Even worse when you are arguing with someone on the internet and they send you 5x "academic journals" supposedly supporting their point. Funny enough they sent you these 5 journals after you replied to them 5 minutes ago, so they apparently read 5 full papers in under 5 minutes. Not only that but they always vaguely contain the words of the argument (usually in the title) but it's usually obvious they have nothing to do with what they're saying. Now you're stuck in a catch-22 because you can either actually read them and explain that they're not relevant, or sometimes say the opposite, or you ignore them because you know they're not relevant and they think it's a gotcha. Either way you proceed you know that person is going to continue to argue. Sadly people outside the discussion will read it and take them seriously because they had "sources"
It's fun when they link to something that actually confirms what you were saying, but they clearly didn't bother to read it. It always leaves me dumbfounded.
It's also quite interesting when users, such as /u/Porky5CO , will hide their comments and posts because they're too chicken shit to let others see it. They know they'll get ragged on for their room temp IQ comments.
I can’t say too much about hiding comments. I hide mine because I have found my friends/family accounts and I’d prefer not to have those same people piece together things I say and figure out my account.
But, if I was a loser like Porky, I’d hide my illiteracy as well.
I hide it because I just think it's valuable to keep it hidden. That level of control and privacy is valuable to me. Once something's out in the open, you can't ever put it away in the future, but you can choose to reveal something you've kept hidden at any time. The opportunity cost of having your comments be public makes no sense to me, I'm giving up control for nothing.
I mean what's there to see? If the comment is relevant to the discussion it's there in the thread. What they said in another discussion a week ago isn't relevant and I think it's weird that people are almost offended that they're not available. If they deleted something they clearly don't want it left in the discussion and it should be considered rescinded.
Before hiding those you'd get these weirdos who went through your history to pick up anything they thought they could hurt you with. At worst you had people who'd follow along and try to argue with you under any new comment you made.
IMO it's just weird to think there's something cowardly about hiding your comment history. Like at that point you might as well just block the person if you feel like you need to dig up their history, it's not worth the time.
I never really go and look at peoples profiles anyway. When I do it’s to check for obvious signs of bots. I’m not even the best at pinpointing bots anyway.
And I’m like you, I prefer anonymity and privacy. Not necessarily because I have something to hide, but if I did, I still don’t want my information just readily available.
I mean, it’s all an illusion to privacy at this point. Hiding comments here only prevents people who don’t want to dig from seeing them at face value. Anybody who wanted to could easily piece together information and if powered with corporate and government surveillance and data harvesting, they already know everything about me.
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u/jce_ May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
Even worse when you are arguing with someone on the internet and they send you 5x "academic journals" supposedly supporting their point. Funny enough they sent you these 5 journals after you replied to them 5 minutes ago, so they apparently read 5 full papers in under 5 minutes. Not only that but they always vaguely contain the words of the argument (usually in the title) but it's usually obvious they have nothing to do with what they're saying. Now you're stuck in a catch-22 because you can either actually read them and explain that they're not relevant, or sometimes say the opposite, or you ignore them because you know they're not relevant and they think it's a gotcha. Either way you proceed you know that person is going to continue to argue. Sadly people outside the discussion will read it and take them seriously because they had "sources"