What are some signs that the person you are dealing with is arguing in bad faith? That is, he is not interested in the truth of the matter, only trying to assert his own position for other reasons.

For background: for the past year or two, YouTuber Ross Scott has been spearheading a campaign called ‘Stop Killing Games’ to change or clarify the law regarding the common practice of companies destroying video games: that is, when a developer ends support for a game that is built to depend upon a central server run by the company, rendering the game permanently unplayable and leaving the customer with nothing. Ross considers this to be fraud, because the company sells you a product which it then destroys at its own discretion without providing any upfront information about how long is can be expected to last, as well as being destructive of culture by trashing the work of hundreds of artists and developers. Personally, I agree with him, but that’s not really the point of this piece (I did an essay on The Everyman about the campaign if you want to read up on it).

Now, according to Ross, at the height of the campaign popular YouTuber Pirate Software, who goes by the handle ‘Thor’, came out with a widely-viewed video trashing the campaign, presenting a false narrative of their goals, and disrupting their momentum when they needed it the most. The bulk of the video below is Ross responding to Thor, which he admits he should have done sooner, but wanted to avoid the appearance of ‘drama farming’ (the rest of the video is Ross giving an update on the state of the campaign and why he’s considering it effectively over).

Personally, I’d never heard of ‘Thor’ until this video, and I only bring this up because I think it is a good illustration of what arguing in bad faith looks like.

Here are some major signs, as illustrated by Thor in this video:

1. He misrepresents Ross’s position

Thor’s summary is that SKG argues that single player games should not have DRM that can allow developers to turn off the game. Also (somehow) that they want developers to turn all multiplayer games into single player games after support ends. And also that it’s about how games are advertised (from what we see here, Thor seems to be changing his summation every time he brings it up).

Ross’s position is simply that if a game is sold to customers, then the game ought to be left in a reasonably playable state after the company stops supporting it. That is, it should not be legally permissible for a vendor to intentionally destroy a video game (or any product) after the point of sale.

This is not a particularly complicated position, and Ross has stated it repeatedly and been very consistent on it. Thor even goes to look at the actual petition, but calls it ‘vague’ because it does not specify his own idea of what the campaign is.

Now, it’s possible, of course, to genuinely misunderstand someone else’s position. That’s why it’s often useful to try to restate the other person’s position in terms he finds acceptable. Which brings us to:

2. He refuses or ignores contrary information

At one point, Ross shows footage of Thor watching one of his videos in which he states, in large, block letters, that his position is not that companies need to provide indefinite support for games. Only for Thor to later claim that that is his position.

Likewise, when he reads the actual petition, he still ignores what it says and repeatedly calls it ‘vague’ because it does not specify what he has decided it is actually trying to do.

To be clear, the issue isn’t that Thor is wrong on the issue in debate, it’s that he’s wrong about what the issue in debate even is and is rejecting or ignoring evidence on that point. What someone thinks is their opinion, which they may hold for a myriad of reasons and in the face of conflicting evidence; that they think it is a fact that is either true or false. If you say that your opponent holds views that he does not in fact hold (speaking of things explicitly affirmed or denied and leaving aside distant implications), you are simply wrong. Just as someone who says “Napoleon was Emperor of India” would be simply wrong.

To persistently misstate your opponent’s position in the face of contrary evidence is a bad sign.

3. He attempts to dismiss Ross’s credibility with unsupported insults

Thor repeatedly calls Ross ‘stupid’, ‘asinine’, ‘disingenuous’, and his arguments ‘used-car-salesman garbage.’

The thing is, Ross is one most of the most genuine and upright creators on YouTube. He drips with authenticity. This is the kind of guy who refused to start a fundraiser for his campaign because he didn’t have a clear plan for how that money would be spent (and he still hasn’t asked for any money for it), whose output (and income) has significantly dropped due to his involvement, and who openly and repeatedly stated that the whole thing was a very long shot. As far as can be publicly observed, Ross has been completely upfront and honest this entire time, and indeed during his entire YouTube career.

And again, this is of a piece with his whole persona. Ross seems to be essentially just a normal guy talking about stuff that interests him, not someone who fancies himself an ‘influencer’ (if you’ve spent any time on YouTube, you know how rare that is). His first few videos on this issue involved him urging someone better qualified to take up the actual fight, calling himself a mascot at best.

Besides which, whatever you might think of his takes (I actually disagree with him fairly often, as parts of this very video illustrate), Ross is clearly very intelligent and does a lot of homework on these issues; things like consulting lawyers, illustrating complex business and computing processes, and so on. Calling him stupid or dishonest simply doesn’t match the known facts. Rather like saying that, say, Thomas Jefferson was an uneducated moron: it simply isn’t true whatever you think of his positions. To make such a claim reveals either open malice or wilful ignorance.

4. He refuses clarification or discussion

Ross showcases an incident where he commented on Thor’s video and offered to clarify the campaign, saying that Thor should at least “hate it for what it actually is,” to which Thor flippantly replied (on air) “I do.”

The guy who started the campaign you are criticizing tells you that you misunderstood his position, and you just deny it as if it were self-evident.

As a rule, if someone tells you that you got their position wrong, you should never just say “no I don’t.” Because the other person knows what they think better than you do. The closest you can come to it is to say “you wrote / said x: did you mean that?” or “you now say Y, but here you said X. X does not mean Y.” But you can’t just say “No, I understand your position perfectly” when someone is trying to tell you that it isn’t what you said it was. That’s a sign that you’re trying to control the narrative, not trying to understand what it actually is. It’s either bad faith or massive egoism, or both.

5. He refuses offers to clarify or debate on extremely dubious moral grounds

Then when asked whether he would consider talking to Ross about the issue, he answered that he would not because he found “his entire statement to be disingenuous.”

Again, Ross is a very hard sell on being disingenuous. But apparently, this was due to Thor’s taking offence at one of Ross’s arguments: a half-joking set of reasons to think the campaign might succeed that included things like “Politicians like easy wins” and “It’s a diversion from more serious topics.”

Thor’s take was “You want to put together legislation because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s an easy win,” which, as Ross points out, are hardly mutually exclusive. But apparently this is such an offensive concept to him that it justified refusing to directly engage with Ross or anyone associated with him (to the point of allegedly deleting Ross’s comments on his video)

Now, I don’t believe anybody could be this sensitive as to take offence at “this is an easy win,” nor so stupid as to think that “easy win” and “good policy” are mutually exclusive (do you think war with Japan was a hard sell after Pearl Harbor?). Certainly I don’t believe this could genuinely amount to moral indignation to the point of refusing to have any kind of engagement with someone, as if they’d shown dishonesty and depravity putting them beyond the pale. That is not a credible moral position to take. It is either him being jaw-droppingly naive and sensitive or a sign that he knows he’s being dishonest and wants to avoid being confronted with Ross’s actual position because it would be much harder to dismiss.

What this all adds up to is that Thor is clearly arguing in bad faith: he does not address Ross’s actual position and instead frames it as something superficially similar, but much less credible. He pretends to look at the source, but tries to discredit the fact that it does not back him up. This allows him to make personal attacks on Ross to dismiss him as a source. When Ross reaches out, he refuses clarification by simple dismissal (“You misstated my position.” “No, I didn’t.”) and refuses any kind of further engagement by claiming a moral objection based on highly dubious grounds.

In short, if someone misstates their opponent’s position, that may be an honest mistake. But a misstatement followed by a refusal to hear clarification, particularly on obviously dubious grounds, generally means a bad faith actor.