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If we are judged to be ranting buffoons by a third party, what does that matter?
I made a post I think last year on subreddit as to why the echo chamber is the ultimate destination for any kind of social group. Even on this place most people are in alignment on things like SocJus and transgenderism and such. When your style of communication is incompatible with another person's, let alone held values, how can you deal with them? People would rather hang out in places that are agreeable to them.
I remember a particular banpost that was made shortly after Roe V Wade was undone, and there were all these non-regulars you'd never seen before. There was one woman asking about a particular type of diet, and when questioned on aspects of that diet she devolved into ALLCAPS insults. This was a person simply not capable of engaging with the sort of deconstruction of ideas that occurs here. Most people I think are not: to them, ideas gives them grounding in this confusing, frightening world. Ideas are not things they defend with argumentation, they are things they defend with passion.
To you, the old lady was a ranting buffon. Perhaps in her eyes, you were just one of many sheeple.
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