A Note on Twitter Etiquette

I have noticed a common situation on some social media web sites, and certainly Twitter.

In that situation two people--let us refer to them as A and B--have an exchange.

In the course of this exchange A says something.

B puts A on the spot, demanding support for that statement as if it were their right to have it.

A responds by linking the source of their information.

B responds by saying that citing a source does not support what they said. This is in apparent obliviousness to, or disregard of, the fact that, even in scholarship, in which the standard for not only making a valid statement, but evidentiating it, might be imagined as higher than in a casual exchange between two strangers on social media, citing a source is accepted as support, at least so long as inspection has not revealed the citation to be irrelevant to the statement, or for some other reason unsatisfactory.

B's game gives away that they--very likely, and I dare say almost certainly--have no interest whatsoever in actually discussing or understanding the issue at hand because what is going on is not a debate, even an uncivil one. Rather B is pretending to engage A as cover for an opportunity to heckle them--possibly because abusing strangers is the idea of a good time of the degenerate in question, possibly because, while perhaps proclaiming themselves a "free speech absolutist" as so many do in extreme bad faith (they regard their right to free speech as absolute, not necessarily anyone else's), they have appointed themselves policers of the Internet's discourse, and are calling to account, and punishing, anyone whose "free speech" they disapprove.

If one really does take freedom of speech seriously--and I do--then I fear there is not much to be done about B's abuse of his right, save for A to refuse to play B's rather obnoxious and transparent game.