How to Win a Fight on Facebook

Take Down the Spineless Plebeians of the Interwebs While Still Maintaining the Moral High Ground

We’ve all had those moments — when you see a picture of your second cousin proudly flaunting a Confederate flag bikini, or you read a long-winded post from your supposedly “woke” guy friend about how J.Lo’s SuperBowl pole-dance really sullied the otherwise *spotless* reputation of the NFL — when you think:

Huh. I might just need to fight someone today.

You see them, carelessly spewing their wrong opinion from the safety of their own personal Facebook page, and a fiery voice stirs within you, roaring:

I, ALONE, AM THE ONE TO SAVE THEM FROM THE DARK ABYSS OF IGNORANCE. THIS IS MY MISSION NOW.

You pick up the boxing gloves. You’re ready to go. But in this world where everyone has a trendy meme to back up why their perspective is the only credible one, how do you make sure your blows actually land? From one fighter to another, here are some tips to help you come out on top.

*CUE ROCKY THEME*

1. Instead of hopping straight onto the aggro defense train, ask questions of your adversary. Quote their own words back to them and ask them to expound. This will make you come off as inquisitive, rather than SCREAM-INSIDE-YOUR-HEART ENRAGED (which is what you actually are), and will put the onus on them to follow up their statements with facts. And if they can’t back up their soundbites? Then watch their argument unravel like a once-beloved Cosby sweater.

2. Maybe wait two seconds to respond until you have a better sense of the bigger picture.

In this age of deep-fakes and click-bait, it’s easy to take a headline and roll with it until it snowballs into your very own Frosty the Mis-Informed Snowman. But I urge you not to take everything at (potentially computer-generated) face value.

Use your intuition. Fact check your articles. As much as we would all like to live in a hunky-dory Normal Rockwell painting (you know, minus the antiquated nuclear family gender tropes), we have to accept that we share this earth with real-life garbage humans who will exploit your naïveté if given the chance.

So, take a second to settle from your knee jerk reaction. If you do, you’ll hopefully come off as someone who’s done their research. If you don’t? You might come off as a Jussie Smollett sympathizer.

3. If you have personal experience with the matter at hand, bring it to the boxing ring. This moves the fight onto home turf, which could boost your credibility and even elicit empathy* from your opponent. Let’s say you’re debating — and I’m going out on a limb here — the authenticity of worldwide pandemics. If you are on the Maybe We Should Take This Seriously? side, it might be eye-opening for the opposition to know that you’ve personally known several people who have been irreversibly affected by the illness.

There’s a time and place for this tactic, however.

In the ongoing discussion of the government’s ruling over the female uterus, for example, using the argument “I am a woman and actually have one so maybe I know better” doesn’t really have much clout. Strange, I know. It’s funny how that works.

*empathy, believe it or not, is not a Latin word. Though it’s been a dead concept for maybe just as long.

4. It’s going to be difficult, but try not to resort to using Ad hominem remarks. If you’re not familiar with the term, Ad hominem is an argumentative strategy that diverts from the actual topic of debate by attacking the character or intellect of your opponent, you uncultured swine. In that spirit, try not to let old grudges taint your present day fisticuffs. This is a lesson that I had to learn the hard way back in 2015. An acquaintance — whom I had never met face-to-face but had heard horror stories about from multiple friends — posted a simple prompt: Michael Keaton was more deserving of the coveted Best Actor Academy Award than Eddie Redmayne. What began as a civilized discussion about Oscar-bait cinema and method acting quickly devolved into my personal ploy to expose his true colors — which, if I were to name them, would be Burnt Asshat and Canary Coward. But that’s beside the point. The point is that I used sweet, innocent, fish-mouthed Redmayne as the Trojan Horse in this verbal ambush, and since “YOU’RE A MISOGYNISTIC CONTROL FREAK WITH A NAPOLEON COMPLEX WHO MEASURES THE VALUE OF HIS FEMALE STUDENTS BY THEIR FUCKABILITY” took too long to type, I landed on a short & sweet, below-the-belt “ur stupid.”

It didn’t matter that I knew the former to be true. All anyone else saw on that thread was a deranged woman — who clearly loved Eddie Redmayne — attacking a man’s entire education over a movie review.

So, remember, kids: you can mud-sling all you want in your mind, but keep the comment section clean.

5. And now, for the most important tip of all…

DON’T HAVE A FIGHT ON FACEBOOK TO BEGIN WITH.

I know. After all of this golden advice and I’m telling you to just walk away? YES. YES I AM.

As adults, we like to think that we’ve moved past the nurture part of evolution, but the fact is that robot birds killed Jeffrey Epstein and we’re still being conditioned on the daily by our media consumption.

Facebook is one of the worst offenders in terms of collecting data on its consumers (watch Netflix’s The Great Hack if you reaaaally want to feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror), so OF COURSE our feeds not only cater to our personal interests, but are built to reinforce them. What you see people spouting as fact is often the truth that they’ve been primed to believe, so contradicting them on it is just going to lead to an afternoon of talking in circles.

Now, this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t call someone out for their B.S. — it’s just that Facebook isn’t the right arena if you want to actually make headway. So save your vitriol towards flat-earthers for the family reunion and your Karen-conversions for the office breakroom and try to transition your digital feud to an in-person conversation — where you can draw them out from the emboldening comfort of their keyboard to make prolonged, uncomfortable eye contact with you. Only then will you have created a level enough playing field for a fair debate to take place — one that will hopefully lead to the change that you want to see from them.

Because, obviously, you’ve had the right opinion all along.