If it helps, you can think of the “person being educated” as all the people reading the comments. If you are making coherent points and justifying what you’re saying then people will pick up on it. I think online conversation (in the aggregate) has a huge amount to do with influencing how people look at the world in modern society, probably more so than TV or newspapers or “online newspapers.” That’s not to say that any individual Lemmy poster or even Lemmy as a whole has any kind of move-the-needle influence, but on the whole, the influence from “the internet” is huge.
The person you’re arguing with will probably not be convinced (certainly not after one conversation just do a total 180 and say they agree with you now), but even on Lemmy there are dozens or hundreds of people reading your stuff and seeing whether you make sense and being impacted by it. It means the temptation to just turn it into a shit-throwing contest on both sides is important to avoid, in favor of making compelling arguments in a way that people can get behind, if you actually care about your points landing for anyone who isn’t already a convert.
That is absolutely false…
If it helps, you can think of the “person being educated” as all the people reading the comments. If you are making coherent points and justifying what you’re saying then people will pick up on it. I think online conversation (in the aggregate) has a huge amount to do with influencing how people look at the world in modern society, probably more so than TV or newspapers or “online newspapers.” That’s not to say that any individual Lemmy poster or even Lemmy as a whole has any kind of move-the-needle influence, but on the whole, the influence from “the internet” is huge.
The person you’re arguing with will probably not be convinced (certainly not after one conversation just do a total 180 and say they agree with you now), but even on Lemmy there are dozens or hundreds of people reading your stuff and seeing whether you make sense and being impacted by it. It means the temptation to just turn it into a shit-throwing contest on both sides is important to avoid, in favor of making compelling arguments in a way that people can get behind, if you actually care about your points landing for anyone who isn’t already a convert.