[Maru]

There's a lot of gaslighting that goes on in this section when sensitive topics are brought up, so yeah.. it's going to make it seem like people "buddy up" in order to take charge of the situation, when really it is mutual discomfort in seeing other people in such a common position... people themselves really hate being gaslit... like in our culture we do not handle this well at all... and this is so incredibly common on social media/online in general, so we are all familiar with that form of emotional manipulation from personal experience...

It is also the single worst debate "tactic" that we use, to gaslit someone into taking on a particular stance that wasn't their proposition and then raining projections onto them as they try to deconstruct the prior ones... so yeah, it leads to some unnecessarily ridiculous exchanges between folk imo when maybe refraining from fighting on those grounds entirely would better "level" the discussion(s)... people are allowed to disagree, of course, but when it is implied by either other party that their resolving to disagree is meant to be the perfect illusion, and here's the bait&switch that is proof they are the ones who are the actual oppressor of the thread, then we've already entered that territory... like crazy narcissist territory.

For me the obvious clue is when someone basically says, "Ok here's my version of facts, and here with it I attached my emotional résumé on the subject"... usually a huge red flag for me the debate will be nothing but endless u-turns based on wide-reaching emotional arguments (i.e. subjective truth(s)). We're not only debating what facts are now, we're forced to resort to fighting other people's personal demons on their behalf, and then told they are far too powerful and cannot be killed without specially designed weapons... it's like a bad JRPG, man.