Learn critical analysis and use it in your comments

Critical Thinking Is Critical

There’s no tone to written words, so be assured there’s no anger in this piece. In person I can demonstrate that I’m not being combative, merely assertive, with open body language, friendly expressions and tones. Here, we only have words.

It seems I’ve read virtually every slur, ad hominem, straw man and “insert fallacy here” you’d care to mention. The internet is a petri dish for self entitled Dunning Krugerites. I accept that I’m impatient with nonsense, for we may have a right to have our own opinion but not to our own facts.

I don’t generally comment on other people’s words curtly, unless their post is blatantly rude. Though when we offer something in the public domain we must expect responses, some of which we won’t like. I understand that and can even accept rudeness — when backed by evidence — much more blithely than the slippery tentacles of the terminally passive aggressive.

It takes effort to make a critical comment with merit. Being critical can be perfectly acceptable, if you can back it up. This involves actually reading the article and replying to what has, in fact, been written. Replying to a post manufactured in your imagination might make you feel good, but it doesn’t make you look it.

Last week, a woman went out of her way to bicker about something I hadn’t written. Responding to an imagined article, her ill-penned complaint simply wasn’t relevant as she’d chosen to interpret, infer and fabricate to give herself something at which to take umbrage.

I was polite; she must have caught me in a cheerful mood. Four frustrating times I was compelled to explain that her diatribe was moot as I’d neither stated nor implied anything to the contrary. She eventually skedaddled without reading my final reply, which once again stated that her gripes should be directed to an article actually making the claims she disputed.

Of course it’s not the first time I’ve seen this behaviour. The Daily Fail relies on poor analytical ability to fill comment sections. Internet anonymity encourages unreflective invective.

I believe that critical analysis and thinking should be encouraged from childhood. The ability to comprehend what’s being said or written, not what your prejudices, opinions or beliefs lead you to infer, is invaluable.

I’m far too long in the internet tooth to be goaded into arguing for a case I didn’t make so I made it unambigously and immediately clear that her response wasn’t relevant to my piece. Yet still she persisted.

I’m sure there are all sorts of reasons for such peculiar inapposite obstinacy. But truthfully I don’t much care why folk do it, I’d just like it very much if they’d stop it, thanks all the same.

So that’s my plea to all commenters. If you want to disagree, of course you’re entitled. But if you want to disagree with a claim I didn’t make, perhaps write your own article instead. I might even see it and offer an opinion, or ten.

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Alison Tennent, 2020, Queensland, Australia Copyright Alison Tennent 2020, all rights reserved. Scottish by birth, upbringing and bloodline, Australian by citizenship. If you’re reading this anywhere but The Garrulous Glaswegian or Medium, this work may have been plagiarized.