The Modes of Online Discussion

The internet is used for many things, but the prominence of social media puts online discussion close to the top of this list. It’s not just about discussing with friends, though – the popularity of forums like Reddit shows an enormous market for talking about anything with strangers.

This can lead to a lot of heated debates when it comes to things that people are passionate about, like fiction or sports. Still, the form that these discussions take often goes back to the same few examples repeatedly, making their way out of forums and into articles or other types of posts.

Quantification

People love to rank things. Any time there is a popular TV show with multiple seasons, or a movie or game franchise with multiple entries, there will be an abundance of lists that emerge looking to put them in a neat order of worst to best. The subjective element keeps so many of these alive – people want to know what other people think, perhaps to validate their own opinions, but that creates opportunities for more contentious rankings to emerge, which can generate further discussion. 

Even in discussions that aren’t initially about this, the topic can end up being geared in that way – explaining that the reason something works in one case is through a negative example, where you point to how it was used poorly in another situation. The sheer abundance of these lists and these instances tells you how popular it can be.

Analysis

However, for some people, a straightforward ranking might not go deep enough. People don’t just want to know what other people like; they want to know why they like them. Most people might know that Empire Strikes Back is generally regarded as the best Star Wars film, but why is that? Of course, what’s typically considered the best doesn’t have to have any bearing on what you think is best, but it can feel as though popular opinion carries a kind of social weight.

This is something that can be found in absolutely every medium and industry. Going outside film and TV and into the world of sport and other forms of popular entertainment, it’s not hard to find discussions on the greatest football players of all time, or the legacies of WWE legends, for example. You can find an opinion about almost anything.

Critique

There is also the opposite to this – where someone looks to take something that is perhaps popular or otherwise highly regarded, and point to why they don’t think that this is the case. This is ultimately the same kind of situation as when someone presents an unpopular ranking – looking to generate controversy and discussion through taking a contrarian stance. Though in some situations, it might be due to how the social landscape has changed around what’s being critiqued. For example, an older movie might be considered a classic, but over the years, as social norms and standards change, there might be elements of it that are considered outdated or even offensive.