[joe_the_user]

>> everyone argues from an emotional perspective

> You kind of have to. If you were not emotionally invested in some way, you wouldn’t be arguing.

The thing is, if you're talking about an average online debater, their emotional motivation is likely quite confused. The emotional distribution might be: 20% wanting to appear smart/reasonable, 30% wanting to insult their idea of bad people, 30% wanting to reinforce their lifestyle as valid, etc or whatever. With that, you could can could translate liamrosen's comment to say "if they're motivated 30% to appear smart, you can involve them in the framework" and once you involve the person, Cialdini's commitment and consistency can strong motivators to keep them there.

That said, I think this does raise the point that there are other good way to deal with the emotions behinds arguments that aren't mentioned in liamrosen's essay (the OP). One standard approach to determine the emotion behind a given irrational claim, acknowledge the emotion, sympathize with it and then go back and show that the original claim is unnecessary.