Argumentum ad hominem: attacking the person making the argument, rather than the argument itself, when the attack on the person is completely irrelevant to the argument the person is making.
Also known as: personal abuse, personal attacks, abusive fallacy, damning the source, name calling, refutation by caricature, against the person, against the man.
In the advent of social media it has been known that people of different culture, race and origins can interact in each other through the widespread medium which is fastly growing in number.
On a daily basis, people from different parts of the world engage with one another. They interact and sometimes they agree to each other at some point. But mostly, because of the diversity of culture and tradition they tend to disagree a little bit more often than they agree to each other.
This is where arguments start to begin and sometimes never actually end. The endless battle between beliefs, traditions, political views, points and even to the tiniest detail that there is to discuss.
Argumentum ad hominem is the most common fallacy committed by people engaged on arguments and discussions in social media.
Instead of addressing to the topic at hand the person attacks the the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.
But here's a tip, when others verbally attack you, take it as a compliment to the quality of your argument. It is usually a sign of desperation on their part.
People discuss different topics in social media with their own personal motives and agenda. Due to the lack of gate keeping body that regulate acts pertaining to these topics the social media remains a cradle for narcissism. A trait that this medium has promoted.
Is social media becoming an outlet for narcissistic individuals to self-promote? And is social media turning us and our children into narcissists?
Meaningful issues are rarely examined or questioned and social media has made this okay by allowing us to alienate ourselves from diverse perspectives.
We're badly losing ourselves in our social media and we’re more concerned with being famous than we are with being nice.
I know you’ve heard it before, but consider just how much time you spend online and how much time you spend worrying about your digital self image. It’s probably too much. Be aware, and don’t be so narcissistic. There’s too much of that shit in the world already.
It’s no secret that social media has made us more comfortable with the idea of self absorption. But it's not yet the end, there's still a hope for humanity.
-WUV-