Now, don’t get me wrong, this is prime dunking material. Everything about it is perfect. It’s the absolute pinnacle of engagement bait. It’s clearly been ripped wholesale from a viral post elsewhere and submitted under the flimsy pretext that it’s an original thought. It’s an uncanny simulacrum of wisdom that lacks anything wise about it.

Naturally, then, I followed standard internet protocol – when given the opportunity for a snarky rejoinder, do not hesitate. I hit that quote-restack button, and dashed off the most scathing comment I could think of:

And the likes came flooding in. A hundred tiny dopamine boosts, scattered across the week. The machine had smiled on me. But beyond that, I became in my own modest way something of a trendsetter. Several other people joined in with their own rebuttals, including people with far higher profiles on the platform than me – and certainly far higher profiles than Frank, who had never asked for any of this.

But after a few days, I noticed something – the original post had been updated to include Frank’s own editorialising above the screenshot:

Now, standard internet protocol here I believe is to quote this dril tweet:1

But I’m not going to do that, because at some point you become self-aware and realise you’re just dancing for the algorithm. And this type of engagement isn’t constructive, it’s the sort of thing that turns a discussion of ideas into a flame war. A more useful exercise is to try to understand where the thought process that motivates posts like Frank’s comes from. Obviously, the notion that all of nature lives in conditions of material adequacy and we humans alone have invented deprivation is absurd – but is there something salvageable here, some deeper moral truth underneath the garbled evolutionary history?

Because there are two Darwinisms. One is the descriptive theory of evolution by natural selection, the other is a normative ethical system under which survival of the fittest is elevated from an empirical observation to a moral lodestar. And I’m certainly no social Darwinist – on the contrary, I believe society is good precisely because it alone allows us to escape the Darwinian trap.

And this kind-of lines up with Frank’s criticism of my “identity being utterly founded in [my] western work ethic”. Now, I assure him that’s not the case – I’m quite the lazy bum, truth be told – but I think I understand how he’s arrived at the misunderstanding. Because if Frank is conflating the two Darwinisms, I can see how he thinks I and his other detractors must be tiresome hustle bros with a billionaire mindset. It probably didn’t help that my initial response, optimised for witty brevity rather than explanatory clarity, wouldn’t have made sense to anyone who couldn’t fill in those missing logical steps themselves.

Naturally, I and several others with views across the political spectrum had tried to point out the flaws to Frank. But he wasn’t in listening mode, and why would he be, when we’re all in dunking mode? We all know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a pile-on. So I figured it would be more productive to get a better handle on who Fred was, and what made him tick.

I flicked through Frank’s notes, and it was, to be honest, pretty boring. Boilerplate left-wing pieties (and very America-brained ones), most of them restacks from others and many in the meme/screenshot format. Scattered among these was some personal stuff geared towards nature and animals, particularly his own dogs, which made me confident that Frank was a real person and not a bot. The overall impression was of someone whose real passion was nature, animals and the outdoors, and who was clearly and proudly left-wing but in a rather vibesy way where he outsourced his opinions to tribal thought leaders.2

Well, now suddenly it all makes sense. Frank sees this meme about how nature is a utopia and humans are uniquely sinful, and that’s the jackpot, that presses every button he has and fits his preconceptions like a glove. It’s like this post was grown in a lab for express purpose of maximally grabbing Frank’s attention and emotional attachment. Of course he’s going to get frustrated and lash out when he gets criticised for sharing it - especially when the criticism is itself largely motivated by tribal allegiance and a desire to make the outgroup look foolish. (I’d be lying if I pretended this didn’t factor into it at least a little when I decided to get involved.)

So clearly, persuading Frank is out of the question. The “wonderful nature, fallen humans” narrative is too emotionally resonant for him, and we his interlocutors are in no mood to discuss this non-judgementally. The discussion of why it is important to quell this narrative is best left for another day, but in the meantime, there is an important lesson to learn; and that is that these dunks achieve nothing. They are the junk food of online discourse - satisfying in the moment, but unhealthy in the long run. We all think in our heads that a well-crafted dunk will cause our doubters to instantly recognise our own genius, but of course they will do no such thing, they will get angry and defensive and double down. There will be more anger, less trust, and nobody will have been moved any closer to the truth.

Which is my very long-winded and roundabout way of apologising. To Frank, and to all the many strangers I’ve gotten into pointless and ill-tempered arguments with over the years. I’m sorry to you all. And Frank, if you’re reading this - go and take your dogs for a walk, feel the beauty of the world around you. That’s a million times more important than the opinions of an online freak like me.