These include Medium, where I published a post earlier today, Don’t Give Them Time. It's the first in what will be a series of posts on dealing with (you almost think) deliberately difficult, and downright jerkish people in the online world.
Since this blog is now intended for updates and shorter pieces, what I'll do when I publish a longer piece is either summarize or excerpt from it here. So, here's a passage from the crux of the essay.
[T]his is just the start of my setting down my thoughts about these matters, so I haven’t got some comprehensive, systematically worked out, debated-with-the-decent take on all of this. I do, however, have one main insight about how to handle the contentious, the tendentious, the “debate me bro!” types.
Jerks don’t get time.
Or if they do get time, it’s the minimum possible.
When they do get it, time allotted to them comes after others get attended to.
The basic idea is that all too often, those of us who are devoted to online engagement in substantive conversations get suckered into the idea that we somehow owe our time (and thought, and attention, and emotions, and. . . ) to anyone who happens to come along.
We don't. And time is a resource that not only is always in short supply, but that we ought to devote to those who deserve it more than online jerks. I've been making that a practice, and I'm finding it quite a useful strategy for properly using my time.
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