The Rhetorical Fallacy I chose to talk about is Poisoning The Well. This is a type of ad hominem where the writer instead of attacking the issue really just looks to attack the arguer and any information that the writer uses to argue they try to discredit. I find this to be a pretty affluent fallacy as I see it commonly with people who are my age that get into arguments. There typically really isn't a great quantity of valid information that is being brought forth to argue but the arguer is just discredited and attacked no matter what is said. I find this pretty easy to catch in writing and honestly find it very unattractive when I am trying to believe a source or find validity in a source.
I've experienced this pretty recently in my life. Without getting too personal (don't worry) very recently I dated somebody who was very malicious in the way that she used her words and the way that she would twist my words. Even at times compliments were twisted to use them against me and to discredit what I'd say. For example If I said "You are a really great person with so much potential. You are very caring and thoughtful". Her response to discredit and take away value from what I said would be "Those are just words. You do not mean that. That is not very sincere. You do this, this and this..". This is very frustrating when it is happening in every day dialogue. It does not build trust. Immediately it only starts discord and vehemency. I am not sure that there ever would be a clever or good use of this type of fallacy as It cannot be deemed as valid.
Another example of this I see a lot is on open blog forums. In High School I played football and on Deseret News there was an open blog where people would comment about teams and games that week. One of the weeks against our rivalry I had a very good game and some of the parents had made comments toward me saying that I wasn't "as good as people make me out to be" or "I am a dirty player". These comments were thrown out to attack me and when I responded with "I am sorry, I just play the game as good as I can. If you can show me an example I'd love to change" there were some respondents that just said "Whatever you are dirty and you know it!" Now, these respondents were not looking to really make a valid point put just make me look bad. There is no win when responding to these types of fallacies because there is no much ill intent involved. Just like my prior relationship.
I am not a big fan of fallacies and up to this point choose to stay away from them in my writing.
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