You can spend years arguing with idiots, or you can spend years making friends. The idiots aren’t going to be there for you when you need help. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re playing the public twitter game<\/a>, you gotta know what you\u2019re optimising for, or you\u2019ll likely get swept up in other people\u2019s nonsense. In my case I\u2019m optimising to make thoughtful + kind + interesting friends around the world. I think I\u2019m doing pretty good so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I had the time, I would happily argue with every single person about every single thing until they<\/em> collapse from exhaustion. Unfortunately time is limited, so time arguing with idiots is time not spent with my wife, who is a lot more fun & interesting & deserving of my time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m currently almost exclusively following mutuals (everybody else is on lists). These 300+ (update: now 900+) people mostly fit the bill of thoughtful + kind + interesting, and I am so looking forward to having dinner and\/or drinks with them someday. And I\u2019m definitely missing out on 100s of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My primary goal is to keep expanding this thread<\/a> indefinitely, to keep getting to know more lovely people like this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is an art to replying and commenting<\/a>, and probably like 60-70% of people I\u2019ve seen on the internet fail at it. The important thing is not to speak your mind, but to \u201csupport\u201d the OP. You can support them by disagreeing well & you can \u201cmis-support\u201d them by agreeing stupidly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every \u201cutterance\u201d (status, tweet, whatever) is a bit of an invitation, a bit of a proposal. \u201cLet\u2019s play this game\u201d. When strangers read the proposal accurately, and support the game, a shared understanding develops. You can make friends this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some people deliberately choose to ignore, misread, disregard or denounce other people\u2019s bids. Others are outright clueless and don\u2019t know how to play, and sometimes cluelessness leads to worse bungling than deliberate malice (JJ\u2019s razor<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was a lot more belligerent and disagreeable when I was younger, in part because I simplistically thought playing other people\u2019s games was a sheep-like way to live. Why should I support other people\u2019s dumb games? Why not mock them instead? It\u2019s easy, and intoxicating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I learned that you rarely build anything worthwhile that way. The \u201cbest\u201d case scenario: you win over other disagreeable people. A few years of this & it becomes the world you live in \u2013 surrounded by other belligerent assholes who don\u2019t know or care how to play nice. A cursed life. (See also: Ben Shapiro’s way of being.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n We can\u2019t choose where we are born, or our family, and our initial set of friends is heavily influenced by happenstance. But we can choose who we want to be associated with subsequently. All problems are interpersonal problems, but we kind of get to choose which ones we want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many different lines of enquiry have led me to this same following conviction:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u2014 2 \u2014<\/h2>\n\n\n\n