People like that thrive on being martyred and/or dragging you into a flame war. They want to stand and fight and make a scene. They want to take the example of how they were silenced or whatever and parade it around to their peers. You being passive aggressive/sarcastic with them only plays into their hand 98% of the time. If you want to make a point for other people looking on, then you answer them calmly with a few sources and move on.

Otherwise, the best course of action is the simplest: ignore/downvote/report and move on. You’re better off spending your energy and wit actually helping people who are there in good faith.

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ang_cire 13 hours ago | parent [-]

How about I choose how I spend my energy, and you optimize your own according to your standards?

We don't all have to give a response optimized to be "best".

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BolexNOLA 11 hours ago | parent [-]

No you don’t have to do anything in particular and this isn’t about “optimization” but rather about getting a result you actually want. So if we’re talking about having a legitimate discussion or “the general good,” I believe what I wrote is the better way to operate. If your response to that is simply “I feel like being shitty to people in response to things I find shitty,” then that’s your prerogative. You’re more than allowed to choose that course for yourself, I just don’t think that’s a healthy way to operate.

It all boils down to what you want out of the situation ultimately.

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ang_cire 10 hours ago | parent [-]

> If your response to that is simply “I feel like being shitty to people in response to things I find shitty,” then that’s your prerogative. You’re more than allowed to choose that course for yourself, I just don’t think that’s a healthy way to operate.

I don't think passive aggressiveness rises to the level of "shitty" behavior, and that's my entire point; people have turned anything but HR-approved, company rep-like responses into being shitty behavior.

The elimination of emotion (of which annoyance and exasperation are two kinds) from online discourse as a means to attempt to signify who is more correct is bad.

"Using lmgtfy makes you shitty" is ridiculous levels of tone policing.

	▲	BolexNOLA 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> "Using lmgtfy makes you shitty" is ridiculous levels of tone policing. I guess my question is: what is the point of sending a lmgtfy link? What do you want to happen? I don’t think this is tone policing tbh unless we call any time someone says “stop” tone policing. In which case I’d say I guess I support some light policing.