Anatomy of an Internet Argument #4 - A Success Story
The Anatomy of an Internet Argument series is about failure modes of communication & how to fix them. Today’s issue is a success story where an interaction starts out hostile, and ends very positively.
People don’t believe me when I say this happens all the time, but it does, and it would happen WAY more if people actually tried.
Guy read Michael’s initial quote of him as hostile, meanwhile Michael was confused as to why his innocent comment would trigger such an aggressive reaction.
They were literally having two different conversations. Here’s an illustration of what I believe they were each reading in each other’s words:
I see this pattern over & over, and usually the people end the interaction by insulting each other, (incorrectly) believing that the other guy is an idiot or not interested in good faith discussion. But Michael short circuits this:
This is the inflection point that saves the interaction. This is a genuine apology that validates Guy’s perspective 1 . It allows Michael to signal “I am genuinely interested in understanding”. This type of move is rare only because no one expects the other side to be reasonable, so they don’t even give them a chance.
