Edit: My own solution: when it happens, get off the computer and pet the dog.
So let’s say I make a point on a post. I put forward my argument and I support it with evidence.
Now let’s say the first comment is from someone who disagrees with me, but seems to fundamentally misunderstand what I am saying, probably because they read the title of the post and immediately posted the first thing that came to mind.
But my fear, acquired from Reddit, is that people are going to read this guy’s totally inaccurate presentation of my argument and then every comment in the rest of the discussion will proceed as if that’s what I said.
And since, as we all know, fear leads to hate, my first instinct is just to berate this person for being a stupid moron.
This is a bad strategy. Not only is probably against Lemmy rules, it automatically makes me the bad guy.
So: question: how do I handle this person without tediously restating my position again, which is extremely irritating because I already wrote it once and they didn’t read it the first time. What I want is to say something that quickly quarantines the misreading comment in people’s minds so the misreading doesn’t infect the entire thread.
I try to give them one chance. Sometimes I get pulled in deeper if I’ve got nothing better to do. But on the whole, respond with curiosity first. Then determine of they are worth your time. If not, ignore them and move on, interacting with those more worth your while while eye rolling the idiots.
Guess the best way is to not care much about what others think of you. Then, eventually, down votes and bad arguments made by morons really just don’t even bother you. Engage with better people, ignore the rest and chuck a down vote.
I would argue that downvotes and bad arguments made by morons aren’t so different from downvotes and arguments made by the “intellectually superior” among you. It’s hard to corral human thought and all of it’s often contradictory and competing, overt or covert motivations.