I recently opened Twitter (or X, whatever you want to call it), and was immediately served a trending topic about the debate of stirred vs unstirred porridge. At a glance, it was trivial. But when I read the replies, people were fighting to the point of bringing up conspiracy theories, ad hominem attacks belittling people's jobs, and discussing life philosophies.

I could only shake my head. Why do humans love spending hours typing long essays to prove their point to anonymous accounts with anime profile pictures who reply with irrelevant memes?

If we look at it from a programming perspective, debating on social media is a perfect example of an infinite loop. A loop of code that has no exit condition or break statement. You will just keep spinning in the same argument until one of you runs out of phone battery or suffers a mental breakdown.

This infinite loop happens because the two parties are running different algorithms, but are waiting on the return value they want from each other. Person A uses a logic algorithm: dropping facts, giving journal links, and hoping Person B will say "oh yeah you are right bro." Meanwhile, Person B uses an ego algorithm: their only goal is to win the debate, so they will bypass all of Person A's facts using logical fallacies, twisting words, and hoping Person A will get emotional and give up.

Because the success parameters of this debate function are never in sync, the loop will never stop. Person A feels they have not won because Person B has not acknowledged the facts. Person B feels they have not won because Person A keeps replying using formal language that makes them look like a know-it-all.

In computer science, we have the concept of the Halting Problem by Alan Turing. Basically, computationally you cannot know for sure whether a program will stop or run forever just by looking at its source code. But in real life, I can guarantee 100 percent that internet debates are definitely infinite loops if you do not quickly realize it and press Ctrl+C aka block the account.

Social media also systematically designs its algorithms to bait you into this loop. Negative emotions (like anger, taking offense, wanting to prove someone wrong) are the highest engagement metrics for their platforms. Their algorithms make huge profits from your time wasted typing long replies that actually have zero impact on the real world. You are just feeding their servers.

So how do you break the loop?

First, set a strict if-else condition before you decide to reply. If the person you are replying to is not your friend, does not give you money, and their arguments have started going ad hominem (attacking you personally), immediately return false and bail out. Do not take the bait.

Second, be self-aware that your mental energy bandwidth is limited. Your brain has a daily connection limit. If you spend it all fighting bots or trolls, you will not have any energy left to do things that actually benefit you, like learning a new skill, playing games, or just taking a good nap.

Third, apply a tech version of stoicism. In coding, we cannot control other people's server environments, we can only control how our application reacts. In the real world, you cannot control other people's stupidity on the internet, but you have full control to close the app, put your phone on the table, and go outside for some fresh air.

Do not pretend to be a hero of truth on the timeline. Your time is too valuable to be debated with people whose only intention is to pick a fight.

Khay