Arguing on the Internet Isn't a Constructive Hobby
Let's do things differently! Here's an ultra-cheap book to get you started
This book cover was designed by Andrea Cocke (my daughter)
Do you ever find yourself getting drawn into fierce debates on social media? Do the discussions turn toxic much too quickly? Have you ever wondered why this happens so easily? Or why it is so hard to persuade your friends that their views are wrong? Or why they find it so hard to convince you that you are wrong?
I must plead guilty to being an extremely argumentative person. After joining Facebook in 2007 and Twitter in 2012, I engaged in many hours of bad-tempered internet in-fighting. It was a complete waste of time! Nobody ever changed their mind about anything, least of all me.
By about 2014, I began to realize the futility of internet debates, but taming my argumentative streak proved to be very difficult. I began laying the groundwork for the Sharpen Your Axe project around 2016 by doing lots of research on why people find conspiracy theories so appealing (as an investigative journalist, I found the conspiratorial mindset to be built on weak foundations). I slowly wrote the beta version of a book on thinking critically about current affairs and was ready to publish it by the end of 2020. I set up this blog on Substack to promote it and got into a groove of publishing weekly essays.
Eventually, I came to realize that I hadn’t sharpened my axe enough with the beta version. The tone was still too argumentative; and making my research transparent made the book much too long and unwieldy, with too many detours. I decided to make everything much sharper. The result is a new e-book with just 134 pages. My aim was to make it much more readable and accessible. I hope I achieved it, but that judgement call isn’t one for me to make!
The book is now ready. I just published it on Amazon´s Kindle store. Unfortunately, Amazon wouldn’t let me give it away for free, but I have given it the lowest price possible. It is less than a cup of coffee! I would be delighted if you would check it out! If you don’t have a Kindle and want to read it on your phone, tablet or computer, it is very easy to download the Kindle software for free for Android, Apple or Windows.
The title of the book is inspired by a quote that is often incorrectly ascribed to Abraham Lincoln. The earliest version says: “A woodsman was once asked, ‘What would you do if you had just five minutes to chop down a tree?’ He answered, ‘I would spend the first two and a half minutes sharpening my axe.’ Let us take a few minutes to sharpen our perspective.”
The idea behind axe sharpening is to think a little about your methodology; welcome feedback; but be aware of your emotions and those of other people when you disagree on issues that provoke strong emotions. The new version of the book lays out a simple template to do this instead of diving straight into a fight with a blunt axe.
The topics of the book include some very compelling questions. Why do we get defensive when we feel our worldview is under attack? What is cognitive dissonance? Why does social media generate so much cognitive dissonance when we disagree with someone? Why is it so easy and so comforting to build echo chambers? Why is a slow and thoughtful essay on Substack a healthier response to a deep disagreement than a quickly drafted reply tweet?
Of course, Amazon’s recommendation algorithms are very sensitive to reviews. If you enjoy this blog, I would greatly appreciate your support in downloading the book. If you could find five minutes to give it a review on Amazon once you have finished reading, it would be amazing. Let’s show the world that there is a healthier way of handling disagreement!
At the risk of being repetitive: DOWNLOAD SHARPEN YOUR AXE HERE. The comments are open. See you next week!
Sharpen Your Axe is a project to develop a community who want to think critically about the media, conspiracy theories and current affairs without getting conned by gurus selling fringe views. Please subscribe to get this content in your inbox every week. Shares on social media are appreciated! If this is the first post you have seen, I recommend starting with the first-anniversary post, which includes links to the beta version of the book.
Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.
I'm sorry that you decided that "making my research transparent made the book much too long and unwieldy, with too many detours. I decided to make everything much sharper."
There are lots of short books that tell people how they ought to behave, think, etc. The evidence provided for the recommendations generally amounts to "I think it's a good idea". People often take the recommendations on board, presumably because they see the author as something between higher status and more informed than they are themselves, and therefore worth obeying and/or emulating.
Unfortunately, they don't agree with each other. Without evidence, the reader has no particular grounds for deciding that Rupert Cocke is (or is not) a better person to obey/emulate than Alex Jones. So they pick based on which one they already agree with, or their friends recommend, or similar. Or maybe which one has the more enjoyable writing style.
Obviously, I'm writing this without first reading your book. It may not have fallen into this particular trap. You didn't say that you'd omitted evidence, or footnotes - just your process of discovering that evidence. But the sentence I quoted leaves me fearing that those were also omitted, particularly given the length of the book.