The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
You aren't going to persuade actual individual people by rhetoric directed at those people. Jesus Christ didn't descend to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus and politely say "Hey, Saul, you have some good points about murdering my followers, but look at this exceedingly well reasoned proof of why I am the word and the light and the way." Crisis or intuitive vision convert committed people, rhetoric does not, unless the stakes were so low that nothing interesting was involved to begin with.
So you need to start by defining your goals/targets, and keeping track of what you're trying to do. Don't go in thinking your learned friend in argument is going to admit you are correct and give you a crisp $20 bill. In my mind the proper goals in arguing with anyone I ideologically despise online are:
to "fight the good fight" on a forum I enjoy and signal to silent lurkers who agree with me that this kind of thing won't go unchallenged, hopefully raising their spirits and preventing my comrades from fleeing. This goes for both Right and Left deviants, and goes for all kinds of forums. If an SJW starts up with making a baseball forum all about racism, I'm going to call them out for bringing their hobby horse in; same if an unironic pedo shows up in a rightist forum. It is important to prevent it from seeming like these people have the run of the place unchallenged; if no one stands up to them pretty soon their rhetoric dominates and becomes the forum culture. For this purpose, the important thing to is to express your beliefs and disapproval of your opponents beliefs in a clear way, and then stop arguing. Don't get dragged down into long comment threads, they will just make everyone think "Oh, don't respond to X, you'll end up getting harassed."
to convert any "soft" members of the opposite side, the normies. This is less likely, but at least possible. You're never going to convert someone who is committed to their beliefs, you aren't going to turn (on a 1-5 scale) a 5 into a 1, that's Road to Damascus stuff; but you may get a 4 down to a 3, or a 3 to a 2. Most normies are going to respond best to ethos based arguments: you should make the speaker, you, seem to be scrupulously fair and fun and intelligent. Seem like you're having a good time, being nice; never getting angry or bitter. Social change works where it feels like its proponents are having fun, it fails where its proponents seem bitter and sad.
for your own amusement. I don't know what amuses you, but what amuses me is saying what I like and not getting dragged into a long debate with someone arguing in bad faith. Block quote from Sartre:
An opponent can always tie you in knots if they don't, fundamentally, care about the truth. So keep track of whether you are having fun, and cut it off if you aren't.
All this points to a simple rule: be nice, have fun, move on.
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