There is something that I generallly don’t do, but I have found myself doing it more here on this forum because it seems to be a very common M.O. here and it’s rubbing off on me.
Rather than attempting to read a whole post and looking for the intent behind what the person is saying and responding to that, I am tending toward pulling quotes out of context and responding to them as they stand on their own. Which is very sketchy in terms of understanding the other persons intent.
Usng quotes as examples of what you believe the person is getting at is a reasonable way of getting a “perception check” or clarifying. Too often here it turns more into a way of pulling apart what the person said in order to muddy up the meaning and win an advantage over them in the “debate”. Or if that is not the intent it becomes the result anyway.
This leads to threads going off on tangents that are addressing the twisted meaning of an isolated quote that’s been pulled out of context.
Like I said, clarifying the intent by quoting is useful, disecting what someone says and taking individual statements out of context and attacking them point by point is a typical tactic of politicians and intellectuals who are trying to prove something or destroy an opponents posiition. I don’t really see it as sharing ideas or communicating.