I recently discovered this French YouTuber who shares very sensible essays about masculinity, feminism and society in general.

She has some interesting ideas and her videos are heavily sourced from academic literature. In one of her most popular videos, she talks about the concepts of ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘positive masculinity’. To showcase her point she started talking about men’s retreats created to get them in touch with what is called ‘deep masculinity’.

She says “I don’t want to make fun of them, but…”

And then we have a full minute of images of the men in those retreats in slow motion with a mocking soundtrack as background. Just because.

Look, I don’t know anything about those retreats and they might even do more harm than good. But do we really need to ridicule others to make a point?

She’s not the first, obviously. Some YouTube (and even TV) channels got famous for going into Trump supporter’s rallies and demonstrating just how ‘ignorant’ they are. You might have seen it, when reporters seem to debunk MAGA Republican’s twisted concepts.

But here’s the thing — those videos are heavily edited to show just the worst responses. Suppose someone starts a debate with well-sourced information about the mishandling of public funds by the Biden administration… That scene is obviously not going to make the cut, because the goal of the video is to show “how stupid they are”.

And it’s not just the left — I’ve recently also seen a video of someone going to a pro-Palestinian protest and making people scramble to define what Zionism is, just to share it on Instagram.

That kind of video in which people from one side attempt to “show what the other side thinks” by going to a rally and interviewing random people never really worked for me. First, because to understand the other side you need to be willing to understand, and I don’t think this is the case here. And second, because ignorant people exist in every rally. I doubt everyone in a pro-Ukraine protest will know where to point that country on the map.

And it’s not just random people in a protest or event. Celebrities get frequently “roasted” about everything from their political opinions to what kind of houseplants they have. There’s this trend on YouTube of reaction videos, in which a creator puts another creator in the spotlight, just to highlight how wrong they are. If the person being roasted has some following, you might even be able to include their pictures on the thumbnail and attract thousands of views.

Why do we like things like that? For the same reason we like gossip. It just feels good to hear people trashing people.

If we are the ones pointing out the flaws in someone else, it states to the world that those flaws are not in us. When we point to them and say “See how stupid they are?” we’re actually trying to say “See how smart I am? I’m not like them.”

This happens with arguments for any cause as well, and we got into the habit of seeing people showcase the other’s side reasoning as stupid. This tweet perfectly illustrates this.

The “you’re anti-semitic because you disagree with me” argument might even exist, but is definitely not the strongest pro-Israel argument.

It might seem like we’re strengthening our side by showcasing things like this, but all this does is weaken the debate. If I think I’m right, I want the other side to throw its best arguments at me. Or else, how do I know that my reasoning is strong?

I love this quote from All Sides founder, John Gable:

“ …with anything you believe, work at it so you can make a fantastic argument for the opposite point of view. Until you can really argue the other side, frankly, you don’t understand the issue.”

Ever since I came across it I started taking it quite literally and I’ve been trying to put a solid argument together for both sides when I want to understand a topic. That’s how I learn the most. And this leaves no space for ridicule.

This is how we should debate things, putting our best arguments to the test of the debate, not mocking others to our select audiences.