[jonnathanson]

Most people start from the (ostensibly reasonable) assumption that you can't win an argument on the internet. It doesn't matter how cogent, how thought-provoking, how thoroughly researched and meticulously cited your position may be. You're not convincing the other side of anything. At best you can "win the crowd" in the Gladiator sense of the term.

And this is what encourages most of the fallacy-citing, semantics nitpicking, and prosaic grandstanding seen in pseudo-sophisticated internet arguments. People aren't trying to convince the other side of anything in particular; they're trying to convince the audience -- oftentimes, more imagined than actual -- of their intellectual superiority.

People these days join conversations, by default, in fight-or-flight mode. They presume hostility is lurking in every response, or, conversely, that responding to a post necessitates correcting it in some way. If more of them assumed good intent until proven otherwise, they wouldn't rush headlong into internet arguments.

[MartinCron]

Most people start from the (ostensibly reasonable) assumption that you can't win an argument on the internet

I should be spending more time in whatever corners of the Internet where you are.

[EvanKelly]

Maybe not... his point is that this premise causes internet arguers to play to the crowd, rather than to engage in meaningful discourse with the person they are arguing with.

There are alternatives to winning an argument. A very positive one would be coming to an understanding of why your opponent holds their view, but continuing to disagree because what you value is different.