Somebody you know posted it

Blocking is not available to you, and that changes every other decision on this page.

You are also allowed to say nothing at all. Not answering somebody you know is a move available at every point below, and it needs nobody’s agreement. It is right more often than the rest of this site would lead you to expect.

Almost everything written about arguing online assumes a stranger. Mute, block, report, ignore, quote: five costed options, and all five assume somebody you can make disappear. Your cousin does not disappear. Neither does the woman you did your degree with, or the man who has run your son’s football team for three years.

Before you type anything. What you write here is permanent, screenshottable, and read by people who know you both. The cost of winning is a relationship, and sometimes a family one. That price is attached to everything below, and it is why the cheapest move on this page is the one to consider first.

The forty people reading are the point

You are not writing to the person who posted. That much this site says everywhere. What is different here is who the silent readers are.

They are not anonymous. They know you both, they will be at the wedding, and a few of them have not decided anything. They read the exchange as evidence about you, not as evidence about the argument.

Which settles the register.

The person who comes out of this best is not the one who was most right. It is the one who was visibly reasonable to forty people who know them both.

Take it to a message

This is the move to reach for, and it is the one almost nobody makes.

What it does. It removes the audience. The audience is the reason people dig in. Nobody defends a bad post in a message the way they defend it in public, because there is no face to lose, and that is what makes moving possible.

What it costs. No public correction. The post stays up, and everyone who read it has still read it. It also commits you to a real conversation. That takes longer than a reply, and it cannot be won the way a thread appears to be won.

Write the message as though it will be screenshotted, because it might be. Then open with the relationship rather than with the argument.

“I saw your post. I’m not going to argue with you in front of everyone. Can I tell you what I actually think, here?”

“You and I are fine. I’ve got a problem with one specific thing in that post, and I’d rather say it to you than under it.”

“I’m not asking you to take it down. I’d like you to know what it lands like for me.”

“I’m not doing this tonight and I don’t want to do it by typing. Are you about at the weekend?”

Public, private, or nothing

In public. Buys a correction on the record for the people reading. Costs you the relationship a notch, and they will not concede in front of an audience whatever you say. One reply, factual, no adjectives, then out.

In a message. Buys the only real chance of them moving. Costs you time, and changes nothing that anybody else can see.

Both, in that order. Frequently the right answer. One public sentence answering the claim, then a message saying you did not want to do that under their post.

Nothing. More often right than it feels. Five signals, and one is enough.

• The post is not aimed at you.
• Nobody is reading it.
• You have had this argument with this person before.
• You are angry now.
• What you would win is being right, and what you would spend is the friendship.

When other people pile in

A thread between two people who know each other stops being that the moment a third person arrives, and that happens fast.

Your own side arriving is not help. It turns a disagreement into several strangers aimed at somebody you know. You cannot call it off once it starts, and you will be blamed for it, correctly.

So never bring anybody in. Not to a group chat, not by tagging a larger account. Where your own people turn up uninvited, say so in public and ask them to stop.

“This is a mate of mine and we’re having a disagreement. I don’t need anybody helping. Please leave it.”

Their side arriving changes what the thread is. Stop replying. Anything you add now is feeding something else, and the handling from that point is in answering hostile replies. If it moves towards your employer, your family or your address, that is when it comes at you.

The person you know is unlikely to call their own side off. Ask once, privately, and expect nothing.

“Some of what’s in your replies is aimed at my family now. I’m out of it. You might want to say something.”

When it is family

You cannot leave, and you will be sitting across a table from them in six weeks.

Three things are different. Somebody else in the family gets asked to take a side, usually a parent, and usually the person least able to refuse. It is not one conversation but a position you will be held to at every gathering for years. And muting the account, which is fine and worth doing, changes nothing about the seat next to you at the meal.

So go slower here than anywhere else on this site. Message rather than reply. Give it a week rather than an evening. And separate the person from the post out loud, because they cannot do it for you.

“I love you and I hate that post. Both of those are true and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.”

“I’m not doing this on the phone. I’ll come round on Sunday.”

Where it is hatred about Jews rather than a position about a war, the calculation is not the same one and this page stops applying. Nobody owes a relative unlimited access on those terms. Distance is a legitimate answer. Taking it does not mean you have written anybody off for good, and it is not a failure of family feeling.

What winning actually costs

Somebody has to be shown to be wrong in front of people they know. That is what a public win is. It is also why you have probably never watched anybody concede in a thread.

You will both still be here next year. So will the screenshots. Decide what you are buying before you spend it.

One message, not a reply

Fill in the blanks177 words

Two questions from memory. Who are the forty people reading, and what does the person who posted have to lose in front of them? And which of the four moves are you actually choosing?

Then this, before you close the page. Screenshot the post, so you answer what was said rather than what you remember by Thursday.

If I have started typing a reply under a post by somebody I know, then I will move what I have written into a message and send it there instead.

If it is family, then I will not reply at all tonight, and I will ring them at the weekend.

If other people start arriving in the thread, then I will post one line asking my own side to leave it, and stop replying to anybody.

And the obstacle is not anger. It is that saying nothing feels like letting it stand. If I have chosen to say nothing and it is still at me two days later, then I will send one message rather than reopening it in public.