People are sharing excruciating tales of when they tried to argue with an idiot – 13 life lessons
Few things in life are less satisfying – or more frustrating – than trying to argue with an idiot.
We say this after Redditor Blaztwin had a question for everyone over on Ask Reddit.
‘“Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” What’s your best real life example of this?’
And we’ve read all the responses – well, quite a few of them – so you don’t have to, and here are our 13 favourites.
1.
‘The day before Biden’s inauguration, a co-worker told me the military would execute him live on stage and Trump would walk out to be named as president again.
‘When I laughed and said there’s literally no chance of it, he said “dude what do you know? You work in a warehouse in nowhere, you don’t know shit” ignoring that he’s my coworker in the same warehouse.’
justdontask3
2.
‘Anytime I’ve tried to explain marginal tax rates to an employee.’
Mo-Cance
3.
‘For a short while, I worked as a line cook at a Cracker Barrel, and there was a little saloon style door that led to the staff section (kitchen, bathroom, etc). There was a staff only sign on the door, above the doors, and on the wall behind the doors at eye level.
‘Usually if someone from the customer side comes in, they said, “Coming in” before opening the door, so they didn’t hit anyone, but of course customers didn’t know that.
‘So when this dude opened the door and hit a waitress carrying a ton of drinks, we were reasonably upset with him. He said, “You should really put a sign up.” We showed him all the signs, and he goes, “That seems a bit excessive.”‘
GreyFoxHound1
4.
‘I used to argue a lot with my sister when we were kids. She would do this thing where she would say something, and then I would reference back to it literally a minute or two later to prove a point and she would say “I never said that” or “that’s not what I said”. Absolutely impossible to argue with someone who will just deny having said things that could hurt their argument.
‘Also, trying to change the course of an argument if they feel like they are “losing”. A coworker once called me an idiot for doing something “incorrectly” when I was actually doing it the right way.
‘When I politely explained to them that the way they suggested doing the task didn’t actually work, they started asking “why are you getting so angry?? I was just trying to help” etc. So now we’re arguing about whether I’m angry or not instead of the right way to complete the task.’
themightypianocat
5.
‘I thought I had a no-lose argument going up against someone who believes in homeopathy…. I left the discussion feeling like I lost somehow :(.
‘Edit: Appreciate all the comments. Some very funny replies! Just a quick clarification, I was specifically referring to homeopathic dilutions as far as the argument/discussion went.
‘I “felt” like I lost because I was dumbfounded by their argument and realised quickly that it was a belief system that I was up against and didnt want to waste either of our time (the person being a naturopath that my wife used to go to).
‘They had obviously had this argument many times and had various convoluted responses to all your standard points. Essentially, they had more experience in this argument than me.
‘Thankfully, that interaction resulted in my kids no longer having to take so much “medicine” which was my main issue because I could see that it was eroding their confidence. Sure, its just water so it cant do any harm right?
‘Wrong, it meant every time they saw the naturopath they would come home with a whole new set of ailments and the eventual thinking of “what is wrong with me??”. There was never anything wrong with them.’
MehhicoPerth
6.
‘Working retail. Especially when I worked in the tech shop od a computer store. Trying to convince someone their $500 laptop is never going to be a gaming system no matter how many of the very few replaceable parts we throw at it can be exhausting…’
MOS95B
7.
‘Social media debates.
‘You won’t convince someone they’re wrong, you’re screaming at a brick wall.’
tacobelmont
8.
‘Not my story but once my friend (friend A) was having a friendly (turned sour) debate with another friend (friend B) about how sometimes people just don’t have a choice, in the context of, they can’t just choose to live a frivolous life because of their family background etc.
‘Friend A proceeds to say, “what about starving children born in Africa, it’s not like they had a choice.” To which Friend B answered….”WHO ASKED THEM TO BE BORN IN AFRICA? JUST DON’T BE BORN THERE.”
‘That’s when we knew…. :—).’
ulaef
9.
‘Even though they’re wrong they’ll still carry on the argument and then when you’ve convinced them they’ll say yeah that’s what I said trying to make you look the fool. Had plenty of arguments like that.’
XenomorphXx121
10.
‘Was arguing with this dude about something math-related. He didn’t know how to read a study which involved statistics. claimed he was in multiple AP math classes.
‘Tried saying that I “probably don’t even know basic integration”. Gave me a common integration problem. He wrote it but forgot the minus sign, making it unsolvable. I pointed it out and he edited the comment to make it correct. Told him that some people can see when you edit comments. He claimed that he just capitalized a letter. On and on and on …’
SaturdayNightCity
11.
‘When I tell people to just reboot your computer and it will fix all their problems and yet they wont because they said if you wait long enough it will shut down, when in reality it only goes to sleep.
‘Then when I tell them they have to completely shut it down they look at me like I’m an idiot and say they did. I tell them it seems like it but it only went to sleep. They argue back.’
niallaa
12.
‘I was listening to a podcast once, and the host articulated something profound in a very well-stated way. He said (I paraphrase):
“I will never argue with a flat-earther, or an anti-vaxxer, or any of those people. The reason is because that these people have made that into their whole identity, and they are prepared to address any possible argument I could come up with. And because I care about facts and truth and they do not, my only possible response would be ‘…uh, I’ll have to look into that, I don’t know off the top of my head’.
‘It doesn’t matter that their response is incorrect or based on faulty research or has been rejected by the scientific community or whatever; by the time I discover that, they will be long gone and talking about how they won another debate.”
‘This is it in a nutshell. If you argue about an issue with someone who has made that one issue into the core of their persona, you will lose unless you are someone who has made arguing against that issue also into the core of your persona.’
kiwi_rozzers
13.
‘This was best said:
“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” ― George Bernard Shaw.’
Zerowantuthri
Source Reddit u/Blaztwin