One of the best things about the internet is the democratization of, and ability to exchange, information and ideas. When you really boil it down, therein lay the true genius of the web. This applies perfectly to the movie world since all film is subjective and open to our own individual opinions, ideas, interpretations and impression. A world wide forum where fans of the art can come together to exchange ideas and engage in debate over various opinions is like Nirvana to many film fans.
I love engaging in film debate, mostly because of what Movie Blog readers write in the comments. Quite often the best stuff on The Movie Blog isn’t written by the authors, but rather by the users in the comments section who are debating with each other or the author of the post. A good, intelligent and open debate is a very fun and informative thing to be a part of.
But let’s be honest, quite often forums like The Movie Blog and other movie websites have their arenas for the exchange of ideas and debate hijacked by those who just like rant like 6 year olds, hurl insults at the people they’re supposedly engaged in conversation with, add nothing to the conversation itself and in general just like to see what they typed up on the screen. These type of people are a cancer to sites like ours an others and become living black holes to suck the fun and enjoyment out of online movie debate.
Earlier today, I came across a great little post over at a site called “Create Debate Blog” that created a graphic illustrating the seven different levels of debate… ranging from the most idiotic and poor up to the ideal form of debate. The graphic was made with the issue of debate in general in mind, but I think it perfectly applies to the world of film debate on movie websites like The Movie Blog. The chart looks like this:
Let’s start at the bottom:
NAME-CALLING
This is where some people reveal their basic lack of intelligence the most. They’re so devoid of anything intelligent to say that they resort to name calling. “You’re an idiot if you think Star Wars isn’t the best movie ever”. Instantly the environment for an exchange of ideas and debate is killed and replaced with a hostile thread where it’s almost guaranteed nothing intelligent will come out of. Name calling is the fall back position of the weak.
AD HOMINEM
Another great method of the weak is to attack the messenger instead of the message. In other words, making the debate about the person presenting the idea or opinion instead of debating the idea or opinion itself. “How can you not like Juno? Like you would know a good movie from a bad one. You didn’t even like Hot Fuzz”. You see what they did? Now the conversation isn’t even about the topic itself. Their inability to intelligently debate the actual issue drives them to change topics and make the debate about the person instead of about the merits of “Juno”. Also, now instead of an open exchange for everyone to be involved in, the thread becomes a personal argument between two people. Weak weak weak.
RESPONDING TO TONE
We’re starting to get up into the more understandable areas here. “I don’t like the way you said that”! Ok, there is nothing offensive or counter productive really about this type of comment… but it just wastes space. It doesn’t actually address the content of what the person said… and therefore is a waste of space, and a waste of the readers time.
CONTRADICTION
There’s nothing wrong with contradiction. Not every comment has to engage in debate. Sometimes it’s perfectly fine just to express a contrary idea or opinion without debating the merits of another persons idea or opinion. For example, I put up a post about how bad “Jumper” was… another person may just simply comment “I really enjoyed jumper”. Fair enough. Part of the purpose of the comments is just to express opinion. Nothing wrong with that.
COUNTERARGUMENT
This is where stuff starts to get fun. “John, in your post you say Chris Tucker isn’t funny, but if you look at A,B and C I think it’s fair to say that he is indeed funny”. Now we’re contrasting our opinions and and giving reason for our disagreement. It’s still just in the arena of opinion.
REFUTATION
Very useful and informative… but it SUCKS when people properly do it to you (it happens to me all the time). When actual objective, measurable FACTS are able to be used to counter notions proposed by the other party. For example, I remember this one time where on the podcast I made a joke about how Sylvester Stallone would never be on “In The Actors Studio”… only to have a couple of people leave comments with the actual dates and episode number where Stallone had ALREADY been on the show. It’s a little embarrassing when it happens to you, but it’s also a great learning experience.
REFUTING THE CENTRAL POINT
This the the height of great movie debate and where it’s at its most fun. When people start to exchange ideas and opinion while staying on the central idea. When the starting idea is: “Chris Tucker doesn’t deserve $20 million a film” and then people on both sides stick to expressing their thoughts, ideas, opinions.. backed up by some (if applicable) objective data and where the participants keep the exchange respectful of each other… that’s total gold and a lot of fun to be a part of.
I visit a lot of movie websites dozens of times a day, and just about all of them (including mine) face the problems of a few individuals who try to sour things for everyone. But I think if people would shape their comments to the top four levels of that pyramid, comment sections on all film sites would be a much more fun, informative and even entertaining place to participate.
