That’s what someone wrote to me on Twitter yesterday. Ugh. Doesn’t it make you want to barf? What’s most annoying about people who use pathetic, weaselly phrases like this one (normally as a means of eliciting sympathy from their pocket band of social media fucktard sycophants) is that they normally take the “bad words” completely out of context.

Now, I’m not going to go into the conversational context any more than necessary, because that particular debate is over, and he and I have kissed and made up. But I am citing his tweet as an example of how not to conduct yourself in a public discussion.

Firstly, I never used the word “idiot”. (In fact, I hardly ever do. I much prefer “moron”.) I said “Are they stupid?”, referring to people who engage in certain behaviours. Not the same thing.

Secondly, I never called him a retard. I said something of the order “If you do x, it makes you look retarded.” Again, not the same thing.

There’s a nasty little sleight of hand going on here, changing an adjective used about someone’s behaviour into a noun describing them. I think most people are smart enough to see the difference between “Your behaviour is retarded” and “You’re a retard”, because they’re very different things. Ask a libel lawyer or forum moderator.

Think about the difference in connotative meaning between the two. On the one hand, you’re saying someone is acting in a foolish way. (This harmless enough usage has become especially prevalent in recent years after widespread adoption in America.) On the other, you’re saying they’re mentally deficient (and, you may think, being highly disrespectful to disabled people in the process).

But just because most people can see through such nonsense doesn’t make it cool to play silly tricks: someone who sees your response out of context, and who hasn’t seen the whole conversation, might take it at face value.

It’s not authentic. Hence, it’s not cool.

What is it about some people that makes them come out with crap like this? Is it a way of closing down the debate when they know they’re in the wrong? A way of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat? Making their enemy look like the bad guy (this one is used against Right-wing journalists all the time)? Or is it just a manifestation of a generally smug and superior demeanour?

Whatever it is, it annoys the hell out of me. Neither mindlessly and meaninglessly repeating “I respect your opinion”, nor deliberately and disingenuously twisting your opponents words to make them seem more offensive than they really were, makes the debate go away.

It just makes you look retarded.