>Social shaming also isn’t an argument. It’s a demand for listeners to place someone outside the boundary of people who deserve to be heard; to classify them as so repugnant that arguing with them is only dignifying them. If it works, supporting one side of an argument imposes so much reputational cost that only a few weirdos dare to do it, it sinks outside the Overton Window, and the other side wins by default.
> Nobody expects this to convince anyone... People who use this strategy know exactly what they’re doing and are often quite successful. The goal is not to convince their opponents, or even to hurt their opponent’s feelings, but to demonstrate social norms to bystanders.
Allowing yourself to be dragged into the same argument over and over again, because some people are just not listening (creationism, flat earthers, moon hoax believers, ...) is a waste of time. Publicly reminding the readers about the majority view on the situation and then letting the argument go is fine as a response.
(And yes, the majority view is that Rand is not worthy of any special attention as either a philosopher, political theorist, economist or author. Not more worthy than any other random member of those groups of people.)
Of course it's fine for you to dismiss their entire point with derailment even further into meta-arguments because, after all, they started it /s