I've found this is entirely dependent on your audience's biases. An appeal with facts, reasonable viewpoints and what not is effective if your audience is alre

I've found this is entirely dependent on your audience's biases. An appeal with facts, reasonable viewpoints and what not is effective if your audience is already heavily biased towards your viewpoint. Appeals based on emotion and whining are likely to be called out by an audience that's inherently skeptical or believes very specific ideals surrounding the nature of discussion (the "debate to reach a higher truth, not to win" crowd). Unfortunately, I've found what you said to be true with audiences who remain on the fence or don't really care about whatever issue is at hand. Many posters here fall into the camp to whom discussion is an attempt to reach the truth so they fail to see the rhetorical forest for the trees. That's not to say we don't have our blind-spots when it comes to emotional appeals, however. That's just human nature.