The porqupines are but human’s souls trapped in a lighthouse that sometimes burns too bright. I would argue, berate and impose: They highlight themselves with as strong a stroke as they can.

Now go on, form an opinion and see how bright that light shown. Introspection? or bright lights revealing something other than their source?

However, I’m not entirely sure your example is the best one (as someone else has already pointed out.) That being said, I often find myself rewriting my posts to make the language milder, just so nothing is taken too out of context. The example you give is just too mild for most people to get, I imagine.

I’m not sure who this “Roger” is, but his “laws” seem a bit simplistic. While it may be useful to grow a thicker skin and not take things too seriously, many people have not learned how to communicate in a manner that minimizes these frictions of which he speaks. I would go so far as to suggest that a “Porcupine” would be someone who, despite all their best intentions, still keeps getting into pointless net arguments, pissing matches and flame-wars. Perhaps assuming that everyone should just suck it up and get used to it is not the appropriate position to take in this case. Debate and argument is a two-way street.

This is what you seem to suggest in your text, I think. Any misunderstandings are my own.

I think it’s important to note that, despite the notion of how much we’d like things to be contrary, interpersonal communication in any media can be contentious at times. Learning how to frame a rebuttal so it does not sound like a personal attack at all is a necessary skill if you want to avoid pointless arguments about arguments. This is true in Real Life just as it is in the virtual world.

For example, one of the best ways to simply avoid argument and get your point across is to not use the word “you” so damn much. This is one of the hallmarks of rhetoric and debate that can make a huge difference. The judicious use of “I understand..” or “what I hear from you is…” or “one could take the position…” goes a long way to ensuring that arguments stay on topic and actually have some use to the rest of the humans listening in.

By the way, this comment is written by a recovering Porcupine; not so much online (where I had patient old-timers to shape my behaviour [this was before the Neverending September]) but in my real personal life. Learning not to attack every “weak” position in the most trivial discussions is definitely the #1 thing Porcupines need to learn. #2 is to listen and respond appropriately, and take everything so damned personally.

I couldn’t possibly disagree more. The response was direct, addressed the point with personal style, and didn’t condescend to the original poster by assuming she was incapable of adult discourse.

In fact, at risk of being branded a porcupine myself, I’ve gotta tell ya… you’re spreading the disease here, not the cure. By giving hypersensitive folks a justification for their feelings of distress at the first sign of intellectual conflict, you’re enabling the kind of pointless exchanges that it appears you’d like to avoid.

Roger’s First Law of Online Community:

“Cyberspace encourages a strange sort of intimacy. Intimacy leads to a sense of contact. Contact causes several kinds of friction. These are the Physics of Communication, and you’ll be much happier in the long run if you accept them and expect them.”

More significantly, I must ask:

If the statement “you’ve got the cart before the horse” is somehow an implicit example of myopic, malformed social interaction, then what do we call a public dissection of that statement that explicitly brands the author as “online vermin”? Why is this post any less rude, or any less an example of poor communicative habits?