But my fear, acquired from Reddit, is that people are going to read this guy’s totally inaccurate presentation of my argument and then every comment in the rest of the discussion will proceed as if that’s what I said.

Difficult as it is, I have to remind myself that the people who do this are not my target audience. They are swayed by the wind like blades of grass. Even if I convince them, they will be unconvinced by next week. The people who my words can affect are the people who bother to read what was actually said.

If I feel the need to reply, a very simple “that’s not what I said but okay” and block them and move on. If they want to respond, anything they say will be longer than that sentence and the people who aren’t invested will gloss over it and move on. And the people who are invested will go back and reread what I originally said. Or at least that’s what I tell myself as I open up TikTok to look at videos of cats chattering and possums loudly cronching on grapes or whatever cute shit they’re up to.