As a friend said many years ago: you don't have to attend every fight you're invited to. "Pick your battles" is another phrasing of it. As I've gotten older,

As a friend said many years ago: you don't have to attend every fight you're invited to. "Pick your battles" is another phrasing of it. As I've gotten older, I've come to realise that there are people (including offline, including close friends and/or family) with whom discussions simply turn into arguments ... and there's no logic that will prevail. Increasingly I set boundaries, both for myself, and with those others. I've also realised that some things don't need to be arguments. I'll state my terms, request, proposal, plans, whatever (and even that only if necessary or plausibly considerate), and if there's some antagonistic response ... I ignore it. If the person actively thwarts my doing something (often to help them, and why people get so combative about assistance I can't even begin to understand...), I'll simply lay down tools. "You don't want me to do X ..." or "You're going to make it more unpleasant / inconvenient for me to do X ... then you can do it yourself." It's much easier to do this if you can walk (or otherwise) get away. A space you can control (walls, locking doors, or exit from location) helps tremendously. Some of this transfers to online discussion. Mostly I communicate to share my own knowledge/experience, or to try to understand others. Rarely to convince. Occasionally to refute or show the inherent paradox or inconsistency of a statement, though that's usually aimed at other readers. (The lurking audience is almost always far larger than the participating one.)