Forgiveness?

In one of the cartoon discussion groups I'm in, there's a person I keep my eye on to avoid contact. I don't want to talk to her. We're interested in a lot of the same things, but I take care to avoid replying directly to her and I do not engage.

I do this because I had a bad experience with her and she committed one of the sins I can't handle. Intellectual dishonesty.

We disagreed about a fact. A fact that was easy to verify. She said a character said a certain line and provided specific information about her age. I said that character did not say that line and the age of the character has never been provided. I was understandably confused that we were arguing about a fact--there is literally only one answer. Did the character say the line you say you remember, or didn't she? Well, go watch the episode or read a transcript. Easy to find out who's right.

She refused to look at the transcript and refused to go watch the video. She said she "remembered it differently," and said we should just agree to disagree. After which she chose to carry on discussing the subject as if she did in fact know the character's age.

(This person's an adult--I'm not arguing with a kid. Just thought I'd make that clear.)

This kind of nonsense makes me see red. I'm happy to disagree with someone on interpretation of facts, or opinions, or theories. I'm not okay with wasting my time talking to someone who's going to argue with me about whether something happened, when it's easy to check whether it did.

This person also tried to cast doubt on the veracity of several other claims I made in the conversation: most notably, when I was quoting from a book that was written by the cartoon's writers, she said "well, you say that, but since I've never seen the book myself, there's no way for me to know if it says what you say it does." I responded with photos of the pages. And she responded with pearl-clutching over how my attitude is so nasty and I'm being so rude to her.

I can't have a conversation with people who go out of their way to avoid facts.

Intellectual dishonesty. If you repeatedly claim that you only accept ~FACTS~ but deliberately avoid looking at sources, throw your hands up, and say it's impossible to know something and we might as well proceed as if your opinion is as good as my fact . . . I have nothing to say to you. Especially since if I back you into a corner to make you admit you're refusing valid proof, you'll derail into how mean I'm being. (And of course, I'm "mean" if I hold you to standards while not apologizing, or refusing to pretend my facts are opinions so they sound less threatening.)

When you arbitrarily accept only "facts" that support your own position, and slap anyone who tries to reason with you with the tone argument, you are not a worthy conversation partner. And I will avoid you.

I bring this up because after many months of avoiding this person, she went after me again yesterday. We were both talking in the same thread, and though we weren't directly arguing with each other, she kept telling different people in the thread this same misconception she has and insisting it's factual. I decided to talk around her, replying to the original thread-starter to present my position without directly engaging her, but she then just started replying to me like she's allowed to talk to me or something.

I responded once with an uncommented link because I didn't want to talk to her but I was really having a hard time letting it go, if I'm honest--she was doing her whole "well maybe X, but that's never been confirmed, guess there's no way to know ~oh well~" nonsense, so I linked to the confirmation she said didn't exist. Then she started talking back to that too, at one point interpreting the confirmation as THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT IT SAID and concluding, again "so there's still no way to know!"

I corrected her, and then I told her I had been trying to avoid talking to her, and did not want to engage further.

Cue excuses ("I'm not familiar with Tumblr, so I somehow interpreted a black and white sentence as the opposite of what it said, conveniently, since that would support my opinion"), plus four paragraphs of "well my goodness, I would have thought we could talk like adults, just because we once had a coarse conversation doesn't mean I think you're a bad person, I had thought you would extend me the same courtesy, blahblahblah."

No baby. It's not about forgiveness.

I am angry about this, obviously. I have feelings about it. But my feelings aren't what matter here. My problem is that talking to this person WASTES MY TIME AND ENERGY, and she has not changed at all over the time I haven't been speaking to her.

I'm not worried about forgiving someone's sins or getting over bitterness I'm harboring. What I'm worried about is getting sucked into conversations where I can't share a known fact without being asked to pony up proof, and then having my proof arbitrarily rejected if she doesn't feel like looking at it or considering it. She's one of those people who pretends to like documented facts and intricate arguments--until someone uses one against a pet theory of hers. Then all of a sudden the sources she'd otherwise trust aren't good enough, or there's still room for interpretation because she says so. Or if I'm quoting the cartoon show itself--a primary source whose content can't be dismissed--she could always just flat-out avoid LOOKING AT IT so she doesn't have to admit I've shown her she's wrong to any reasonable person's satisfaction. And instead of admitting she's wrong and going on to have a real discussion about it, we're now going to talk about how I was mean to tell her she should have the integrity to check her own facts.

So I told her so.

I told her forgiveness isn't the point. Intellectual honesty is the point. What in the world am I supposed to get out of a conversation with someone who doesn't accept the results of fact-checks if they prove she's wrong?

It sounds really petty to keep saying it this way, neener-neener, I'm right and you're wrong, but . . . if we're trying to puzzle out conclusions from incomplete information and the conversation is already ABOUT being a gigantic nerd, like, really? I disprove your "fact" and you just walk around what I said even though it invalidates your argument? You think you can pull a "fact" out of your pocket and talk to me like it's a given, even though there's an easy way to check if your memory has failed you and YOU REFUSE TO DO IT? I just don't know why she's not EMBARRASSED that she did that, and that I know she did that. She has yet to even acknowledge that it happened. Any time I express irritation or outrage that she's DELIBERATELY NOT LOOKING AT FACTUAL INFORMATION so she can keep repeating false stuff, while saying she'd rather "agree to disagree" on a matter of FACT, the conversation flips into shaming me for my attitude. What's funny is I'm pretty sure she has no idea she's doing it. She's got some kind of justification machine going in her head as to why she can't be bothered to look up facts but expects everyone else she's talking to to present them to her. (But she can still ignore them if she wants.) I'm so confused how someone who must know she's doing this can possibly feel any bafflement that someone doesn't want to talk to her, unless she literally can't tell she's doing it.

Anyway, it feels good to have a nice rant about this sort of thing--THAT'S something I'm happy to "waste" time on since it cleanses my emotional palate at least--and I hope in the future she does not try to engage with me. As a closing, can I just say how frigging passive-aggressive and revolting it is when people like this "apologize" (you know, the "I'm sorry you're upset" variety--"I'm sorry that you can't just move forward peacefully without holding a grudge," that kind of thing), and then tell you to have a good day, with a heart emoji. When I know how insincere you are about every other supposedly authentic conversation you're looking to have, I can't help but see everything else you do as snotty and false.

(Another person in the same thread left the conversation and turned off his notifications because of her snotty arguing too. She gave him the same kind of "apology.")

Just be honest, people, and maybe you won't have to deal with people refusing to talk to you. But I'm sure it's somebody else's fault in her head. So tiresome.