I am not really into debating. Because some things are not and should not up for debate. BUT

when you do, do you ever debate the opposite side, just to make them hear how dumb they sound? and if so, does it work? How many have you converted?

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LordShadowfire · M

That's called devil's advocate trolling, or Poeing (named for computer scientist Nathan Poe, who famously said that without some kind of indication, it's almost impossible to tell if an extremist online is joking or serious).

Yes, I've done it. I used to do it anonymously on Yahoo! Answers, to make argumentative Christian creationists realize how ridiculous they sounded. I even went as far as to make an account called Nathan, with a profile picture of Edgar Allan Poe, just to test Poe's Law to the extreme. At first, people thought I was serious. Then I started adding more and more quotations from Edgar Allan Poe into my posts, until people finally got the joke. It actually took a couple of months.