I may be an optimist but I believe the tenor of online debate could be vastly improved if more people were capable of distinguishing “this is what I believe reality to be” from “I heartily endorse this”
I feel like plenty of solid posts were never posted, because—in writing them—the poster realized all of the potential bad faith interpretations (even by those who'd actually agree with them), tried to add more detail to counter that, ran into the character limit, said "Fuck it" and clicked Discard.
I have several half written in drafts. (And felt sick posting a few that did escape.) Including one fandom meta that's like 9 years of continuous observations about the work in dialogue with itself. But I've wussed out of finishing it multiple times even when it was eye opening to friends.
This might be controversial but this is especially true why I no longer comment on Israel and Palestine any more despite it still being quite important in my mind. It’s just not worth it being called genocidal supporter or hamas terrorist over a matter that can’t be solved in one day and one post
Sometimes it seems like people think the original post is required to be a super thought out coherent idea and the comments can be quick throw away reactions. The burden of understanding is on the poster and the reader/commenter has no such obligation.
As somebody who used to dump a lot of posts like this (and still does occasionally) often times the animus wasn’t great, in a “of all things you could say you are picking this hill, hm interesting” sense. Like the bad faith started with me and was just contagious.
