Why Your Hot Take Is Not an Argument
A thing happened in the world yesterday. Within minutes, thousands of people had opinions about it. Within hours, those opinions had hardened into positions. Within a day, the positions had calcified into identities, and anyone who questioned them was treated not as a fellow thinker but as an enemy.
No one, in this entire process, made an argument.
I want to be specific about what I mean by “argument,” because the word has been so thoroughly degraded by popular usage that many people believe they are making one when they are doing nothing of the kind.