When you mingle in or around communities that posit nonsensical claims, it’s important that you make it clear how little credibility you give them. And one way you can do this is when your interlocutor recommends a long (read: longer than 10 minutes) video for you to watch that supposedly proves or addresses a point in a conversation, you not only have the right but also the obligation to ask them the following questions:
- What unique arguments does this clip demonstrate?
- Which parts of the clip should I pay attention to?
- Can you summarize what the best arguments from this video are?
What unique arguments does this clip demonstrate?
Too often, people who mingle in factually bereft communities share videos that spread the same claims that you have already seen and have already been debunked. Regardless if the community is flat earth, pro-“Palestine”, sovereign citizen, or any other such nonsense, you’ll inevitably run up against the same tired arguments that are entirely unconvincing and yet, they just won’t die.
Thus, the important thing to ask is if the video brings anything new to the debate or discussion, rather than just rehashing old, tired arguments that you can get from any asshole on social media. If they can’t bring up any unique or novel arguments the clip demonstrates, or if they can’t bring up any means by which they finally prove a point that they made that was previously debunked, then why should you spend the time to watch their nonsensical drivel?
Which parts of the clip should I pay attention to?
A lot of videos contain a lot of fluff. Introductions, credits, irrelevant speakers. The point of this question is cutting through all that and getting to the meat and potatoes - why the hell should anyone care what this video has to say? If it’s a video around 20 or more minutes long, why the hell should you have to sit through the whole thing?
Can you summarize the best argument from this video?
If someone can’t summarize the best argument or most convincing argument from this video, they aren’t sharing it in good faith. This is a tactic used by dishonest debaters who use tactics such as the Gish gallop. They insist on “equal time”, but they use their time to lie repeatedly so that when they are done talking, you have a whole litany of off-topic lies and nonsense to debunk. Users of this strategy abound in pseudoscience and bullshit circles like:
- Dwayne Gish
- Kent Hovind
- Ben Shapiro
- Candace Owens
- Kaitlin Bennett
- Ray Comfort
- William Lane Craig
- Dinesh D’Souza
- Alex Jones
- Jordan Peterson
- Ancient Aliens
The chiral twin of this fallacy is /argumentum ad tl;dr/, which involves the use of long walls of text to artificially inflate the text to give it the appearance of depth and quality of information presented. This is the chiral twin because unlike the Gish gallop which relies on a litany of short but legion bullshit points, /argumentum ad tl;dr/ involves arguments so thick and so long, Victor Hugo would blush.
Why these questions?
Videos are unlike textual arguments, which you can skim for important clues and make preliminary decisions as to whether or not you want to continue watching the whole thing. Unlike with text based arguments, videos have their own pace. A person who presents a video argument to you is telling you: “you should spend x amount of minutes watching this video?” If the video is short (like under 10 minutes), I’ll usually oblige, even if I fully believe the person sharing it is full of shit.
However, if someone is sharing a video that is any longer than that, they are asking for more from you and you should be able to ask more from them. Like, what value does this video bring to the argument? Why should this video be considered?
This is doubly important if the way the video is presented (either the title or the thumbnail) shows that in all likelihood, they’re going to present long-debunked arguments. If this is the case, they have to have some pretty novel counter arguments to make their case. If not, they’re wasting your time by regurgitating the same talking points that these people likely shot at you on Twitter or Facebook or any other social media platform. Why reward that with any more attention?
An example: the Video « Debates » Between Kent Hovind and Aron Ra
After their discussion on the Non-Sequitur Show, Kent Hovind challenged Aron Ra to a series of video debates. However, recognizing that Kent Hovind wanted each round to get exponentially longer in order to try to wash out every person who wanted to watch the follow up videos, Aron endeavoured to try to make shorter responses while still addressing the meat of all of Kent’s points, ignoring points he had previously addressed.
You can watch a playlist of these videos here to get a sense of this strategy. Instead of addressing Kent's stupid points over and over again, he addresses them once and then moves on.