I've been thinking about this. Flabberghaster already took the "I have never been rightfully criticized" joke, so I must engage seriously.

I think trying to turn the tide of a conversation on somewhere like Reddit is very different than trying to change an individual persons mind. On Reddit, if you can belittle someone well enough, you won't change their mind, but you might change a hundred onlookers minds.

But I do agree- if you want to change an individuals mind, you need to be compassionate and generous and give them outs where they can save face. If you can bring them to agree with you, it should never be embarrassing or hypocritical.

When I was a teen, I was a little MRA shit, and folks at SRS and The Fempire basically saved me. But I did like to think of myself as a perfectly logical automata(*) which helped me see through the jabs and circlejerks and whatnot.

That said, I can't remember the last time I was criticized and unready to hear it. I think I've always been able to see that people can say useful or correct things, even if they're dicks about it or are incorrect about a lot of other things.

* i am using the label from your post but i would be so embarrassed to earnestly use this label for myself. "perfectly logical" is just the floor. u gotta have good epistemics and u also gotta have a good capacity to think beyond just the tools of logic. they call me "philosophy of thot" for a reason