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Classic reactive

Inflammatory content designed to produce an emotional reply from a specific person or group. The provocation is the point; the topic is a vehicle.

Responding at this level

Disengagement still usually works, but the pull to answer is much stronger because the bait is now personal. This is where knowing the pattern by name does most of its work.

10 tactics at this level

  • Flaming

    Direct hostility aimed at a person rather than an argument, intended to produce an emotional reply.

    Bait

  • Ad hominem baiting

    Attacking the person so the reply becomes self-defence rather than argument.

    Rhetorical

  • Quote-dunking

    Requoting someone to your own audience for ridicule, so the reply is performed rather than exchanged.

    Amplification

  • Tone policing

    Rejecting a point because of how it was said, converting the subject into the speaker's manner.

    Rhetorical

  • Strawmanning

    Refuting a weakened or invented version of the argument instead of the one actually made.

    Rhetorical

  • Nut-picking

    Presenting the least defensible member of a group as representative of it.

    Rhetorical

  • Hypocrisy bait

    Provoking an inconsistency so the conversation becomes about your consistency rather than the issue.

    Rhetorical

  • Sensitive-topic digression

    Introducing a charged subject to make continuing the original discussion socially costly.

    Rhetorical

  • The "just joking" defence

    Retroactively reframing a provocation as humour, so objecting to it becomes the offence.

    Bait

  • Poe's-Law gaming

    Performing a position ambiguously enough that sincerity and parody cannot be distinguished, then punishing either reading.

    Bait