Brant Hansen on public disagreements

I struggle with this myself a lot.

Note: I summarized what Brant Hansen actually said. Here's what he actually said, unsummarized, on his 2 April 2015 podcast:

Man, people are mad online about stuff. There’s politics, and there’s all sorts of issues. I see postings from people all the time that I don’t agree with.

What I have found, though: I can tell myself that, “Oh, I want to correct this person. That’s all I’m doing, just correcting this person.”

It doesn’t work if I do it on their page. It doesn’t work if I do it in public. If I really want to correct the person, I could send them a private message, a Facebook message or whatever, an email, and say “Hey, here’s what I’ve heard about this. I’m curious what you think. I love you either way.”

That’s far more effective, if it’s concern about that person.

…

If you feel like “I need to take a public stand for truth here. My opinion needs to be in public,” I understand that, too. But man, when you follow up with a comment , if you want to box somebody in and make them look “How stupid you are” and insult somebody, if you think that’ll change somebody’s mind, I will tell you, it NEVER does, EVER.

It’ll just occupy you the rest of the day and you’ll feel like you’re in conflict, and for what?

You can find the podcast at http://branthansen.com