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If there’s one virtue epistemic lesson I’d like to teach people on Twitter, it’s that it’s entirely possible to fight casual irony with robust sincerity, precisely because the former is not just casual but generic. It’s not just low effort, it’s lazy, which is a deeper weakness.
‘Don’t feed the trolls’ is good defensive advice, and is best heeded when we must conserve our resources for the important battles, rather than be ground down in discursive wars of attrition. But there can be good offensive advice here too.
My advice here is, if you’re willing and able, feed the trolls till their bellies burst. Kill them with discursive kindness they don’t know what to do with, because they never learned anything beyond cheap tactics. That’s the strategic approach to rhetorical dynamics.
They’ll scream and shout and throw their toys out of the pram, which usually isn’t worth much in the relevant context, but it’s precisely what they were trying to make you do, and so it serves them right. Discursive symmetry cuts both ways, even from a dynamic perspective.
Of course, this isn’t an end in itself, at least not in the specific discursive context you’re contesting. But it is an end in itself in a wider sense, precisely insofar as sincerity is a virtue to be cultivated and propagated, as opposed to the ironic vices it counters.
I’ve written on the virtue of sincerity as opposed to the ‘brutal’ honesty favoured by trolls, especially the Pill addicts (red, black, trad, etc.). https://deontologistics.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/tfe-sincerity-vs-honesty/
Addiction to 'brutal honesty' is a libidinal impulse governed by an aesthetic which disguises itself as an epistemic imperative. It's a mental disease that comes in some truly 'brutal' forms. Addicts rapidly dismantle and pawn the rest of their belief system chasing that dragon.
People will dig themselves into deeper and deeper epistemic silos, in which it becomes harder and harder for conflicting information to penetrate, convinced they see the true 'darkness' in the world, unable to admit to themselves that they *want* darkness.
It's perfectly fine to want darkness. There are delightfully bleak affects that have their own aesthetic place, which can be composed and cultivated in everything from great works of art, to the simple joys of shitposts, to the edifying synthesis of both:
But limiting yourself to honesty leaves you room to lie to yourself about your real epistemic motivations, and clinging to an authentic vision of your self and your place in the world even while chanting that you have no self, no vision, and no place. Try sincerity, it's better.
But be good to yourself guys. Allow yourselves a little irony here and there. A little discursive cruelty, in moderation. We are none of us angels, and the devil in us can enjoy revelling in the details. Be liberal with your charity, but ruthlessly precise in your pedantry.
In the dynamic world of debate, in which the argument is still being contested, and nothing resembling a proof or a refutation has yet been completed, to be assessed in retrospect, there is no choice but to deploy rhetoric, because there is no choice but to be strategic.
Play to win, but keep your opponents' (and your audiences') attention, because victory has no communicative worth without it. And if you lose? If you've all played sincerely, then everyone wins, because new truths are revealed, and new selves are unveiled, better than the last.
