Full agreement. I think another reason the debate bro caught on was that it makes for better content, even before the modern content economy.

Back in the day when the archetypal internet debates were atheists and science educators vs creationists, you could see it just as effectively. Nobody wanted to watch someone on their side go in with an open mind, open to being convinced and for both sides to come to a position entirely based on the evidence. Hell, I still don’t like that because one side has reproducible evidence and the other failed to indoctrinate me as a teenager.

A lot of modern bad faith debate tactics come back to creationists, with the infamous Gish gallop named after a creationist. And from there the opposition had to learn to play the game. Debate, not as a neutral shared pursuit of truth, the clash of thesis, antithesis, and evidence to distill an agreeable and defensible synthesis, but rather as a verbal gladiatorial contest.

The pro evolution side split with the death of new atheism, they’re on all sides now. A lot of the more committed debaters went right for varied reasons, and we wound up in a position where we needed stuff like the alt right playbook to teach how to argue against the dishonest.

And on the other side of the equation you have the internet rationalist movement, who are infamously bad at the “this sounds like bullshit” test among other flaws. They strive to accept any debate with an open mind, and find themselves a good example of why you need to keep some biases that while you’re open to changing, you’re gonna need strong evidence for.