This is a first for me. Here’s the transcript of a chat I just had with an old business contact. Edited to remove the irrelevant bits, and to protect the clueless:

XXX: you probably don’t know this, but google is a big part of the govt plan to monitor people, and google’s in the world’s best position to do that. my favorite is google’s idea to remotely activate the microphone on people’s pc’s and record everything that happens while their pc is on

me: so it’s obviously useless for me to point out that you might be wrong, since I don’t know what’s going on

me: instead, I’m going to nicely ask you to share whatever you’re smoking :)

XXX: that is public information, so whatever

me: conspiracy theories don’t exactly qualify as “public info”, you know :)

XXX: oh fuck off. i really cannot handle that kind of insult to my intelligence.

XXX: get educated about things before you insult someone who has done some research

me: and you are in a better position to know than somebody who works at google, why exactly?

XXX: obviously you haven’t even bothered to spend 5 minutes googling it for yourself, so stop wasting my time.

(XXX has changed status to: Busy)

me: you can tell well founded arguments when the other person gets rude and aggressive instead of presenting arguments… but whatever

me: have a nice day too

XXX: facts are not something you debate. you verify facts to be true or false. you haven’t bothered to check the facts, have you? presenting arguments is done when there is an opinion to be argued. do you understand the difference between opinions to be debated and facts to be verified? now, really, don’t waste more of my time.

XXX: and you’re who started the aggressiveness and rudeness by implying that i’m some kind of dope smoking conspiracy nut.