| > If someone makes a spurious allegation against you then I think you should defend yourself as much as possible 1. Defending yourself makes you look guilty. 2. Defending yourself can provide legal ammunition to the opposition. 3. If it's not a legal matter, defending yourself can provide the opposition with words to manipulate to make you look even worse. 4. If they're already making spurious allegations against you, your replies will just prompt them to make more spurious allegations, much of which you may not be able to disprove. Their process of continually coming up with "new information", even if it's fake, will seem genuine to outsiders (due to cognitive bias). Responding just gives them new avenues to attack. 5. If you do defend yourself, it has to be in the form of an attack on the opposition, to discredit them. They can continue to come up with new claims all day which will just make people believe them more. You have to make it so people don't buy anything they say. 6. Besides the tactics of one-on-one mud-slinging, multiple parties provides greater weight to claims or concerns. Even if you have proof that someone is wrong, if they have 5 people all claiming the same thing, the crowd will believe them over you. 7. If this involves some kind of tight-knit in-group or community, you have to completely discredit your opposition for anyone to give a crap what you say. The biggest problem with defending yourself is that you think the truth will win out, or the truth will come out in the end. It doesn't. The most convincing tactics win out. Lies are a lot easier weapons to use than the truth, and a lot more effective. And all of this also becomes a lot more difficult depending on the circumstances of the claims. Nobody will care if you're right if it looks like you might be wrong. |