sides talking past each other.

*Please to be noting I was extremely tempted to title this post "The 'Some' of All Fears," but I resisted the impulse to pun.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with those kinds of generalizations. A lot of times, it is relevant and useful to talk about trends in society and/or fandom. I just did it in the preceding paragraph, in fact. But it tends to open up a big ol' can of worms. :)

There seem to be two basic responses to the "Some people say..." argument:

"Who says that? Nobody says that. I have never heard anyone say that."
"Well, maybe some people say that, but that's not what I'm saying."

The first response is sometimes used as a deflection, an attempt to cast the original statement as a straw man argument, thus rendering a thoughtful rebuttal unnecessary. "Nobody actually says that, therefore the premise of your argument is invalid." It's impossible to prove a negative, which places the burden of proof on the commenter who asserts that people DO say such things. They must be able to provide empirical evidence of people who are, in fact, saying that. Even then, those examples may be discarded as anomalies or extreme factions, insisting that no one reasonable actually says that (of course, what constitutes "reasonable" is a pretty subjective determination).

It's rare that someone has a sampling of empirical evidence at their fingertips, though, particularly when the argument comes from a general perception based on an aggregation of indistinguishable reactions over days or weeks or months or even years of having these same conversations over and over. And there's no way to argue that definitively for either side. You can't empirically prove a perception, but you can't disprove it, either.

Sometimes it truly is a strawman - one person intentionally or unintentionally misrepresents the prevailing trends in fandom, thus enabling them to refute the distorted view rather than the actual one. But other times it's simply an indicator of a difference in perspective. The internet is a big, big place, and one of its defining features is the user's ability to tailor one's content as broadly or narrowly as one would like. We have the ability to shape our experiences, depending on what forums or communities we frequent and which individuals we interact with. This leads to very different perceptions of the way things are or what fans collectively think and say, even within the same segment of fandom.

gabrielleabelle's "unpopular opinions" post is a testament to that, where both sides of an argument on multiple issues perceived themselves as holding an unpopular opinion. (Our tendency to feel like the beleaguered minority is also a factor here. People tend to notice disagreement much more than support, which leads to viewing ourselves as being in the minority, even when that's not factually accurate.)

The second response accepts the given perspective ("Yes, some people say that.") but requires an evaluation of the scope of the argument. Are we discussing broader trends, or are we debating opposing individual viewpoints? If the topic at hand is about aggregate patterns in the behavior of a particular group, then yes, talking about what "some people" do is valid and relevant. To hold up yourself as an exception ("Maybe some people do that, but I don't.") is to disregard the parameters of the discussion. We're not talking about you. We're talking about the collective behavior of a whole group, within which there will obviously be some individual deviation, but typically behavioral patterns do emerge. We do not make individual posts and comments in a vacuum. We are influenced by others' opinions, our perception of what's "acceptable," as well as social conditioning regarding societal norms and storytelling cues, and that influence definitely needs to be recognized. Claiming to be immune is missing the point.

On the other hand, if someone is putting forth an individual viewpoint, then it's equally inappropriate to respond with "Some people say..." Doing so attributes an argument to the person that they have not actually made. Moreover, it demands that they defend a position they may not even hold. I see this a lot when people make assumptions about hypocrisy. If a particular character does X, they're criticized for being too Xy, but if they do the opposite, then they're criticized for not being Xy enough. Or character A gets judged harshly for a particular action, whereas character B is let off the hook for doing essentially the same thing. I'm not going to say we don't have our biases or are never hypocritical in our judgment of characters, but I've seen "some people" used as a way to conflate those contradictory opinions, when in fact the individual commenter never claimed to agree with both.

So. I suppose this should have some sort of conclusion, though I'm not really sure what it is. This is mostly just my observations of the things I've seen, because I'm nerdy and I like to dissect arguments like that. I don't know that I have any particular advice on how to have more constructive discussions, except maybe to recognize when the disagreement is based on different perceptions and to acknowledge that just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not happening.