As has become a holiday tradition at the New York Times, they’ve included their annual “how to talk to your angry uncle” op-ed, featuring the Angry Uncle chatbot. It’s fun for a few minutes, but the upshot quickly becomes clear: to avoid unpleasantness, say nothing unpleasant.

The “try this” suggestion is:

And this is no doubt correct, as far as it goes, if one’s purpose is to hear or learn why your angry uncle is so awful. By asking an open-ended question, you’re far more likely to get a full exposition of Angry Uncle’s view. But so what?

If your purpose is to kill time, make it through dinner without anyone throwing anything, then there are tons of easy ways to avoid conflict, from “don’t ask” to nod politely while munching on stuffing. Then again, the Angry Uncle bot assumes the old guy has the emotional maturity of a college sophomore, which may or may not be true.

But the point of the bot is to foster engagement on controversial issues while assuming the Angry Uncle is wrong and needs the hip New York Times reader to inform him, in a non-judgmental way, that he’s got shit for brains. Except you can’t tell him he has shit for brains, because he’ll be offended and react poorly.

What the bot fails to do is consider the possibility that your Angry Uncle might be right. It’s irrelevant whether you pick the conservative or progressive (the bot calls it “liberal,” but there’s nothing liberal about it) Angry Uncle, as the bot provides insipid replies to either. In doing so, the Angry Uncle bot reflects one of the core tenets of generational communication: you’re right, he’s wrong, and the only issue is how to beat him at a game of empty rhetoric.

There’s a well-known phenomenon on the twitters called the “Reply Guy,” which I define as that random twitterer who, uninvited, regularly jumps into your timeline with some insipid snarky reply. It’s like some child throwing pebbles at a grown-up from behind a rock, hoping to  be sufficiently annoying to get his attention.

But there’s another, lesser-known, phenomenon I call the “Why Guy*.” Using a lawyer example, he’s the guy who replies to a straightforward assertion of law such as “hate speech is not an exception to the First Amendment” with:

Serious question, what value does racial slurs have to meaningful public discourse?

He doesn’t always begin with “serious question.” Sometimes it’s “just out of curiosity,” but the upshot is that the Why Guy asks what, on its surface, is a not-entirely-unreasonable, if orthogonal, question. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to answer. After all, he said “serious question,” and you don’t want to be what the kids refer to as a dick by ignoring someone with a serious question, even if you have no clue who he is, aren’t responsible for his education and have no idea whether or to what extent he’s equipped to understand the answer.

It’s a trap. Don’t fall for it. By my highly scientific calculations, this is not a sincere question 87.3% of the time. The Why Guy is trying to suck you into engagement where every logical fallacy he’s been taught to believe in his critical philosophy class will be sequentially thrown at you once you’ve given a reply.

Got all day to argue with some rando who believes he’s serving the cause? Sorry to hear. At least at Thanksgiving dinner, it will eventually come to an end, whether by him storming out the door, throwing his final bomb, “OK Boomer,” over his shoulder as he shuts the door to his Uber, or you announcing that it’s time to mop the floor, which will sail over his head as he’s unfamiliar with the concept of a mop, and ultimately inform him that they he has to leave now.

As with the Angry Uncle bot, the purpose isn’t to have a useful discussion, an anachronism if ever there was one, but to become adept at rhetorical devices which at best serve to deflect unpleasantness and at worst serve to goad people into a rhetorical corner to “win” an argument that persuades no one.

There are two things to bear in mind as you enjoy the lessons learned by your child, your niece, the neighbor’s kid who has adopted the “steampunk homeless Jesus” mode of appearance. They are not only entitled to their opinion, but they’re entitled to have you accept that their opinion is valid. The old saying, that everyone is entitled to an opinion,** is as passe as “let’s agree to disagree.” Should your opinion differ from theirs, it’s your duty as an adult to acquiesce to theirs because they’re better educated than you in the ways of critical theory and you ruined the world.

In contrast to the Times’ Angry Uncle bot, I therefore proffer my suggestion for a pleasant dinner with an unduly passionate college sophomore at the table using the “I’m just curious” device to draw out the view he desperately seeks to attack. Just say, “okay then, pass the gravy please” and let it go.

And don’t say anything about what she’s wearing. Oh no.

My mom: “Don’t forget to pack something nice for thanksgiving!”

Me: pic.twitter.com/LR6cg0JHTd

— Jen Winston (@jenerous) November 24, 2019

*It doesn’t have to be a “guy” in the gender fluid sense. It can be non-guys too. Notice how I avoided saying “girls”? Oh crap.

**There is a corollary saying involving assholes.